Matt Gaetz sex, drug report released by House Ethics Committee

The House ethics committee on Monday it revealed it found “substantial evidence” that former Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old girl in 2017 and that he “regularly” paid women for sex while in Congress.

The panel, in a final report on its year-long investigation of Gaetz, also found that he used illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on several occasions between 2017 and 2019.

Gaetz also accepted gifts, including a trip to the Bahamas in 2018, “in excess of permitted amounts,” the bipartisan committee concluded.

“Representative Gaetz has acted in a manner that reflects House discretion,” the report said.

The committee said it found “substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House rules, state and federal laws and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illegal drug use, acceptance of illegal gifts, provision of special services and privileges, and obstruction of Congress .”

But it did not find sufficient evidence that Gaetz violated a federal sex-trafficking statute, even though he “caused the transportation of women across state lines for the purpose of commercial sex.” The panel said it found no evidence that these women were under 18 when the travel took place, and it could not conclude that “the commercial sexual acts were induced by force, fraud or coercion.”

An attorney for Gaetz did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the report. When the report was released, Gaetz denied in a series of X posts that he had engaged in prostitution or sex trafficking.

“There is a reason they did this to me in a Christmas Eve report and not in a courtroom of any kind where I could present evidence and challenge witnesses,” Gaetz wrote in a post.

Hours before the long-awaited report came out, Gaetz asked a federal judge to issue one temporary restraining order which would block its release.

The ethics panel’s report, the final product of an investigation that began in 2021, was at the center of a recent firestorm of controversy surrounding the former Florida lawmaker.

Gaetz, 42, resigned from Congress in mid-November, shortly after President Donald Trump picked him to be US attorney general. Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department drew immediate howls from critics, who were quick to note that Gaetz, if confirmed, would be in charge of the agency that had previously investigated him on sex-trafficking allegations.

The Justice Department closed the investigation without filing charges. But the ethics committee, which had put its own efforts on hold while the DOJ’s version played out, reauthorized its investigation in May 2023.

When Gaetz left Congress, Republicans, including ethics chairman Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., that he was no longer in the committee’s jurisdiction, casting doubt on whether its report would be made public.

News media reported at the time, with Gaetz’s departure coming just two days before the ethics panel was to vote to release the report. The panel, which is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, deadlocked on whether to share the report, despite Gaetz no longer being a congressman.

But in a secret ballot on December 10, the committee decided that the report should go out.

Gaetz withdrew his bid for attorney general after just eight days as Trump’s pick, saying he was “unfairly becoming a distraction” to the Republican president-elect’s transition efforts.

He has denied any wrongdoing.

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