Congressman Matt Gaetz is being accused by the House Ethics Committee of committing statutory rape, using illegal drugs like cocaine and ecstasy, and obstructing justice during his time as a House member. Mr. Gaetz resigned from the House in November, in part, to quash the release of the report while he was being considered to lead the Justice Department during the second Trump administration. 

In a press release on Monday, the Ethics Committee — a small, secretive, and famously bipartisan group — confirmed that they had voted to release the report on Mr. Gaetz before they left Washington last week. 

“The Committee determined there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress,” the Ethics Committee members wrote. 

They accused Mr. Gaetz of having sex with a 17-year-old girl in 2017, when he was 35. 

The accusations have hung over Mr. Gaetz for years following the guilty plea of his friend, Joel Greenberg, who admitted to federal authorities to trafficking girls for sex. In exchange for his conviction, Greenberg agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department’s investigation into Mr. Gaetz, though that probe yielded no charges. 

The Ethics panel accuses Mr. Gaetz of “regularly” paying women over the course of years in exchange for sex. 

The committee included in its report a series of text messages obtained from the women whom Mr. Gaetz and Greenberg were sleeping with between 2017 and 2020. In one exchange, a woman asks Greenberg to remind Mr. Gaetz to send her the money that she was owed. 

Members of the Ethics Committee say that Mr. Gaetz went further than just having sex with one minor, however. They write that the former congressman “took advantage of the economic vulnerability of young women to lure them into sexual activity for which they received an average of a few hundred dollars after each encounter.” Between 2017 and 2020, Mr. Gaetz paid out just more than $95,000 to various women with whom he was having sex. 

Several press outlets reported on the investigation into Mr. Gaetz for sex trafficking minors, though the Ethics Committee says they have no evidence that the then-congressman paid for girls to travel to him for sex while they were underage. 

“Although Representative Gaetz did cause the transportation of women across state lines for purposes of commercial sex, the Committee did not find evidence that any of those women were under 18 at the time of travel, nor did the Committee find sufficient evidence to conclude that the commercial sex acts were induced by force, fraud, or coercion,” the panel writes in its report. 

One of the women who slept with Mr. Gaetz said in an interview with the committee that she did not believe she had been sex trafficked. When asked by a committee lawyer if she felt she had been trafficked, she responded, “no, I wouldn’t say that” according to an interview transcript in the report. 

Mr. Gaetz defended himself in an interview with Just the News on Sunday night, telling the outlet that the women interviewed by the Ethics Committee were former girlfriends who simply were given gifts and money. “These were some women who I dated over the course of a decade, and had relationships with at various times and that I admittedly were generous to,” he said.  

In a preemptive move to explain the findings of the Ethics Report, Mr. Gaetz said in an X post last week that he had been a party animal in his earlier years before he met his wife, whom he married in 2021. 

“In my single days, I often sent funds to women I dated — even some I never dated but who asked. I dated several of these women for years,” Mr. Gaetz said. “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,” Mr. Gaetz wrote. 

Just hours before the Ethics Committee released the report on Monday, attorneys for Mr. Gaetz filed a lawsuit at the District of Columbia’s federal district court, seeking to have the report kept under wraps. The attorneys said that releasing the report would violate Mr. Gaetz’s constitutional rights. 

The lawsuit further stated that the release of the report “would significantly damage Plaintiff’s standing and reputation in the community.”