House Ethics report says Matt Gaetz regularly paid for sex, including payment to an underage girl
Former House Rep. Matt Gaetz , R-Florida , regularly paid for sex, possessed illegal drugs and paid a 17-year-old girl for sex in 2017, according to a 42-page report released by the House Ethics Committee on Monday on President-elect Donald Trump’s former pick for attorney general.
The report cited “substantial evidence” that from 2017 -20, Gaetz “regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him,” and from 2017 -19, possessed illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on “multiple different occasions.” The Ethics Committee also investigated a 2018 trip Gaetz made to the Bahamas where the panel found he accepted transportation and lodging in violation of the House rules and laws on gifts.
The GOP-led committee concluded in the document that Gaetz “violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress.”
The release of the report was delayed after Gaetz – who resigned from the House after becoming Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department – filed a lawsuit to halt the release of the panel’s findings, according to two people familiar with the panel’s internal deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. Gaetz’s lawyers requested a restraining order and injunction against the committee, arguing that its actions amounted to an “unconstitutional” attempt to “exercise jurisdiction over a private citizen through the threatened release of an investigative report containing potentially defamatory allegations,” according to the complaint.
The committee’s release of the hotly anticipated report, which came three days after Congress adjourned for the holidays Friday evening, reversed an earlier decision not to make public the results of its investigation. The report is the culmination of yearslong scrutiny surrounding Gaetz and the allegations against him. The panel wrote that Gaetz was “uncooperative” throughout its review and found that he “knowingly and willfully sought to impede and obstruct the Committee’s investigation of his conduct.”
It also concluded that he misused House resources when he employed his then-chief of staff to “assist a woman with whom he engaged in sexual activity in obtaining a passport, falsely indicating to the U.S. Department of State that she was a constituent.”
Rep. Michael Guest , R-Mississippi, who chairs the Ethics Committee, and others had opposed publicizing the report, arguing that Gaetz was no longer up for attorney general or a member of Congress. Democrats wanted to force its release, leading to a contentious debate. In the report on Monday, Guest wrote on behalf of the members who did not support the release, arguing that “the majority deviated from the Committee’s well-established standards” on releasing a report on “an individual no longer under the Committee’s jurisdiction, an action the Committee has not taken since 2006.”
While he and others who voted against its release “do not challenge the Committee’s findings,” Guest alleges that putting out a report after a lawmaker has left Congress “is a dangerous departure with potentially catastrophic consequences.”
But Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Maryland) told The Washington Post in a brief interview that there was precedent for releasing a report after a member has left office. And he argued that the panel’s work was an important public good that provided “guidance to current members of the House as to what conduct is across the line and what’s permissible.”
“The public has a right to know,” said Ivey. “Whether [Gaetz] seeks public office of a different type, or whether he seeks employment in the private sector, I think this is the type of information, given the nature of these issues, that those folks should have a right to know before they make a decision.”
In 2020, while Trump was still in office, the Justice Department began investigating Gaetz over the alleged relationship with a 17-year-old girl and sex-trafficking allegations that related to whether he had paid for her travel. The Justice Department did not bring charges. Gaetz has denied all the allegations against him and pointed to the Justice Department’s decision not to charge him.
Gaetz said on X last week that he has never been charged and never had sexual contact with a minor. He posted that his behavior was “embarrassing, though not criminal” and that he had in the past “probably partied, womanized, drank and smoked more than I should have.” He also said he “often” sent money to women he dated when he was single, as well as some he did not date.
On Monday, Gaetz criticized the committee for releasing the report without giving him recourse to a courtroom, “where I could present evidence and challenge witnesses,” he posted on X. “This is testimony from one of the alleged ‘prostitutes’ that you won’t see in the report!” Gaetz added, sharing a screenshot of testimony from one of the witnesses who appeared before the committee and said she “never charged anyone anything.”
The panel wrote that it did not find “sufficient evidence” to conclude that Gaetz violated the federal sex trafficking statute. But contrary to Gaetz’s public denials, the committee found that Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old in July 2017 in violation of Florida’s statutory rape law.
“The Committee received evidence that Representative Gaetz did not learn that Victim A was 17 years old until more than a month after their first sexual encounters,” according to the report. “However, statutory rape is a strict liability crime. After he learned that Victim A was a minor, he maintained contact and less than 6 months after she turned 18, he met up with her again for commercial sex.”
The committee looked into a trip that Gaetz made to the Bahamas between Sept. 13 and 16, 2018, interviewing witnesses who testified that Gaetz “appeared to be under the influence of drugs and that they took ecstasy during this trip.”
“Representative Gaetz engaged in sexual activity with at least four of the women on the trip,” according to the report. “Most, if not all, of the women involved had some history of sexual interactions with Representative Gaetz for which they had been paid. While there were no specific payments to the women in connection with the Bahamas trip, according to one woman, ‘the trip itself was more so the payment.’”
The panel also concluded that Gaetz received “impermissible gifts,” such as accepting “travel via private plane and other travel costs” related to the Bahamas trip, without disclosing or “seeking approval from the Committee.” Members must follow a House “Gift Rule” that requires them to apply “for a waiver to accept gifts of personal friendship with a fair market value over a threshold amount.”
“Contrary to Representative Gaetz’s claims that he provided ‘substantial’ evidence to the Committee ‘demonstrating his innocence’ on this allegation, he provided no evidence showing how he paid for any travel costs other than his flight to the Bahamas, despite being given multiple opportunities to do so,” the panel said in the report. The report noted that Gaetz did not provide evidence of payment for his flight home.
Questions about those allegations – and about what the House committee had learned – reached a fever pitch last month after Trump named Gaetz as his pick for attorney general. Facing opposition from fellow Republicans in the upper chamber and amid the public airing of new details about Gaetz’s conduct from witnesses involved with the investigation, Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration for the role in late November. He is set to join One America News Network (OAN) as an anchor in January, the network announced earlier this month.