Matt Gaetz Paid Thousands For Drugs And Sex, House Ethics Report Shows

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Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R) of Florida was found by a House Ethics Committee probe to have paid a 17-year-old for sex and consumed illegal drugs while in office.

Gaetz, the sex-scandal-plagued Republican who recently dropped out as President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, violated several state laws relating to sexual misconduct while in office, according to the committee’s report published Monday.

Details of the report’s final draft were published earlier in the day by CBS News and CNN. 

The investigators found “substantial evidence” that 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 panel listed over $90,000 in payments to 12 women — including a 17-year-old — that the committee “determined were likely in connection with sexual activity and/or drug use.”

The report found that Gaetz allegedly twice had sex with the 17-year-old, described as “Victim A,” at a 2017 party. She had just completed her junior year in high school.

“Victim A” recalled receiving $400 on the night in question “which she understood to be payment for sex,” the report found. “Victim A said that she did not inform Representative Gaetz that she was under 18 at the time, nor did he ask her age,” the committee wrote.

The report states that it is a felony for someone aged 24 or older to engage in sexual activity with a 16- or 17-year-old under Florida’s statutory rape law.

The committee noted that all the women who gave evidence said the sexual encounters with Gaetz were consensual. But one woman told investigators, “When I look back on certain moments, I feel violated.”

The panel wrote that it did not find Gaetz violated federal sex trafficking laws, writing that “although Representative Gaetz did cause the transportation of women across state lines for purposes of commercial sex, the Committee did not find evidence that any of those women were under 18 at the time of travel, nor did the Committee find sufficient evidence to conclude that the commercial sex acts were induced by force, fraud, or coercion.”

The committee claimed to have seen texts in which Gaetz made references to drugs as “party favors,” “vitamins,” or “rolls,” and the report also accused him of setting up a fake email account from his Capitol Hill office “for the purpose of purchasing marijuana.”

Details of the report come days after media stories emerged that the committee held a secret vote to reverse course and make its report public on the accusations of sex trafficking, illicit drug use and other misconduct by Gaetz, who denies all the allegations. Earlier this month, a full House vote on whether to make the report public failed, largely along party lines.

In a statement Gaetz released last week the committee voted to release the report, he emphasized how he has never been charged over the alleged crimes.

“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.”

The committee said Gaetz refused to participate in sworn testimony, but he did submit written answers to some of their questions, including denying having sex with a minor.

On Monday, Gaetz submitted a restraining order in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in a failed bid to halt the congressional committee releasing its findings.

Trump’s choice of Gaetz upended the Republican’s career as he knew it. When he accepted the nomination last month, he resigned his House seat, for which he’d just won reelection, saying it would allow Florida to name his replacement in time for the next Congress. Notably, giving up his seat also meant the House committee could no longer continue its ethics investigation into him.

But his plans began to unravel almost immediately as Republicans began openly questioning his eligibility for the job leading the Department of Justice. Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) offered perhaps the most blunt answer when HuffPost asked for his initial reaction to the Gaetz nomination: “Are you shittin’ me?”

Just over a week after Trump announced him as his attorney general pick, when it became clear that senators were increasingly unlikely to confirm someone dogged by so many accusations, Gaetz rescinded his acceptance of the nomination. His upcoming confirmation process, he claimed, was “unfairly becoming a distraction” to the Trump transition team’s work. 

The next day, Gaetz said he wouldn’t be returning to Congress.

By then, reports had emerged that the House committee’s investigation had wrapped up and that it had been days away from voting on whether to release a report on its findings when he dropped out. Top members of the Senate quickly called on the committee to release the results of its investigation anyway.

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Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a high-ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters Thursday that the committee should “absolutely” release its report, adding he didn’t “want there to be any limitation at all on what the Senate could consider” when weighing Gaetz’s nomination.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the Senate majority whip, said the circumstances around Gaetz’s resignation raise suspicion. 

“The sequence and timing of Mr. Gaetz’s resignation from the House raises serious questions about the contents of the House Ethics Committee report,” he told reporters. “We cannot allow this valuable information from a bipartisan investigation to be hidden from the American people.”

Public scrutiny around Gaetz’s possible criminal activities first arose after the Justice Department opened an investigation into him in 2020 for allegedly sex trafficking a 17-year-old girl in 2017 and asking women to recruit others for sex. Gaetz denied all of the accusations. The Justice Department ultimately decided against pursuing charges against the congressman.

But a simultaneous House investigation remained ongoing. That probe was examining the possibility that he “may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift,” the committee’s announcement in 2021 said.

Amid the fallout from Gaetz, Trump nominated Pam Bondi, a longtime ally who represented him at one of his impeachment trials, as his new pick for attorney general. 

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.

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