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 Ethics Committee of the House revealed on Monday that he had 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 he was in Congress.
Ploča, ua final report in its years-long investigation of 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 2018 trip to the Bahamas, “in excess of what was permitted,” the bipartisan committee found.
“Representative Gaetz acted in a manner that brought the House into disrepute,” the 42-page report said.
The committee said it found “substantial evidence that Rep. Gaetz violated House rules, state and federal laws and other standards of conduct that prohibit prostitution, statutory rape, use of illegal drugs, acceptance of illegal gifts, granting of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress.”
But the board said it did not find enough evidence that Gaetz violated federal sex trafficking laws, even though he “caused the transportation of women across state lines for the purpose of commercial sex.” The panel said it found no evidence that the women were under 18 when they traveled, and could not conclude that “the commercial sex acts were induced by force, fraud or coercion”.
Gaetz has pleaded not guilty.
Gaetz’s attorney did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the report. After the report was published, Gaetz denied in a series of posts on Xu that he engaged in prostitution or sex trafficking.
“There’s a reason they did this to me in the Christmas Eve report and not in any courtroom where I could present evidence and challenge witnesses,” Gaetz wrote in one post.
Hours before the long-awaited report came out, Gaetz asked a federal judge to issue it temporary restraining order this would block its release.
Trump’s first AG pick
The ethics commission’s report, the final product of an investigation that began in 2021, has been at the center of recent controversy surrounding the former Florida lawmaker.
Gaetz, 42, resigned from Congress in mid-November, shortly after being elected president Donald Trump he chose him to be the Attorney General of the USA. Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department immediately drew howls from critics, who were quick to note that if confirmed, Gaetz would be in charge of an agency that had previously investigated him over sex-trafficking allegations.
The Ministry of Justice completed that investigation without filing a criminal complaint. But the Ethics Commission, which had paused its own efforts while the DOJ’s version unfolded, reauthorized its investigation in May 2023.
When Gaetz left Congress, Republicans, including Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest of Mississippi, said Gaetz was no longer under the committee’s jurisdiction, casting doubt on whether his report would be made public.
Newspapers reported at a time when Gaetz’s departure came just two days before the Ethics Council was to vote to release the report. The panel, which is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, blind spot whether to release the report despite Gaetz no longer being a congressman.
But hey secret ballot On December 10, the commission decided that the report should be published.
Gaetz withdrew his bid for attorney general after just eight days as Trump’s pick, saying it “unfairly becomes a distraction” to the Republican president-elect’s transition efforts.
His decision, which followed reports that a number of Republican senators would not support Gaetz’s confirmation, was the first major setback in Trump’s efforts to fill out his Cabinet.
As more Trump appointees prepare to face senatorial scrutiny in the coming weeks, the content of Gaetz’s report could undermine senators’ confidence in the Trump transition team’s vetting process.
‘Interactions with a minor’
A chart from a December 23, 2024 House Ethics Committee report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz, summarizes payments he allegedly made to women and former aide Joel Greenberg via peer-to-peer payment platforms or checks.
Source: House of Representatives
Between 2017 and 2020, Gaetz made tens of thousands of dollars in payments to women “that the Board determined were likely related to sexual activity and/or drug use,” the report said.
That amount includes money spent at a party from July 15, 2017, where “the record strongly suggests that Rep. Gaetz had sex with multiple women … including a then 17-year-old girl,” the report said.
Gaetz, who was 35 at the time, and the underage girl had sex twice at the party, including at least once in front of others, the report found. The girl, referred to as “Victim A,” said she remembered Gaetz giving her $400 that night for what she understood to be sex pay, the report said.
“At the time, she had just finished her freshman year of high school,” the report said.
Gaetz’s previous claim that he had not had sex with the 17-year-old “since he was 17” was untrue, the commission concluded.
His “statutory rape of Victim A was in violation of Florida law, the Code of Official Conduct and the Civil Service Code of Ethics,” the report said.
The board said it found evidence that Gaetz did not learn the victim’s age until a month after they had sex. But “statutory rape is a strict liability crime,” the report said, referring to crimes that do not require proof of intent to convict. The panel noted that Gaetz met with the girl again for commercial sex less than six months later, after she turned 18.
Joel Greenberg
The Gaetz investigation involved 29 subpoenas, nearly 14,000 documents, more than two dozen witnesses, six Freedom of Information Act requests and nine other information requests, according to the report.
The board said it received a written communication from Gaetz’s associate, Joel Greenberg, a former tax collector in Seminole County, Florida, who in 2021 pleaded guilty federal crimes including sex trafficking of an underage girl. Greenberg was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2022
Gaetz and Greenberg — who met and became friends shortly after Gaetz was sworn into Congress in January 2017 — often attended parties with young women Greenberg contacted through a “sugar dating” website, the report said.
Greenberg said he and Gaetz, who did not have his own account on the site, would split the cost of “drugs, hotels[s]and girls.”
The commission said that while Greenberg has “credibility issues,” none of its findings relied solely on information he provided.
