House Ethics finds ‘substantial’ evidence Gaetz had sex with minor, used illicit drugs

WASHINGTON (CN) — A yearslong investigation into former Florida Representative Matt Gaetz uncovered “substantial evidence” to corroborate allegations that the Republican lawmaker had sex with a minor, used illicit drugs and paid women for sex, according to a House Ethics Committee report.

The panel published its findings Monday after weeks of uncertainty about whether they’d see the light of day. Gaetz, who joined the House in 2017, had appeared to dodge consequences when in November he resigned from Congress, having been tapped to serve as President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general.

As for the question of whether the Ethics Committee would release its findings on a former member of Congress, the panel’s lawmakers secretly voted earlier this month to publish their report anyway.

According to the committee, Gaetz made tens of thousands of dollars in payments to women between 2017 and 2020 which investigators said were “likely in connection with sexual activity and/or drug use.” The former lawmaker made these payments, ranging from $200 to more than $63,000, using PayPal, Venmo and CashApp — sometimes using other people’s accounts or under a pseudonym.

One set of payments, a sum of roughly $63,000, were made to a woman Gaetz was in a long-term relationship with, the report said, and so some of those transactions could have been above board. But the lawmaker’s former girlfriend invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked about whether he had paid her for sex or drugs.

“Based on that assertion combined with evidence received from other sources, the committee found substantial reason to believe that most of these payments were for such activity,” lawmakers said.

Among the evidence published by the House ethics panel were screenshots of a 2018 conversation between Seminole County, Florida, tax collector Joel Greenberg and a 20-year-old woman on the platform SeekingArrangement.com. Greenberg, who has since been convicted of sex trafficking minors, appeared to be connecting the woman to Gaetz for a meetup. He asked the woman if she had “ever tried molly,” referring to the party drug MDMA.

Other women interviewed by the committee testified that they had witnessed the Florida lawmaker taking ecstasy. The report further concluded that Gaetz had used or possessed other drugs including cocaine on “multiple occasions” during his tenure in Congress.

Lawmakers also found evidence to back up allegations that Gaetz had had sex with a 17-year-old girl at a party in July 2017. Witnesses testified to the ethics committee that the former Florida congressman had sex twice during the party, “including at least once in the presence of other party attendees.”

The victim, who was a high school junior at the time, received $400 from Gaetz following the party, which she presumed to be payment for sex, the report said. She did not tell the lawmaker that she was under 18 at the time, and he did not ask.

“The record overwhelmingly suggests that Representative Gaetz had sex with multiple women at the party, including the then-17-year-old, for which they were paid,” the report said.

Further, the ethics panel unearthed evidence that Gaetz may have violated House rules governing gifts and hospitality by accepting transportation and lodging for a 2018 trip to the Bahamas — and that he in 2018 arranged for his chief of staff to help a woman he was having sex with to get a passport and lied to the State Department that she was a constituent.

Throughout the investigation process, the report added, the lawmaker attempted to “mislead and deter” the committee from investigating him and may have violated federal laws about making false statements and obstruction of Congress.

The committee’s survey determined that there was “substantial evidence” that Gaetz violated House conduct rules prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors and obstruction of Congress.

Gaetz, for his part, has raged against the Ethics Committee’s move to release its report. In an X post Monday, the former congressman repeated the argument that he had not been given the opportunity to give his side of the story.

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

The lawmaker on Monday filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia aimed at blocking Congress from releasing the ethics report.

Gaetz last week acknowledged that he’d sent money to women he dated, as well as women he “never dated but who asked,” but he has long denied any wrongdoing. The Justice Department in 2022 declined to bring charges against him related to his relationship with Greenberg.

With Gaetz out of Congress, there is little the Ethics Committee can do to hold him accountable. He resigned in November after he was selected as Trump’s nominee for attorney general, and has since said that he will not retake his seat representing the Sunshine State’s First Congressional District in January.

His nomination as attorney general fell through quickly amid concerns about the ethics investigation into him. He withdrew his name from consideration just weeks after being tapped for the job, saying at the time that he did not want to be a distraction for Trump.

Gaetz has since accepted a position as a host at right-wing One America News Network.

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