Four revelations from the House ethics report on Matt Gaetz

The House Ethics Committee report on Donald Trump aide Matt Gaetz released Monday revealed new details about the former congressman’s alleged behavior, at least one new allegation and insight into the panel’s investigation.

From at least 2017 to 2020, the committee concluded that the former Florida congressman routinely paid women to “engage in sexual activity”, had sex with a 17-year-old girl, used illegal drugs or Kept near them, accepted gifts and helped beyond the limits of the House. According to reports, a woman obtained a passport.

Gaetz, who resigned from the US House of Representatives in November – days before the report was made public and after Trump announced him as his choice for US Attorney General – denied the committee’s findings and on Accused of conducting unfair investigation.

Here are the four parts of the much-awaited report that stand out.

According to the report, House investigators said Gaetz paid women more than $90,000 (£71,843) for sex and drugs, but created a complex web of transactions that was difficult to trace.

“The Committee was unable to determine the extent to which Representative Gaetz’s payments to women were compensation for engaging in sexual activity with him,” the report found.

He allegedly used his friend Joel Greenberg, who is currently serving 11 years in prison for crimes he said he committed with Gaetz, and Greenberg’s accounts on SeekingArrangement.com. Logged in on, which bills itself as a “luxury dating site.” To converse with young women.

According to the report, Gaetz also made payments directly to women, sometimes through platforms such as Venmo. But the committee said he often used an account linked to someone else’s PayPal account or an email address with a fake name.

He also obscured the payments, the panel wrote. In one example, he gave a college student a “cashed” check with “tuition reimbursement” in the memo line. The woman said she got it after a group encounter, which “may have been a form of coercion because I really needed the money”.

Gaetz has posted on social media that he gave the money as gifts to women he was involved with, not as payment. The committee found that the two women, aged 27 and 25, did not consider their relationship to be a give and take one.

Another woman, believed to be his girlfriend, invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when asked if she was paid for sex or drugs, or to pay others.

The committee attempted to prove that Gaetz frequently paid for sex through a text message, which at one point described his inability to pay.

His then-girlfriend said in the message that she and Greenberg were “a little limited in their cash flow” and asked a group of women “if this could be more of a Customer Appreciation Week”.

A few months later, according to the committee, she wrote: “By the way Matt also mentioned he was going to be a little generous with the ‘customer appreciation’ last time.”

The committee also said Gaetz purchased illegal drugs or reimbursed people for them.

It gives examples of his alleged cocaine and Ecstasy/MDMA use, but focuses on the heavy marijuana habit. He allegedly asked women to bring marijuana cartridges to meetings and events, and created an email account with a fake name to purchase marijuana.

According to the report, his trip to the Bahamas was paid for by an associate of Representative Gaetz with connections to the medical marijuana industry, who also reportedly paid for female escorts to accompany him.

One woman felt that drug and alcohol use at parties had impaired her ability to “know or fully consent to what was actually happening”.

The report states, “Indeed, almost every woman the Committee spoke to did not recall details of at least one or more events they attended with Representative Gaetz and did not recall the involvement of drugs or alcohol. was attributed to consumption.”

According to the report, his then-girlfriend, who was 21 when they met and “paid him thousands of dollars” during their two-year relationship, often participated in encounters with the women and acted as mediator. Used to work.

One woman told the committee that she was 17 when she had sex with Gaetz twice at a party in 2017 — at least once in front of other people — while under the influence of ecstasy. The woman, who had just completed her junior year in high school, received $400 from him.

She also told the panel that she did not tell Gaetz that she was a minor and the committee found no evidence that the former congressman knew she was underage.

In 2021, Greenberg pleaded guilty to sex trafficking of the girl.

Gaetz reportedly instructed his chief of staff to expedite the passport application of a woman he was sleeping with, who he said was a voter in his district. He also reportedly gave her $1,000.

According to the committee, Gaetz violated House rules that prevent using his position to solicit special favors, writing: “The woman was not his constituent, and the case was not handled in the same manner as similar passport assistance cases. Was handled”.

The committee devoted a large portion of the report to detailing how Gaetz allegedly obstructed its investigation, including failing to produce evidence that it said would have “exonerated” him. Will be given.

The report concluded that he “consistently tried to distract, obstruct or mislead the committee in order to prevent his actions from being exposed”.

According to the report, Gaetz, who has accused the committee of being “weaponized” against him and leaking information to the press, alleged that the panel was working on behalf of former Chairman Kevin McCarthy. Last year, he helped lead the effort to remove then-Speaker McCarthy from his role.

While Gaetz claimed to have “volunteered thousands of records,” he gave the committee “only a few hundred records, more than 90% of which were either irrelevant or publicly available,” the report found.

One sore point was the trip to the Bahamas, where the committee said he withheld information. It was ultimately concluded that he breached the rules on gifts because the value of the trip was too high.

The committee also cited the Justice Department’s investigation into the allegations against Gaetz as a reason for the delay.

Some witnesses asked the committee to access statements they had given to the department, but it declined to share them because they had not issued charges and because it said it would deter future witnesses in other cases from coming forward. Can stop.

The report ends with a one-page statement from Ethics Committee Chair Michael Guest “on behalf of the dissenting committee members”, who are not named.

Those members do not challenge the committee’s findings, but disagree with releasing the report after Gaetz resigned from the House, which has not happened since 2006, they write.

This “breaks with long-standing practice of the Committee, opens the Committee to unfair criticism, and some will see it as an attempt to weaponize the Committee process”.