WASHINGTON – The House Ethics Committee on Monday accused Matt Gaetz of “regularly” paying for sex, including with a 17-year-old girl, and buying and using illegal drugs throughout the time the Florida Republican was a member of Congress.
Gaetz denied any wrongdoing.
The 37-page report by the bipartisan panel details the sex-filled parties and vacations that Gaetz, now 42, attended from 2017 to 2020 while representing Florida’s panhandle. The findings show that while in office, he violated multiple state laws related to sexual misconduct.
“The Committee found that there was substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated the House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, the use of illegal drugs, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress,” the report said.
The report ends a nearly five-year investigation into Gaetz, who spent most of his time in Washington embroiled in scandalswhich ultimately doomed his nomination by President-elect Donald Trump to be attorney general. His political future is uncertain, although Gaetz recently indicated he would be interested in running for an open Senate seat in Florida.
The long-awaited release of the report comes after at least one Republican joined all five Democrats on the panel earlier this month in a secret vote to release the report on their former colleague, despite initial opposition from GOP lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, publishing findings regarding the former member of Congress.
While ethics reports have been published before after a member resigns, this is extremely uncommon. Gaetz opposed its release, saying last week that as a former House member he would have “no opportunity to debate or overturn” the findings.
Gaetz on Monday filed a lawsuit seeking to block the publication of a report that he believes contains “false and defamatory information” that would “significantly damage” his “standing and reputation in the community.” Gaetz’s complaint says he is no longer under the committee’s jurisdiction since he resigned from Congress.
“The Commission’s position that it can nonetheless publish potentially defamatory findings relating to a private citizen over whom it does not claim jurisdiction constitutes an unprecedented expansion of Congress’s authority that threatens fundamental constitutional rights and established procedural protections,” Gaetz’s lawyers wrote in the request for an interim restriction of freedom order.
In addition to the solicitation of prostitution, the Ethics Commission report states that Gaetz “accepted gifts, including transportation and lodging, in connection with a trip to the Bahamas in 2018, in excess of allowable amounts.”
That same year, investigators say, he instructed his chief of staff to obtain a passport for a woman with whom he was sexually involved, falsely telling the State Department that she was a constituent of his. One of the final “substantial pieces of evidence” collected by the committee determined that Gaetz “consciously and willfully sought to obstruct and obstruct” the report.
The report contains dozens of pages of evidence, including text messages and financial records, travel receipts, checks and online payments made by various people involved. In some text exchanges, Gaetz appears to invite various women to events, outings or parties and arrange air travel and lodging. At one point, he asks one woman if she has a “pretty black dress” she could wear. There are also discussions about shipping goods.
One of the exhibits is a text exchange that appears to have taken place between two women concerned about cash flow and payments. In another case, a person asks Gaetz for facilitate with education expenses.
An often secretive, bipartisan panel has been investigating the claims against Gaetz since 2021. But its work took on greater urgency last month when Trump selected him shortly after Election Day as his first pick for the nation’s top law enforcement official. Gaetz resigned from Congress the same day, putting him outside the Ethics Committee’s jurisdiction.
But Democrats insisted on making the report public even though Gaetz was no longer a member withdrawn as Trump’s choice to head the Department of Justice. A vote in the House this month to force the report’s release failed; all but one Republican voted against it.
