Five revelations from the House ethics report on Matt Gaetz

The House Ethics Committee’s report on Donald Trump’s associate Matt Gaetz that was released on Monday revealed new details about the former congressman’s alleged behavior, possibly adding new information and insight into the group’s investigation.

From 2017 to 2020, the committee decided that the former president of Florida regularly paid women for “sex”, had sex with a 17-year-old girl, who used drugs, received gifts that exceeded the limits of the House and support. the woman should get a passport, according to the report.

It explained that the committee “did not find sufficient evidence” that he had breached the government’s sex laws – which had been debated in public for years.

Gaetz, who resigned from the US House of Representatives in November – just days before the report was made public and after Trump announced him as his nominee for US attorney general – disputed the committee’s findings and argued that the investigation was unfair.

Here are four parts of the highly-anticipated report that stood out.

Domestic investigators said Gaetz paid more than $90,000 (£71,843) to women for sex and drug use, but created a web of problems that were difficult to trace, according to the report.

“The committee was unable to determine the extent to which Representative Gaetz’s payments to women were in return for sex with him,” the report found.

He allegedly used his friend Joel Greenberg, who served 11 years in prison for crimes he said he committed against Gaetz, as a frequent lover and logged into Greenberg’s account on SeekingArrangement.com to hook up with girls.

Gaetz also paid women directly, sometimes through platforms such as Venmo, according to the report. But the commission said they often used someone else’s PayPal account or an account linked to an email with a fake name.

He also hid wages, the group wrote. In one example, he gave a college student a check marked “cash” with “tuition refund” on the memo line. The woman said that she received it after meeting with the group, which “would be forced because I need the money”.

Gaetz wrote on social media that he gave the money to the women who participated as a gift, not a salary. The commission found that two women, aged 27 and 25, did not think about their relationship.

A woman who was considered his girlfriend invoked her Fifth Amendment right to incriminate herself when asked if he paid her for sex or drugs, or paid others.

The committee tried to confirm that Gaetz often paid for sex through text messages that explained that he could not pay at one time.

His girlfriend at the time said in the message that she and Greenberg were “a little low on their cash flow” and asked the women’s group “if it would be a customer appreciation week”.

A few months later, according to the committee, he wrote: “Btw Matt also said he would be generous for the last ‘customer appreciation’.”

The committee also said that Gaetz bought drugs or gave money back to people.

It gives examples of his use of cocaine and euphoria/MDMA, but focuses on what appears to be a normal addiction. He allegedly asked women to bring marijuana cartridges to meetings and events, and created fake email accounts to buy marijuana.

The trip to the Bahamas “was paid for by an associate of Representative Gaetz with connections to the marijuana industry, who allegedly also paid female escorts to accompany him”, according to the report.

One woman felt that the use of drugs and alcohol at parties prevented her from “really knowing what was going on or fully accepting it”.

“Indeed, almost every woman the committee spoke with could not recall the details of one or more incidents with Representative Gaetz and said they were under the influence of drugs or alcohol,” the report said.

His girlfriend at the time, who was 21 when they met and was “paid thousands of dollars” for their two-year relationship”, often met with the women and acted as an intermediary, according to the report.

One woman told the commission that she was 17 when she had sex with Gaetz twice at a party in 2017 — once in front of other people — in a fit of excitement. The woman, who had just finished high school, received $400 from him.

He also told the panel that he did not tell Gaetz that he was a child and that the committee found no evidence that the former congressman knew he was a minor.

In 2021, Greenberg admitted to selling the girl.

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

Gaetz violated House rules that prohibit the use of his office for special interests, according to the committee, which wrote: “The woman was not from his district, and this case was not handled in the same way as similar passport cases”.

The committee detailed the report detailing how Gaetz allegedly obstructed its investigation, including failing to provide evidence it said would “exonerate” him.

The report said that he “consistently tried to distort, obstruct, or mislead the Committee in order to prevent his actions from being disclosed”.

Gaetz, who has accused the committee of being “weaponized” against him and the press, says the group is working on behalf of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, according to the report. Last year he helped lead the effort to remove then-spokesman McCarthy from office.

Although Gaetz said he “voluntarily produced thousands of records,” he provided the committee with “several hundred records, more than 90% of which were unnecessary or publicly available,” the report found.

One painful experience was a trip to the Bahamas, where the committee said he hid information. In the end it turned out that they broke the gift rules because the trip was so expensive.

The committee also cited the Justice Department’s investigation into what Gaetz said was the reason for the delay.

Some witnesses asked the committee to use the documents it had given to the branch, but it refused to share them because they did not file a case and because it said it could prevent future witnesses in other cases from coming forward.

The report ends with a one-page statement from Ethics Committee Chair Michael Guest “on behalf of unnamed members.”

The members do not dispute the committee’s findings, but they do not agree with releasing the report after Gaetz resigned from the House, which has not happened since 2006, they wrote.

“It differs from what the Committee has done for a long time, it opens the Committee to unnecessary criticism, and it will be seen by some as an attempt to use the tools of the Committee”.