Report Leaks of Sexual Impropriety by Attorney General Nominee
WASHINGTON — Details of the report the House Ethics Committee compiled on former congressman Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., are leaking out despite efforts by Republicans to prevent release of the information.
ABC News quoted sources familiar with the report Friday saying it included testimony from a woman who says she was 17 years old when Gaetz had sex with her.
It also has testimony from a former girlfriend of Gaetz who says the Florida congressman was present at a party where illegal drugs were being consumed, ABC News reported. The girlfriend said she knew about Gaetz’s sexual relationship with the then teenage girl.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Friday he does not think the Ethics Committee should release the report publicly.
Gaetz resigned from Congress this week after being nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to become U.S. attorney general.
If he is confirmed by the Senate, he would oversee the same division of the Justice Department that participated in investigating him. The Justice Department investigation of Gaetz ended last year without charges but the yearslong Ethics Committee investigation continued.
Johnson said the resignation means the Ethics Committee is no longer authorized to investigate Gaetz.
He is headed toward a confirmation hearing in which some senators said they would question him about the allegations of sexual impropriety and illegal drug use.
The Ethics Committee questioned the woman at the center of the investigation during the summer. She sat for several days of testimony that included her statements that she was in high school when she had sex with Gaetz. She is now in her 20s.
The allegations originated with former Seminole County, Florida, tax collector Joel Greenberg, a former friend of Gaetz.
The then-teenager said she met Greenberg online in 2017 and started meeting him in hotels and private homes, according to the ABC News report.
Court documents say Greenberg “introduced the minor to other adult men, who engaged in commercial sex acts with the minor in the Middle District of Florida.” One of them was allegedly Gaetz.
Greenberg is serving an 11-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to several crimes, including sex trafficking of the woman to “adult men” who had sex with her when she was underage.
Gaetz denies wrongdoing. He responded to Ethics Committee questions in September before posting his responses on social media.
“Your correspondence of Sept. 4 asks whether I have engaged in sexual activity with any individual under 18. The answer to this question is unequivocally NO. You can apply this response to every version of this question, in every forum,” Gaetz wrote on social media.
“The committee’s star witness, Joel Greenberg, is a felonious liar who involves others in his lies. … Greenberg was initially indicted for attempting to falsely smear a teacher at a local high school as a pedophile,” he wrote.
Several women told the Ethics Committee they saw Gaetz at parties that included sex and illegal drugs, according to ABC News. The committee also reportedly obtained records of Venmo payments by Gaetz to women with whom he had sex.
Johnson said he would ask the Ethics Committee not to release the report.
“I believe it is very important to maintain the House’s traditions of not issuing ethics reports on people who are no longer [a] member of Congress,” Johnson said. “I think it would open a Pandora’s box.”
The Ethics Committee was scheduled to vote Friday on whether to publicly release its report on Gaetz. Republicans on the committee canceled the vote Thursday.
The end of Ethics Committee action on Gaetz is unlikely to halt further questions about his personal behavior in Congress.
On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent the Ethics Committee a request to preserve and to “transmit all relevant documentation on Mr. Gaetz, including the report.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee wants the report as evidence for its upcoming confirmation hearing of Gaetz as attorney general. Some leading Republicans are joining Democrats in saying Gaetz’s chances of confirmation are small.
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