The House Ethics Committee charged Monday Matt Gaetz of paying “regularly” for sex, including with a 17-year-old girl, and purchasing and using illegal drugs while the Florida Republican was a member of Congress.
Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing.
The bipartisan panel’s 37-page report includes explicit details about sex-filled parties and vacations that Gaetz, now 42, attended from 2017 to 2020 while representing West Florida. The findings conclude that he violated several state laws relating to sexual misconduct while in office.
“The Committee has determined that there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated the House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illegal drug use, unauthorized gifts, favors or special privileges and obstruction of Congress,” the report said.
The report ends a nearly five-year investigation into Gaetz, who spent the majority of his time in Washington mired in scandals, which ultimately derailed 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 Florida’s open Senate seat.
The long-awaited release of the report comes after at least one Republican joined the panel’s five Democrats earlier this month in a secret vote to release the report on his former colleague despite initial opposition from Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, to release findings on a former member of Congress.
Receive national news daily
Get the day’s top news, politics, business and current affairs headlines delivered to your inbox once a day.
Although ethics reports have been released after a member’s resignation, this is extremely rare. Gaetz opposed its release, saying last week that he would have “no opportunity to debate or refute” the findings as a former House member.
On Monday, Gaetz filed a lawsuit seeking to block the release of the report, which he said contains “false and defamatory information” that would “substantially harm” his “standing and reputation in the community.” Gaetz’s complaint argues that he is no longer under the committee’s jurisdiction since he resigned from Congress.
“The Committee’s position that it can nonetheless publish potentially defamatory findings about a private citizen over whom it claims to have no jurisdiction represents an unprecedented expansion of Congressional power that threatens fundamental constitutional rights and established procedural protections,” Gaetz’s lawyers wrote in their request for a temporary restraining order. order.
In addition to soliciting prostitution, the Ethics Committee report says Gaetz “accepted gifts, including transportation and lodging in connection with a trip to the Bahamas in 2018, in excess of permitted amounts.” .
That same year, investigators say he arranged for his chief of staff to obtain a passport for a woman he had had sex with, falsely telling the State Department that she was his constituent. One of the final pieces of “substantial evidence” gathered by the committee determined that Gaetz “knowingly and deliberately sought to impede and obstruct” the report.
The report contains dozens of pages of exhibits, including text messages and financial records, travel receipts, checks and online payments between various people involved. In some text exchanges, Gaetz appears to invite various women to events, getaways or parties, and arrange air travel and accommodations. At one point, he asks a woman if she has a “pretty black dress” to wear. There are also discussions about shipping the goods.
One of the exhibits is a text exchange that appears to take place between two women concerned about their cash flow and payments. In another, a person asks Gaetz for help paying college costs.
The bipartisan, often secretive committee has been investigating allegations against Gaetz since 2021. However, its work took on greater urgency last month when Trump chose him shortly after Election Day as his first choice to be the top official in the application of the laws of the country. Gaetz resigned from Congress the same day, putting him outside the ethics committee’s purview.
But Democrats had insisted that the report be made public even after Gaetz was no longer a member and withdrew himself from Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department. A vote in the House this month to force the report’s release failed; all but one Republican voted against.
© 2024 The Canadian Press