House ethics panel finds Matt Gaetz violated Florida laws, committed statutory rape
The U.S. House Ethics Committee issued a report Monday concluding that former Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz violated Florida state laws prohibiting statutory rape and prostitution and broke a raft of House rules during his tenure while using illicit drugs and paying for sex with women — and a high school girl — recruited online.
The final report found “substantial evidence” that Gaetz — President-elect Donald Trump’s first nominee for attorney general — paid $400 to a 17-year-old girl who had just completed her junior year of high school to have sex with him at a house party north of Orlando in the summer of 2017. The minor was one of 12 women that Gaetz personally paid for sex through PayPal, Venmo or CashApp, according to the probe.
Gaetz also brought women with him to the Bahamas in 2018 to “engage in sexual activity,” where he took ecstasy, one of several occasions documented in the report where the congressman was found using drugs. The trip itself, which included his return on a private jet, was also found to have violated House rules on permissible gifts.
“From at least 2017 to 2020, Representative Gaetz regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him,” the report concluded. “In 2017, Representative Gaetz engaged in sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl. During the period 2017 to 2019, Representative Gaetz used or possessed illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on multiple occasions.”
Gaetz says he has never had sex with a minor and denies ever soliciting women for sex, saying the money he sent to women — one of whom he dated for several years — was for other purposes. He attacked the report on social media and filed a lawsuit unsuccessfully seeking to block its release, claiming the committee was attempting to “exercise jurisdiction over a private citizen through the threatened release of an investigative report containing potentially defamatory allegations.”
“Giving funds to someone you are dating — that they didn’t ask for — and that isn’t ‘charged’ for sex is now prostitution?!?” Gaetz wrote on social media. “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.”
The attorney listed as representing Gaetz in the suit, Jonathan Gross, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The report — released despite Gaetz’s resignation from Congress and over the objections of its Republican chairman — is now the lone official account documenting years of investigations by the FBI and the congressional Ethics Committee, which pored over thousands of pages of documents, cash transactions and interviewed multiple women who said they received money after having sex with Gaetz.
The Justice Department closed its investigation into Gaetz last year without filing charges, but has kept its records confidential and, according to the report, did little to help the committee investigate.
Gaetz is slated to begin working in January as an anchor at One America News, a far-right media network. The former lawmaker teased the prospect of running for statewide office in Florida over the weekend, including potentially filling a vacant Senate seat left by Marco Rubio, Trump’s choice for secretary of state.
‘SUBSTANTIAL EVIDENCE’
The investigations stem back to Gaetz’s relationship with the former tax collector in Florida’s Seminole County, Joel Greenberg, who is serving prison time for sex trafficking. Greenberg coordinated the recruitment of women and their payment for Gaetz, according to text messages obtained by the committee and documented in the report. Greenberg identified women to participate in the scheme on the website SeekingArrangement.com.
The website was “generally understood by many of the women interviewed by the Committee to involve, at minimum, an exchange of companionship for money,” the report reads. It also notes that sex trafficking charges have been filed in the past against individuals who made initial contact with their targets through the website. While the committee said that Gaetz did not have his own account on the site, it found evidence that Greenberg frequently showed it to him and provided Gaetz with his login information.
“The Committee concluded there was substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress,” the report concludes. “The Committee did not find sufficient evidence to conclude that Representative Gaetz violated the federal sex trafficking statute.”
The report states that Gaetz paid women following sexual encounters in places like New York, Miami and the Florida Keys, but that most of his exploits occurred in Central Florida.
That includes the two times Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old, according to the report, which says Gaetz met with “Victim A” during a party thrown in July of 2017 at the house of former Florida lawmaker and lobbyist Chris Dorworth. The report found no evidence that Gaetz knew the high school girl’s age at the time, though that is not a condition of statutory rape laws.
As part of the federal civil lawsuit filed by Dorworth in 2023, testimony from witnesses — one of whom was Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend — claimed that Gaetz was at the party at Dorworth’s home. Forensic evidence from Gaetz’s cell phone also indicated that Gaetz was at the home. A sworn affidavit by a witness said the underage girl, identified as A.B., was naked, and that party guests were having sex and consuming alcohol, marijuana, ecstasy and cocaine, court records show.
The committee’s report said multiple witnesses confirmed that Gaetz was at the party.
On Monday, Dorworth took to social media to defend himself, saying neither he nor Gaetz were at the party. He noted that investigators first began looking at Greenberg after he falsely accused a political opponent of having a sexual relationship with a high school student.
“These people are liars,” Dorworth wrote. “The fact Congress selectively included this nonsense shows their bias.”
FLORIDA LAW VIOLATIONS
The report noted three incidents where it found Gaetz likely violated Florida laws.
“Under Florida’s statutory rape law, it is a felony for a person 24 years of age or older to engage in sexual activity with a 16- or 17-year-old,” the report reads. “A person charged with this offense may not claim ignorance or misrepresentation of the minor’s age as a defense.”
It is also a criminal offense in the state “to solicit, induce, entice, or procure another to commit prostitution,” it continues. “Unauthorized possession of controlled substances is also a criminal offense.”
Overall, between 2017 and 2020, the committee found that Gaetz made “tens of thousands of dollars” in payments to women that it said were in connection either to sexual activity or illicit drug use. Altogether, the report documents payments worth just shy of $100,000, most of it made to a woman Gaetz met on the website and dated for several years.
Several of the 12 women identified by the committee as having received payments declined to speak with House investigators.
Some of them, the report states, “feared retaliation or were unwilling to voluntarily relive their interactions with Representative Gaetz.”
Others, the report states, were “particularly concerned with providing additional testimony about a sitting congressman” in light of the Justice Department’s decision not to pursue charges against Gaetz after conducting its own investigation, which included interviews with the same women. In its report, the committee criticized the Justice Department for refusing to provide that testimonial material to their investigators. The Justice Department declined to comment.
Several women did cooperate with the committee, including the individual who was 17 years-old at the time of the initial sexual encounter she said she had with Gaetz. In addition to her testimony, Greenberg’s cooperation, and payment logs, text messages obtained by the committee substantiate that Gaetz knew his interactions with women involved an exchange of money for sex, according to the committee.
In one instance, the report states, Gaetz “balked at a woman’s request that he send her money after he accused her of ‘ditching’ him on a night when she was feeling tired, claiming she only gave him a ‘drive by.’” In another exchange, Gaetz’s girlfriend at the time told other women receiving payments that he and Greenberg were “a little limited in their cash flow” and requested a “customer appreciation week.”
The fate of the Ethics Committee report was thrown into question when Gaetz abruptly resigned from Congress last month after being nominated by Trump to serve as U.S. attorney general. His resignation forced the committee into a vote on whether to release findings of an investigation into a former member of Congress — an unusual but not unprecedented step.
At the time, Republican senators were calling for its release, stating the report would be critical to their assessment of Gaetz’ fitness to lead the Justice Department. Gaetz removed himself from consideration once it became clear that the votes were not there for Senate confirmation.
Gaetz issued a statement last week upon learning that the Ethics Committee would be releasing the report, saying that, “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,” Gaetz said. “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.”
This story was originally published December 23, 2024 at 11:28 AM.
