Five revelations from the House ethics report on Matt Gaetz

The House Ethics Committee report on Donald Trump ally Matt Gaetz released on Monday revealed fresh details about the former congressman’s alleged behaviour, at least one new accusation and insights into the panel’s investigation.

From at least 2017 to 2020, the committee concluded that the former Florida congressman regularly paid women for “engaging in sexual activity”, had sex with a 17-year-old girl, used or possessed illegal drugs, accepted gifts beyond House limits and helped a woman obtain a passport, according to the report.

It explained that the committee “did not find sufficient evidence” that he violated federal laws on sex trafficking – which had been debated in the public square for years, as well.

Gaetz, who resigned from the US House of Representatives in November – days before the report was scheduled to be made public and after Trump announced him as his pick for US attorney general – denied the committee’s findings and has accused it of conducting an unfair investigation.

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

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

“The committee was unable to determine the full 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, currently serving 11 years in prison for crimes he said he committed with Gaetz, as a frequent go-between and logged onto Greenberg’s account on SeekingArrangement.com to interact with young women.

Gaetz also paid women directly, sometimes through platforms such as Venmo, according to the report. But the committee said he often used another person’s PayPal account or an account linked to an email address with a fake name.

He also obscured payments, the panel wrote. In one example, he gave a college student a cheque made out to “cash” with “tuition reimbursement” in the memo line. The woman said she received it after a group encounter, which “could potentially be a form of coercion because I really needed the money”.

Gaetz has posted on social media that he gave money to women he was involved with as gifts, not payments. The committee found that two women, aged 27 and 25, did not consider their relationships transactional.

Another woman who was considered his girlfriend invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when asked if she was given money for sex or drugs, or to pay others.

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

His then-girlfriend said in the message that he and Greenberg were “a little limited in their cash flow” and asked a group of women “if it can be more of a customer appreciation week”.

A few months later, according to the committee, she wrote: “Btw Matt also mentioned he is going to be a bit generous cause of the ‘customer appreciation’ thing last time.”

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

It gives examples of his alleged cocaine and ecstasy/MDMA use, but focused on what appeared to be a heavy marijuana habit. He allegedly asked women to bring marijuana cartridges to meetings and events, and created the fake-name email account to buy marijuana.

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

One woman felt the use of drugs and alcohol at parties had impaired her ability “to really know what was going on or fully consent”.

“Indeed, nearly every woman that the committee spoke with could not remember the details of at least one or more of the events they attended with Representative Gaetz and attributed that to drug or alcohol consumption,” the report said.

His then-girlfriend, who was 21 when they met and “was paid tens of thousands of dollars” during their two-year relationship”, often participated in encounters with women and acted as an intermediary, according to the report.

A woman told the committee she was 17 at the time 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, then received $400 from him.

She also told the panel she did not tell Gaetz she was a minor and the committee did not find any evidence that the former congressman knew she was underage.

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

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

Gaetz violated House rules that bar using his position for special favours, according to the committee, which wrote: “The woman was not his constituent, and the case was not handled in the same manner as similar passport assistance cases”.

The committee dedicated a great deal of the report to detailing how Gaetz allegedly obstructed its investigation, including failing to produce evidence he said would “exonerate” him.

The report concluded he “continuously sought to deflect, deter, or mislead the Committee in order to prevent his actions from being exposed”.

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

While Gaetz claimed he had “voluntarily produced tens of thousands of records,” he gave the committee “only a couple hundred records, more than 90% of which was either irrelevant or publicly available,” the report found.

One sore point was a trip to the Bahamas, where the committee said he withheld information. Ultimately it concluded he violated rules on gifts because the trip was too high in value.

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

Some witnesses asked the committee to use statements they had given to the department, but it refused to share them because they had not issued charges and because it said it could deter future witnesses in other cases from coming forward.

The report ends with a single-page statement from Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest “on behalf of 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.

It “breaks from the Committee’s long-standing practice, opens the Committee to undue criticism, and will be viewed by some as an attempt to weaponise the Committee’s process”.