Home Ethics report describes alleged intercourse with underage lady

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

Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

The House Ethics Committee announced Monday that it had found “substantial evidence” that former Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old girl in 2017 and that he “regularly” solicited women for sex throughout his time in Congress paid.

The panel also found in a final report of its year-long investigation into Gaetz that he had 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, “that exceeded the allowable amounts,” the bipartisan committee concluded.

“Representative Gaetz has acted in a manner that discredits the House of Representatives,” the 42-page report said.

The committee said it found “substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz has violated House rules, state and federal laws and other standards of conduct, engaging in prostitution, statutory rape, illegal drug use, accepting improper gifts, and granting special favors and privileges.” and prohibit obstruction.” of Congress.”

But the committee said it found insufficient evidence that Gaetz violated a federal sex trafficking law, although he did “arrange for the transportation of women across state lines for the purpose of commercial sex.” The panel said it found no evidence that these women were under 18 at the time of the trip and could not conclude that the “commercial sexual acts were induced by force, fraud or coercion.”

Gaetz has denied wrongdoing.

A lawyer for Gaetz did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment on the report. When the report was published, Gaetz denied in a series of posts on X that he had engaged in prostitution or sex trafficking.

“There's a reason they did this to me in a report on Christmas Eve and not in a courtroom 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 preliminary injunction that would block its release.

Trump's first AG election

The ethics panel report, the final product of an investigation that began in 2021, has been at the center of a recent controversy surrounding the former Florida lawmaker.

Gaetz, 42, resigned from Congress in mid-November, shortly after President-elect Donald Trump nominated him to be U.S. attorney general. Trump's nomination to head the Justice Department was immediately met with excitement from critics, who were quick to note that if confirmed, Gaetz would take over as head of the agency that had previously investigated him over sex trafficking allegations.

The Justice Department ended that investigation without filing criminal charges. But the Ethics Commission, which had paused its own efforts while the DOJ's version emerged, reauthorized its investigation in May 2023.

As Gaetz left Congress, Republicans, including ethics Rep. Michael Guest of Mississippi, said Gaetz was no longer within the committee's jurisdiction, raising doubts about whether his report would be released publicly.

News outlets reported at the time that Gaetz's departure came just two days before the ethics panel voted to release the report. The panel, made up of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, disagreed on whether the report should be made public, even though Gaetz is no longer a congressman.

But in a secret vote on December 10, the committee decided that the report should be made public.

Gaetz withdrew his bid for attorney general after just eight days as Trump's pick, saying he would “unfairly distract” 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 of Trump's proposals prepare for senators' consideration in the coming weeks, the contents of the Gaetz report could undermine senators' confidence in the Trump transition team's vetting process.

“Interactions with Minors”

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A graphic from the House Ethics Committee's December 23, 2024 report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz, summarizing payments he allegedly made to women and to former staffer Joel Greenberg through peer-to-peer payment platforms or checks has.

Source: House of Representatives

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

That amount also includes money spent at a party on July 15, 2017, where “records overwhelmingly indicate that Rep. Gaetz had sex with multiple women … including the then-17-year-old,” it says Report.

Gaetz, then 35, and the underage girl had sex twice at that party, including at least once in front of others, the report said. The girl, referred to as “Victim A,” said she remembered Gaetz giving her $400 as payment for sex that evening, the report said.

“At that time, she had just completed her freshman year of high school,” the report said.

Gaetz's previous claim that he had not had sex with a 17-year-old “since I was 17” was untrue, the committee concluded.

His “statutory rape of Victim A constituted a violation of Florida law, the Code of Conduct and the Code of Ethics for Government Service,” the report said.

The committee 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 for conviction. The panel found that Gaetz met with the girl again for commercial sex less than six months later, after she turned 18.

Joel Greenberg

The Gaetz 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.

The committee said it received written communications from a Gaetz associate, Joel Greenberg, a former tax collector in Seminole County, Florida, who pleaded guilty in 2021 to federal crimes including sex trafficking of an underage girl. Greenberg was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2022.

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Gaetz and Greenberg — who met and became friends shortly after Gaetz was sworn into Congress in January 2017 — frequently attended parties with young women Greenberg had 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 “medication and hotel.”[s]and girls.”

The committee said that while Greenberg had “credibility issues,” none of his findings were based solely on the information he provided.