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U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., listens to testimony during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington on Dec. 8, 2022.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
He House Ethics Committee on Monday revealed that it found “substantial evidence” that former Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old girl in 2017 and that he “regularly” paid women for sex, all while he was in Congress.
The panel, in a final report In its years-long investigation into Gaetz, it also found that he used illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on multiple occasions between 2017 and 2019.
Gaetz also accepted gifts, including a trip to the Bahamas in 2018, “in excess of allowable amounts,” the bipartisan committee concluded.
“Rep. Gaetz has acted in a manner that reflects dishonorably on the House,” the 42-page report says.
The committee said it found “substantial evidence that Rep. Gaetz violated House rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, use of illicit drugs, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges and obstruction.” congressional.”
But the committee said it did not find sufficient evidence that Gaetz violated a federal sex trafficking law, even though he “caused the transportation of women across state lines for the purposes of the sex trade.” The panel said it found no evidence that those women were under 18 when the trip took place, and could not conclude that the “commercial sex acts were induced by force, fraud or coercion.”
Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing.
A lawyer for Gaetz did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the report. When the report was published, Gaetz in a series of posts on X denied engaging in prostitution or sex trafficking.
“There is a reason they did this to me in a Christmas Eve briefing and not in a courtroom of any kind where I could present evidence and challenge witnesses,” Gaetz wrote in a post.
Hours before the long-awaited report came out, Gaetz asked a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order that would block its launch.
Trump’s first choice for AG
The ethics panel’s report, the final product of an investigation that began in 2021, was at the center of a recent controversy surrounding the former Florida legislator.
Gaetz, 42, resigned from Congress in mid-November, shortly after President-elect donald trump elected him to be attorney general of the United States. Trump’s choice to lead the Justice Department immediately drew howls from critics, who were quick to point out that Gaetz, if confirmed, would be in charge of the agency that had previously investigated him for sex trafficking allegations.
He Department of Justice ended that investigation without filing criminal charges. But the Ethics Committee, which had paused its own efforts while the Justice Department’s version was developing, reauthorized its investigation in May 2023.
When Gaetz left Congress, Republicans, including Ethics Chairman Rep. Michael Guest of Mississippi, said Gaetz was no longer within the committee’s jurisdiction, raising questions about whether his report would be made public.
Media reported The timing of Gaetz’s departure came just two days before the Ethics panel voted to release the report. The panel, which is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, stagnant on whether to release the report even though Gaetz is no longer a congressman.
But in a secret vote On December 10, the committee decided that the report should be published.
Gaetz retired his candidacy for attorney general after just eight days as Trump’s pick, saying he was “unfairly becoming a distraction” to the Republican president-elect’s transition efforts.
His decision, which followed reports that numerous Republican senators would not support Gaetz’s confirmation, was the first major setback to Trump’s efforts to staff his Cabinet.
As more Trump nominees prepare to face scrutiny from senators in the coming weeks, the contents of the Gaetz report could erode senators’ confidence in the Trump transition team’s vetting process.
‘Interactions with the minor’
A graphic from the Dec. 23, 2024, House Ethics Committee report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz, summarizing payments he allegedly made to women and former associate Joel Greenberg through peer-to-peer payment platforms or checks.
Source: House of Representatives
Between 2017 and 2020, Gaetz paid women tens of thousands of dollars “that the Committee determined were likely related to sexual activity and/or drug use,” according to the report.
That sum includes money spent at a party on July 15, 2017, at which “the record overwhelmingly suggests that Rep. Gaetz had sexual relations with multiple women…including the then-17-year-old,” according to the report.
Gaetz, who was 35 at the time, and the underage girl had sex twice at that party, including at least once in front of other people, according to the report. The girl, known as “Victim A,” said she remembered Gaetz giving her $400 that night for what she understood was payment for sex, according to the report.
“At the time, she had just finished her junior year of high school,” the report says.
Gaetz’s previous claim that he had not had sexual relations with a 17-year-old girl “since I was 17” was false, the committee concluded.
His “statutory rape of Victim A was a violation of Florida law, the Code of Official Conduct and the Code of Ethics for Government Service,” according to the report.
The committee said it found evidence that Gaetz did not know the victim’s age until a month after they had sex. But “statutory rape is a strict liability crime,” the report says, referring to crimes that do not require proof of intent for a conviction. The panel noted that Gaetz met the girl again for commercial sex less than six months later, after she turned 18.
Joel Greenberg
Gaetz’s investigation included 29 subpoenas, nearly 14,000 documents, more than two dozen witnesses, six Freedom of Information Act requests and nine other requests for information, according to the report.
The committee said it received written communications from a Gaetz associate, Joel Greenberg, a former tax collector in Seminole County, Florida, who in 2021 pleaded guilty to federal crimes, including sex trafficking of a minor girl. Greenberg was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2022.
Gaetz and Greenberg, who met and became friends shortly after Gaetz was sworn in as a member of Congress in January 2017, frequently attended parties with young women who had been contacted by Greenberg through a “sugar” website. dating,” according to the report.
Greenberg said he and Gaetz, who didn’t have his own account on the site, would split the costs of “medications, hotel(s) and girls.”
The committee said that although Greenberg had “credibility issues,” none of its conclusions were based solely on information he provided.