Trump’s attorney general pick Matt Gaetz paid two women for sex using Venmo, lawyer says
Attorneys for women who testified to ethics panel are putting pressure on lawmakers to release report
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Your support makes all the difference.Two women who testified to the House Ethics Committee told investigators that now-former Republican congressman Matt Gaetz paid both of them for sex, according to their attorney.
One of his clients also told the committee that she had witnessed Gaetz having sex with a third woman who was 17 years old at the time.
“She testified that in July of 2017, at this house party, she was walking out to the pool area, and she looked to her right, and she saw Representative Gaetz having sex with her friend, who was 17,” attorney Joel Leppard told ABC News.
The statements follow Donald Trump’snomination of Gaetz as the next attorney general and the latter’s subsequent resignation from Congress, days before the anticipated release of an ethics committee report into allegations of sexual misconduct. The claims are coming under closer scrutiny before confirmation hearings in the Senate next year.
Attorney John Clune, who represents the former minor, has demanded that the committee release a report with its findings.
“Mr. Gaetz’s likely nomination as Attorney General is a perverse development in a truly dark series of events,” he said in a statement last week. “We would support the House Ethics Committee immediately releasing their report. She was a high school student and there were witnesses.”
The woman reportedly testified to the committee that Gaetz had sex with her when she was 17 years old and in his first term in Congress. Gaetz stopped having sex with the minor after learning she was underage and did not continue a relationship with her until she turned 18, according to Leppard.
The women told investigators that they attended parties where Gaetz was present and that they witnessed drug use and sex acts, according to Leppard. They were shown Venmo payments with the congressman and were repeatedly asked by committee investigators what they were for, Leppard told ABC News.
“My clients repeatedly testified, ‘What was that payment for? That was for sex,’” Leppard said.
Gaetz was the subject of a Department of Justice investigation for several years, though prosecutors ultimately never brought charges against the Florida congressman.
He has strenuously denied any wrongdoing.
After he was initially charged with 33 counts, Gaetz’s former ally Joel Greenberg reached a deal with prosecutors in May 2021 to plead guilty to six federal crimes, including underage sex trafficking. He is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence.
Greenberg also admitted introducing a minor to “other adult men” who “engaged in commercial sex acts” with her, according to court documents.
Gaetz’s abrupt resignation from Congress effectively ended the ethics committee probe, though its members are expected to convene this week to discuss releasing a report.
“Matt Gaetz will be the next Attorney General. He’s the right man for the job and will end the weaponization of our justice system,” Trump transition spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer told ABC News. “These are baseless allegations intended to derail the second Trump administration. The Biden Justice Department investigated Gaetz for years and cleared him of wrongdoing.”
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters last week that he will “strongly request” that the ethics panel not make a report public, arguing that the committee no longer has jurisdiction over the now-former congressman.
But there is precedent for releasing such a report after a lawmaker leaves office. In 1987, former congressman Bill Boner was the subject of an ethics report two months after leaving office. The ethics committee released its report into former congressman Buz Lukens the same day he left office in 1990.
Yet Johnson argues that releasing the report would open “Pandora’s box.”
“If it’s been broken once or twice, it should not have been,” he said.
Leppard hopes that a media blitz of findings from a congressional investigation into the nation’s next potential top law enforcement official “puts a lot of pressure on the panel to release the report.”
“My clients have already been through this several times and they really, really do not want to testify again, especially not on the floor of the Senate,” he told Politico.