The House Ethics report details allegations of sex with a minor

U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., listens to testimony during a House Judiciary Committee hearing, in Washington, Dec. 8, 2022.

Evelyn Hockstein Reuters

The House Ethics Committee On Monday he revealed that he 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, while when he was in Congress.

The panel, in a final report during its year-long investigation of Gaetz, it also found that he used illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on several occasions between 2017 and 2019.

Gaetz also accepted gifts, including a 2018 trip to the Bahamas, “in excess of authorized amounts,” the bipartisan committee found.

“Representative Gaetz has acted in a manner that appears disconcerting to the House,” the 42-page report said.

The committee said it found “substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, use of illegal drugs, acceptance of gifts that are not is not allowed, the provision of special favors and privileges, and restrictions. of Congress.”

But the committee said it did not find enough evidence that Gaetz violated federal sex-trafficking law, even though he “caused women to be transported across state lines for commercial sex purposes.” The panel said it did not find any evidence that these women were under 18 when they were trafficked, and that they could not conclude that “commercial sex was caused by force, fraud or coercion”.

Gaetz has denied wrongdoing.

An attorney for Gaetz did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment on the report. As the report was published, Gaetz in a series of posts on X denied that he was involved in prostitution or sex trafficking.

“There is a reason they did this to me in a Christmas Eve report and not in any kind of courtroom where I could present evidence and challenge witnesses,” Gaetz wrote in one post.

Hours before the long-awaited report came, Gaetz asked a federal judge to temporary restraining order which would prevent his release.

Trump's first AG pick

The ethics panel's report, the final result of an investigation that began in 2021, was at the center of a recent controversy about the former Florida lawmaker.

Gaetz, 42, resigned from Congress in mid-November, shortly after President-elect Donald Trump elected to become US Attorney General. Trump's pick to lead the Justice Department immediately drew cries from critics, who were quick to point out that Gaetz, if confirmed, would head the agency that previously investigated him here on sex trafficking charges.

The Department of Justice complete that investigation without filing criminal charges. But the Ethics Committee, which had halted its own efforts while the DOJ's version played out, reauthorized its study in May 2023.

When Gaetz left Congress, Republicans including the Ethics Chairman, the Rev. Michael Guest, of Mississippi, said that Gaetz was no longer within the committee's jurisdiction, raising doubts about whether the their report out publicly.

News outlets reported at the time Gaetz left just two days before the Ethics panel was set to vote to release the report. The panel, which is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, deadlock on which the report should be published despite the fact that Gaetz is no longer a correspondent.

But in a secret ballot December 10, the committee decided that the report should come out.

Gaetz retired his bid for attorney general after just eight days as Trump's pick, saying it was “unfairly drawing attention” to the Republican president's transition efforts.

His decision, which came after reports that several Republican senators would not support Gaetz's confirmation, was the first major setback for Trump's efforts to work for his Cabinet.

As more of Trump's picks prepare to face the senators' investigation in the coming weeks, the content of Gaetz's report could erode senators' trust in the Trump transition team's vetting process.

'Interacting with the youngest'

A chart from the House Ethics Committee's December 23, 2024, report on former Representative Matt Gaetz, summarizing payments he allegedly made to women and to his associate Joel Greenberg through senior payment platforms or peer-to-peer checks.

Source: House of Representatives

Between 2017 and 2020, Gaetz paid tens of thousands of dollars to women “that the Committee believed were likely related to sexual activity and/or drug use,” the report said.

That amount includes money spent at a party on July 15, 2017, at which “the record strongly suggests that Representative Gaetz had had sex with multiple women…

Gaetz, who was 35 at the time, and the little girl had sex twice at that party, including at least once in front of others, the report found. The girl, known as “Victim A,” said she remembered Gaetz giving her $400 that night for what she understood to be payment for sex, the report said.

“At the time, she had just finished her junior year of high school,” the report said.

Gaetz's previous statement that he has not had sex with a 17-year-old “since I was 17” was not true, 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,” the report said.

The committee said they received evidence that Gaetz did not learn the victim's age until a month after they had sex. But “statutory rape is a strict liability offense,” the report said, referring to crimes that do not require proof of intent for conviction. The panel noted that Gaetz met the girl again for more 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, the report said.