Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who briefly stood to become President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to be attorney general, was found by congressional ethics investigators to have paid numerous women — including a 17-year-old girl — for sex, and to have purchased and used illegal drugs, including from his Capitol Hill office.
Those are among the findings of the long-running investigation by the House Ethics Committee into Gaetz, which concluded the former Florida congressman violated multiple state laws related to sexual misconduct while in office. The full report was released by the committee Monday.
"The Committee found that there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress," the 37-page report concludes.
It went public as Mr Gaetz made a lawsuit in federal court to stop the report and further claimed that he is out of the committee's jurisdiction after becoming a private citizen yesterday. The committee released the report just a few minutes later.
Gaetz resigned from Congress in November after Trump announced plans to nominate him for attorney general. But facing opposition from some fellow Republicans, Gaetz withdrew from consideration a week later. The release of the ethics report brings to a close — at least for now — Gaetz's incendiary tenure on Capitol Hill, where he became one of the most vocal and provocative members of the pro-Trump faction in Congress.
Gaetz denied improper conduct and called the allegations a "smear" contrived by his political opponents. The committee reported that the congressman declined to answer under oath, although he did respond in writing to some of the committee's questions.
The report gives fresh voice to allegations of misconduct that have circulated around Gaetz for years, in spite of his firm denials. It draws on testimony from witnesses who told the committee they were paid to have sex with Gaetz, text messages discussing the transactions, and Venmo and PayPal receipts.
Among the report's most lurid findings were the allegations of sex- and drug-fueled parties and travel, including a 2018 trip to the Bahamas where witnesses say he took ecstasy and had sex with four women.
"From 2017 to 2020, Representative Gaetz made tens of thousands of dollars in payments to women that the Committee determined were likely in connection with sexual activity and/or drug use," said the report, listing payments totaling more than $90,000 to 12 different women.
The committee said it also received testimony that at a 2017 party, Gaetz twice had sex with "Victim A," who was 17 years old at the time and had just completed her junior year in high school.
"Victim A remembered receiving $400 in cash from Representative Gaetz that evening, which she understood to be payment for sex," the committee wrote. "Victim A said that she did not tell Representative Gaetz that she was under 18 at the time, nor did he ask her age."
In his written responses to the committee, Gaetz maintained that he had never had sexual relations with a minor. Department of Justice had earlier on investigated Gaetz for a violation of the sex trafficking law but had not even brought charges against him. The committee claimed that although it did not find enough proof that Gaetz violated federal sex trafficking statute, while he transported women across state lines for the purpose of sex, their ages were 18 and above.
The report said that even though all of the women who testified claimed their sexual encounters with Gaetz were consensual, one woman testified that the use of drugs during the parties and events to which they attended might have "impair[ed their] ability to really know what was going on or fully consent."
A third woman testified that when looking back on certain moments, she feels violated.
The report also uncovered "substantial evidence" of rampant illicit drug use, the committee said. It has text messages he sent referring to drugs as "party favors," "rolls" or "vitamins." According to the report, Gaetz created a fake email from his Capitol Hill office "for the purpose of purchasing marijuana." The report did note that Gaetz denies using illicit drugs in his responses to the committee.
In a statement posted on X last week, Gaetz said, "In my single days, I often sent funds to women I dated-even some I never dated but who asked. I dated several of these women for years. It's embarrassing, though not criminal, that I probably partied, womanized, drank and smoked more than I should have earlier in life. I live a different life now."
Besides the sexual misconduct and the illegal drug use, the report further accused Gaetz of receiving excessive permissible gifts of luxury travel on his 2018 trip to the Bahamas. It further said he had arranged for his chief of staff to help a woman with whom he had been involved in sexual activity to get a passport by falsely reporting her to the State Department as being one of his constituents.
In his lawsuit Monday, Gaetz argued: "The Committee's apparent intention to release its report after explicitly acknowledging it lacks jurisdiction over former members, its failure to follow constitutional notions of due process, and failure to adhere to its own procedural rules and precedent represents an unprecedented overreach that threatens fundamental constitutional rights and established procedural protections."
Gaetz said last month that he will be "fighting for President Trump" during the remainder of his term in the United States Congress.
"I think that eight years is probably enough time in the United States Congress," Gaetz said, though last week, he floated in a post on X the idea of returning to participate in the election for House speaker.
The House Ethics Committee had voted in secret last month to keep the report, but reversed course in a similar secret vote earlier this month. Two Republican members of the committee voted for the release, according to two people familiar with the vote, which included the entire membership of 10 Republicans and Democrats.
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