A House Ethics Committee report accused former Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz of routinely using drugs and paying to have sexual relations with an underage girl.
Gaetz, who resigned from the House and then withdrew as President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, was fighting up to the last moment to prevent the report’s release.
Gaetz, on Monday, failed a lawsuit against the congressional committee in a last-minute attempt to block the panel from releasing its report on the Florida Republican’s misconduct.
Gaetz’s lawsuit came as several outlets reported on leaked drafts of the report, which found “substantial evidence” that he violated House rules or Florida state laws that prohibit prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges and obstruction of Congress.
The panel released the report today.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., asked a judge to issue an emergency order blocking the report’s release.
Gaetz claimed the committee is acting beyond its authority because it has no jurisdiction over him now that he has resigned from Congress.
Gaetz’s attorneys said the report contains “untruthful and defamatory information” that would “significantly damage” his reputation.
“The Committee’s apparent intention to release its report after explicitly acknowledging it lacks jurisdiction over former members, its failure to follow constitutional notions of due process, and failure to adhere to its own procedural rules and precedent represents an unprecedented overreach that threatens fundamental constitutional rights and established procedural protections,” Gaetz’s attorneys wrote.
In a reversal for the panel that last month voted along party lines not to divulge the results of its long-running investigation, the panel secretly voted to release the report, which will be made public as soon as House lawmakers cast their final vote for the year.
The 10-member panel initially voted to table the report after Trump named Gaetz as his pick to be the nation’s top law enforcement official, and the Florida lawmaker submitted his resignation.
The committee’s turnaround was the culmination of a contentious debate over whether to release the report after Gaetz had resigned from Congress and withdrawn from consideration for attorney general.
Rep. Michael Guest, the committee chairman, along with other prominent Republicans, argued against disclosing the report since Gaetz was no longer in Congress or a nominee for Trump’s cabinet, but Democrats and journalists pushed for its release.
A majority vote of the committee is required to publicly release a report, indicating that at least one Republican lawmaker joined with Democrats on the matter.
Republicans successfully quashed a previous resolution that would have forced all House lawmakers to vote on making the report public.
Gaetz has denied all of the allegations, and the Biden administration’s Justice Department refused to level charges against him based on a 2022 trafficking investigation.
The House Ethics Committee probe, opened in 2021, continued with the committee announcing this summer that it had identified new lines of inquiry that merited review, including whether Gaetz had “dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.”
Last month, new details emerged about Gaetz’s conduct, including testimony provided to the panel by a woman who said she witnessed him having sex with a 17-year-old at a drug-fueled party.
Gaetz on Wednesday once again denied the charges. “My 30’s were an era of working very hard — and playing hard too,” he wrote on X.
“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.”