Matt Gaetz being investigated over sexual relationship with a 17 year old girl

gwb-trading · Feb 16, 2024

To keep you in the loop with what has been happening in February.

Witness Told Feds She Was Paid for Sex Parties With Matt Gaetz
The Ethics Committee is investigating Gaetz—and has text messages between the congressman and a woman who claims she had sex with Gaetz at parties she was paid to attend.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/witness-told-feds-she-was-paid-for-sex-parties-with-matt-gaetz

House ethics probe of Gaetz seeks information from DOJ and woman who allegedly had sex with congressman as a minor
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/24/politics/house-ethics-matt-gaetz/index.html

Ethics investigators in Gaetz underage sex allegations probe obtain star witness
https://www.rawstory.com/ethics-inv...derage-allegations-probe-obtain-star-witness/

gwb-trading · Feb 16, 2024

Let's catch up with the latest... Matt is a huge drug supplier.

The sheer volume of controlled substances Matt Gaetz allegedly supplied to his alleged prostitutes was a factor in not prosecuting him. "The heavy use of drugs and alcohol was a hurdle for investigators, since it muddled memories of the events".

Witness Told Feds She Was Paid for Sex Parties With Matt Gaetz
The Ethics Committee is investigating Gaetz—and has text messages between the congressman and a woman who claims she had sex with Gaetz at parties she was paid to attend.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/witness-told-feds-she-was-paid-for-sex-parties-with-matt-gaetz

When ABC News reported on Wednesday that the House Ethics Committee had acquired text messages between a young woman involved in the sex trafficking investigation and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), a Gaetz spokesperson told ABC that the congressman “does not know anything about the woman you’re referencing.”

That seems extraordinarily unlikely.

The Daily Beast can now report that this woman told prosecutors in 2021 that she had sex with Gaetz at a drug-fueled party that she was paid to attend, according to the woman’s attorney.

This attorney told The Daily Beast on Thursday that the woman, in fact, received payments in connection with multiple sex parties with people in Gaetz’s circle. Her lawyer said that, in response to a subpoena, she testified about her experiences to the U.S. Attorneys investigating Gaetz. And she turned over text messages, photos, and other evidence to the Justice Department as part of its child sex trafficking inquiry into the Florida congressman, the lawyer said.

The Daily Beast has obtained some of those messages and photos, which match the documents described by ABC News.

While the lawyer said he has not yet been contacted by House investigators, as ABC reported, the House Ethics Committee is now reviewing this evidence as part of its inquiry into whether Gaetz paid for sex with women and with an underage teen. In fact, the Ethics Committee met Thursday afternoon behind closed doors to discuss the Gaetz case, which also involves allegations of public corruption, solicitation of prostitution, habitual use of hard drugs, bribes or impermissible gifts, campaign finance violations, and exhibiting nude photos of sexual partners on the House floor.

The woman’s attorney also told The Daily Beast that, when it became apparent Gaetz was being investigated in 2021, she was contacted by another male party attendee—a Gaetz associate—who pressed her to see if she was speaking to anyone about the congressman or the parties. She felt this meeting was an effort to intimidate her into not describing any of the events related to Gaetz, the lawyer said.

The woman, whose name The Daily Beast is withholding, was older than 21 at the time of the encounters, the attorney said, noting that she emphasized to prosecutors that the sex was consensual.

“She told them that she and lots of girls were provided all kinds of controlled substances at these parties,” the lawyer said, confirming a number of news reports about the gatherings. The heavy use of drugs and alcohol was a hurdle for investigators, he said, since it muddled memories of the events.

“The availability of vast amounts of alcohol and controlled substances gave rise to the lack of control of the hormonal imperative,” this lawyer continued, “which inspired people to engage in intimate behavior that may or may not have been because they were financially remunerated.”

This woman appears in Venmo transactions previously reported on by The Daily Beast. Between March and July 2017, this woman received nearly $2,500 across multiple payments from Gaetz’s then-best friend, locally elected tax collector Joel Greenberg. The descriptions Greenberg entered for her payments included “travel,” “being cool,” “stuff,” and the misspelled first name of another Greenberg associate.

The text messages now in the hands of congressional investigators show Gaetz propositioning the woman for a May 2017 private group flight to the Florida Keys, where they would be joined by three women and one other man.

“Hey—any interest in flying on a private plane to the keys May 19-21?” Gaetz wrote in one message, adding that she would be traveling with “2 guys, 4 girls. A very high-quality adventurous group.”

The woman initially agreed, to which Gaetz replied, “Fantastic.”

“As is true with all time you spend w me, it’ll be fun and chill,” Gaetz wrote. He then asked if she had a passport, and she replied that she did.

The woman ultimately declined to make the trip, her attorney confirmed. She doesn’t appear in Venmo transactions around that time, though two other women do, including one who received a $500 payment described as “Cuba.”

(A person with knowledge of the events told The Daily Beast that Gaetz privately boasted about taking a trip to Cuba around this time.)

The woman invited to the Florida Keys did receive other payments from Greenberg in the months before and after the trip, however. For one $500 charge to Greenberg in July 2017, she entered a police woman emoji—“”—in the memo line. (That same weekend, Gaetz and Greenberg each shared a selfie of themselves at dinner with Roger Stone in Miami.)

Although the woman appears to have ultimately declined the trip to the Florida Keys, ABC reported that she posed for a selfie with Gaetz on May 19, the planned departure day. That photo, which The Daily Beast has obtained, was taken at 10:53 p.m. in Winter Garden, Florida, according to metadata on the photo. It shows the attention-grabbing conservative in a T-shirt emblazoned with a quote from former Planned Parenthood vice president Mary Lasker: “If you think research is expensive, try disease.”

The woman’s attorney told The Daily Beast that her decision to come forward was a difficult and emotionally taxing experience. And the lawyer pointed to the meeting with the Gaetz associate as evidence that those pressures weren’t all purely internal.

At one point, the lawyer said, this person close to Gaetz berated his client for information about what she may tell anyone investigating Gaetz, and she felt that the clear intent was to pressure her to keep her mouth shut.

This Gaetz associate asked to meet the woman for lunch in the spring of 2021, the lawyer said. The setup made the attorney so uneasy, however, that he dispatched a colleague to tag along and monitor the meeting in secret.

“This associate was there asking her over and over and over what she had said, demanding she tell them,” the lawyer claimed. The lawyer reported that the woman felt intimidated but did not concede.

Last year, prosecutors announced they were declining to file charges against Gaetz, while also refusing to publicly offer an explanation. That decision, almost exactly one year ago, gave rise to frustration and outrage among key witnesses in the case, including women who had come forward to provide intimate and detailed accounts of their interactions, according to interviews with lawyers and witnesses in the matter.

“The fact that nothing has come of it has kind of astonished her, who along with all the others had been the focal point of such an intense investigation,” the woman’s lawyer said. “For them to go through all that and then for the target of the investigation to just get a wink and a nod has created for some of them a loss of faith in the system.”

Not long after prosecutors tabled their investigation, the Ethics Committee reopened its own probe, which it initiated in 2021 but quickly put on ice in deference to the DOJ. Since then, the committee has reached out to several key witnesses, including the former 17-year-old at the center of the sex trafficking allegations, Greenberg, and an ex-girlfriend of Gaetz’s, according to news reports and sources familiar with the events.

The Ethics probe appears to have rattled Gaetz. Last month, The Daily Beast reported that he privately told colleagues that the rebooted investigation was the reason he waged his scorched-earth campaign to oust then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The months of infighting destroyed key allegiances within the House GOP, eroding trust and sowing enmity between members, feeding a stream of embarrassing headlines. Republicans still have not recovered from the damage.

Gaetz’s close associate, Greenberg, struck a deal with prosecutors in May 2021, pleading guilty to child sex trafficking, fraud, and an array of other federal offenses. In his plea agreement, Greenberg admitted he had also connected the former 17-year-old to other unnamed “adult men” who had sex with her while she was still underage. After several proffers and deferments, Greenberg was eventually sentenced in December 2022, receiving 11 years in prison.

In a confession letter Greenberg penned in 2020 as part of his pursuit of a pardon from then-President Donald Trump, Greenberg wrote that Gaetz also paid to have sex with the 17-year-old, as The Daily Beast previously reported. In his letter, Greenberg noted the exact date that he accessed a DMV database to learn that the teen in question was underage.

“Immediately I called the congressman and warned him to stay clear of this person and informed him she was underage,” Greenberg wrote. “He was equally shocked and disturbed by this revelation.”

But that new information apparently didn’t scare Gaetz or Greenberg off from the teen. The Daily Beast previously reported about a Venmo payment from Gaetz to Greenberg about eight months later, where Gaetz asked his friend to “hit up” the teen. She had turned 18 just five months prior to that Venmo transaction, and Gaetz was 36 at the time—twice her age.

Asked for comment, a Gaetz spokesperson repeated the statement to ABC: “Rep. Gaetz does not know anything about the woman you’re referencing.”

When The Daily Beast provided the name of the woman in question, the spokesperson simply didn’t reply.

Cuddles · Feb 16, 2024

gwb-trading said:
Let's catch up with the latest... Matt is a huge drug supplier.

The sheer volume of controlled substances Matt Gaetz allegedly supplied to his alleged prostitutes was a factor in not prosecuting him. "The heavy use of drugs and alcohol was a hurdle for investigators, since it muddled memories of the events".

Witness Told Feds She Was Paid for Sex Parties With Matt Gaetz
The Ethics Committee is investigating Gaetz—and has text messages between the congressman and a woman who claims she had sex with Gaetz at parties she was paid to attend.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/witness-told-feds-she-was-paid-for-sex-parties-with-matt-gaetz

When ABC News reported on Wednesday that the House Ethics Committee had acquired text messages between a young woman involved in the sex trafficking investigation and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), a Gaetz spokesperson told ABC that the congressman “does not know anything about the woman you’re referencing.”

That seems extraordinarily unlikely.

The Daily Beast can now report that this woman told prosecutors in 2021 that she had sex with Gaetz at a drug-fueled party that she was paid to attend, according to the woman’s attorney.

This attorney told The Daily Beast on Thursday that the woman, in fact, received payments in connection with multiple sex parties with people in Gaetz’s circle. Her lawyer said that, in response to a subpoena, she testified about her experiences to the U.S. Attorneys investigating Gaetz. And she turned over text messages, photos, and other evidence to the Justice Department as part of its child sex trafficking inquiry into the Florida congressman, the lawyer said.

The Daily Beast has obtained some of those messages and photos, which match the documents described by ABC News.

While the lawyer said he has not yet been contacted by House investigators, as ABC reported, the House Ethics Committee is now reviewing this evidence as part of its inquiry into whether Gaetz paid for sex with women and with an underage teen. In fact, the Ethics Committee met Thursday afternoon behind closed doors to discuss the Gaetz case, which also involves allegations of public corruption, solicitation of prostitution, habitual use of hard drugs, bribes or impermissible gifts, campaign finance violations, and exhibiting nude photos of sexual partners on the House floor.

The woman’s attorney also told The Daily Beast that, when it became apparent Gaetz was being investigated in 2021, she was contacted by another male party attendee—a Gaetz associate—who pressed her to see if she was speaking to anyone about the congressman or the parties. She felt this meeting was an effort to intimidate her into not describing any of the events related to Gaetz, the lawyer said.

The woman, whose name The Daily Beast is withholding, was older than 21 at the time of the encounters, the attorney said, noting that she emphasized to prosecutors that the sex was consensual.

“She told them that she and lots of girls were provided all kinds of controlled substances at these parties,” the lawyer said, confirming a number of news reports about the gatherings. The heavy use of drugs and alcohol was a hurdle for investigators, he said, since it muddled memories of the events.

“The availability of vast amounts of alcohol and controlled substances gave rise to the lack of control of the hormonal imperative,” this lawyer continued, “which inspired people to engage in intimate behavior that may or may not have been because they were financially remunerated.”

This woman appears in Venmo transactions previously reported on by The Daily Beast. Between March and July 2017, this woman received nearly $2,500 across multiple payments from Gaetz’s then-best friend, locally elected tax collector Joel Greenberg. The descriptions Greenberg entered for her payments included “travel,” “being cool,” “stuff,” and the misspelled first name of another Greenberg associate.

The text messages now in the hands of congressional investigators show Gaetz propositioning the woman for a May 2017 private group flight to the Florida Keys, where they would be joined by three women and one other man.

“Hey—any interest in flying on a private plane to the keys May 19-21?” Gaetz wrote in one message, adding that she would be traveling with “2 guys, 4 girls. A very high-quality adventurous group.”

The woman initially agreed, to which Gaetz replied, “Fantastic.”

“As is true with all time you spend w me, it’ll be fun and chill,” Gaetz wrote. He then asked if she had a passport, and she replied that she did.

The woman ultimately declined to make the trip, her attorney confirmed. She doesn’t appear in Venmo transactions around that time, though two other women do, including one who received a $500 payment described as “Cuba.”

(A person with knowledge of the events told The Daily Beast that Gaetz privately boasted about taking a trip to Cuba around this time.)

The woman invited to the Florida Keys did receive other payments from Greenberg in the months before and after the trip, however. For one $500 charge to Greenberg in July 2017, she entered a police woman emoji—“”—in the memo line. (That same weekend, Gaetz and Greenberg each shared a selfie of themselves at dinner with Roger Stone in Miami.)

Although the woman appears to have ultimately declined the trip to the Florida Keys, ABC reported that she posed for a selfie with Gaetz on May 19, the planned departure day. That photo, which The Daily Beast has obtained, was taken at 10:53 p.m. in Winter Garden, Florida, according to metadata on the photo. It shows the attention-grabbing conservative in a T-shirt emblazoned with a quote from former Planned Parenthood vice president Mary Lasker: “If you think research is expensive, try disease.”

The woman’s attorney told The Daily Beast that her decision to come forward was a difficult and emotionally taxing experience. And the lawyer pointed to the meeting with the Gaetz associate as evidence that those pressures weren’t all purely internal.

At one point, the lawyer said, this person close to Gaetz berated his client for information about what she may tell anyone investigating Gaetz, and she felt that the clear intent was to pressure her to keep her mouth shut.

This Gaetz associate asked to meet the woman for lunch in the spring of 2021, the lawyer said. The setup made the attorney so uneasy, however, that he dispatched a colleague to tag along and monitor the meeting in secret.

“This associate was there asking her over and over and over what she had said, demanding she tell them,” the lawyer claimed. The lawyer reported that the woman felt intimidated but did not concede.

Last year, prosecutors announced they were declining to file charges against Gaetz, while also refusing to publicly offer an explanation. That decision, almost exactly one year ago, gave rise to frustration and outrage among key witnesses in the case, including women who had come forward to provide intimate and detailed accounts of their interactions, according to interviews with lawyers and witnesses in the matter.

“The fact that nothing has come of it has kind of astonished her, who along with all the others had been the focal point of such an intense investigation,” the woman’s lawyer said. “For them to go through all that and then for the target of the investigation to just get a wink and a nod has created for some of them a loss of faith in the system.”

Not long after prosecutors tabled their investigation, the Ethics Committee reopened its own probe, which it initiated in 2021 but quickly put on ice in deference to the DOJ. Since then, the committee has reached out to several key witnesses, including the former 17-year-old at the center of the sex trafficking allegations, Greenberg, and an ex-girlfriend of Gaetz’s, according to news reports and sources familiar with the events.

The Ethics probe appears to have rattled Gaetz. Last month, The Daily Beast reported that he privately told colleagues that the rebooted investigation was the reason he waged his scorched-earth campaign to oust then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The months of infighting destroyed key allegiances within the House GOP, eroding trust and sowing enmity between members, feeding a stream of embarrassing headlines. Republicans still have not recovered from the damage.

Gaetz’s close associate, Greenberg, struck a deal with prosecutors in May 2021, pleading guilty to child sex trafficking, fraud, and an array of other federal offenses. In his plea agreement, Greenberg admitted he had also connected the former 17-year-old to other unnamed “adult men” who had sex with her while she was still underage. After several proffers and deferments, Greenberg was eventually sentenced in December 2022, receiving 11 years in prison.

In a confession letter Greenberg penned in 2020 as part of his pursuit of a pardon from then-President Donald Trump, Greenberg wrote that Gaetz also paid to have sex with the 17-year-old, as The Daily Beast previously reported. In his letter, Greenberg noted the exact date that he accessed a DMV database to learn that the teen in question was underage.

“Immediately I called the congressman and warned him to stay clear of this person and informed him she was underage,” Greenberg wrote. “He was equally shocked and disturbed by this revelation.”

But that new information apparently didn’t scare Gaetz or Greenberg off from the teen. The Daily Beast previously reported about a Venmo payment from Gaetz to Greenberg about eight months later, where Gaetz asked his friend to “hit up” the teen. She had turned 18 just five months prior to that Venmo transaction, and Gaetz was 36 at the time—twice her age.

Asked for comment, a Gaetz spokesperson repeated the statement to ABC: “Rep. Gaetz does not know anything about the woman you’re referencing.”

When The Daily Beast provided the name of the woman in question, the spokesperson simply didn’t reply.
More...

oh gee, I'm sure that defense works for inner city black kids all the time.

gwb-trading · Feb 27, 2024

Well Matt, attacking the head of the ethics committee investigating your many crimes is probably not a smart move.

Gaetz goes full Trump, attacking House Ethics Committee chair
The Floridian’s tirade at CPAC against a fellow Republican as he faces an ethics probe over sexual misconduct allegations reflects a rather Trumpian strategy of attacking the people investigating him.
https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/r...ublican-ethics-chair-investigation-rcna140592

gwb-trading · Mar 15, 2024

Gaetz will be required to state under oath if he had sex with a 17 year old minor.

Matt Gaetz Hit with Subpoena That Could Force Him To Testify About Allegation of Sexual Relationship with Minor
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/m...oath-about-alleged-relationship-with-a-minor/

gwb-trading · Apr 4, 2024

gwb-trading said:
Gaetz will be required to state under oath if he had sex with a 17 year old minor.

Matt Gaetz Hit with Subpoena That Could Force Him To Testify About Allegation of Sexual Relationship with Minor
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/m...oath-about-alleged-relationship-with-a-minor/
More...

Gaetz's disposition where he will need to state under oath whether he had sex with a 17 year old minor has been moved from April to June.

Gaetz's deposition in civil defamation case moved to June
https://abcnews.go.com/US/gaetzs-de...on-case-moved-june-sources/story?id=108853568

gwb-trading · Apr 11, 2024

Scathing Kevin McCarthy says he was ousted as Speaker because Gaetz allegedly ‘slept with a 17-year-old’
https://www.yahoo.com/news/scathing-kevin-mccarthy-says-ousted-231456079.html

Former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy said he was ousted from his position because Representative Matt Gaetz “slept with a 17-year-old.”

“I'll give you the truth as to why I'm not Speaker,” Mr McCarthy said while speaking at Georgetown University on Tuesday. “Because one person, a member of Congress, wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old, an ethics complaint that started before I ever became Speaker...Did he do it or not? I don't know.”

Mr McCarthy is referring to a US House Ethics Committee investigation opened in 2021 related to allegations that Mr Gaetz, a Republican from Florida, violated sex-trafficking laws and had sex with an underage girl. The Ethics investigation was soon after tabled to allow the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate. The DOJ stopped their investigation last year and did not charge Mr Gaetz.

The Congressman has strongly denied any wrongdoing since the allegations arose. In a statement to The Independent, Mr Gaetz also called Mr McCarthy a “liar.”

“Kevin is a liar,” Mr Gaetz said. “Which, actually, is why he isn’t Speaker. Just ask any of the 224 people who voted to remove him.”

Mr Gaetz led the charge to oust Mr McCarthy as House Speaker last year. The Congressman presented the motion to vacate that ultimately passed, removing Mr McCarthy from the position. The representative from Florida has previously said he ousted Mr McCarthy because of concerns he violated the “fundamental commitments” he made to become Speaker — not because of his anger about the ethics probe.

However, a report from The Daily Beast earlier this year said Mr Gaetz told a friend that he targetted Mr McCarthy because of the probe.

“I’ve heard him complain about Kevin because of it,” an unidentified GOP staffer told the outlet.

Last month, Mr Gaetz was served a subpoena to take part in a deposition in a civil lawsuit connected to claims he had sex with an underage girl. The subpoena is part of a lawsuit brought by a friend of Mr Gaetz targeting the young woman and others.

The subpoena was issued by lawyers representing the woman, who is now in her twenties. Mr Gaetz’s deposition is part of a larger defamation and racketeering lawsuit brought by Chris Dorworth, a friend of Mr Gaetz and a former Florida House member and lobbyist, against the woman and others.

“Congressman Gaetz received a witness subpoena in an ongoing lawsuit between outside parties,” a spokesperson for Mr Gaetz previously told The Independent. “He is not being sued, and he is neither a plaintiff nor a defendant in this matter.”

Atlantic · Apr 12, 2024

republican family values?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/report-reveals-matt-gaetz-even-220015400.html

New Report Reveals Matt Gaetz Is an Even Bigger Creep Than You Thought

Hafiz Rashid
Fri, April 12, 2024 at 12:00 AM GMT+2·2 min read

Representative Matt Gaetz has a reputation as a provocateur and MAGA ideologue on Capitol Hill, with an active ethics investigation against him. After a new profile in The Atlantic, he might be known for other, worse reasons.

One such revelation in the piece, published Thursday, was that he’d show videos of his sexual conquests to other staffers and members of Congress on Capitol Hill.

“He used to walk around the cloakroom showing people porno of him and his latest girlfriend,” one former Republican lawmaker told Atlantic writer Elaine Godfrey, speaking anonymously. “He’d show me a video, and I’d say, ‘That’s great, Matt.’ Like, what kind of a reaction do you want?”

He also, early in his career as a state legislator in Florida, was allegedly involved in a “points game,” in which he and other Republican lawmakers earned points for sleeping with women, with one point for doing so with a lobbyist, three points for a fellow legislator, six for a married fellow legislator, and so on.

Gaetz got his start in politics thanks to the wealth and political career of his father, Don Gaetz, who would serve as president of the Florida Senate. The elder Gaetz ran and sold a hospice company, netting $500 million, and spent a lot of money funding development projects in the Florida Panhandle. The counties that make up the Panhandle, one lobbyist told Godfrey, “are owned by the Gaetzes.”

Gaetz was elected to the Florida state Senate while his father was president and had a reputation for walking into his father’s meetings and sitting on the couch with his feet up, according to one political consultant. The pair were often derisively referred to as Daddy Gaetz and Baby Gaetz, the article said.

The profile wasn’t all negative, though: Gaetz has apparently shown a willingness to work with Democrats, including Representatives Jared Moskowitz and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, when it benefits him.

But recent news about the Florida Republican hasn’t been good. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy claims Gaetz led the effort to oust him because Gaetz wanted him to squash the ethics investigation against him. That investigation is over allegations that Gaetz slept with a 17-year-old girl, as well as instances of drug use and corruption.

gwb-trading · Apr 19, 2024

So while he was a Congressman, Matt Gaetz attended a party where under-aged naked minors roamed around the house with bedrooms made available for sex and illegal drugs were freely flowing.

Matt continually claims the minor "does not exist". His key phrase "does not exist" and variants are widely used to mock Gaetz at this point (including in this thread). It is also interesting to note that Matt is saying the ethics committee investigation is simply payback for him ousting Kevin McCarthy -- however the ethics investigation was going on long before Matt led the effort to dump McCarthy.

Matt Gaetz attended 2017 party where minor and drugs were present, woman's sworn statement obtained by Congress claims
The Ethics panel is questioning witnesses about allegations involving Gaetz.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/matt-gaetz-attended-2017-party-minor-drugs-present/story?id=109324572

The House Ethics Committee is investigating whether or not Rep. Matt Gaetz used illicit drugs as a member of Congress, multiple sources familiar with the committee's work told ABC News.

Committee investigators have inquired about whether Gaetz was under the influence of drugs at parties in Florida after becoming a member of Congress in 2017, according to the sources.

According to a sworn written statement that has been obtained by the Ethics committee, a woman says that in summer of 2017, when she was 20 years old, she attended a party in Florida that Gaetz also attended, which featured alcohol and drugs including cocaine and MDMA, sources familiar with the committee's work told ABC News.

In the sworn statement, which has not been previously reported, the woman said that in addition to Gaetz, the party was attended by the then-minor who was at the center of a yearslong Justice Department investigation into accusations that the Florida Congressman had sex with her when she was 17, according to sources.

According to the statement provided to the committee, sources said the woman who made the statement -- who ABC News is not identifying -- said she saw the then-minor naked at the party, which was also attended by adult men other than Gaetz, and that at the party there allegedly were bedrooms that were made available for sexual activities.

Gaetz has repeatedly denied all wrongdoing, including the allegations that he had sex with a minor. The Justice Department informed Gaetz in 2023 that it was declining to bring charges against him.

Though the statement obtained by Congress references Gaetz, it was not written specifically to the Ethics Committee and is not primarily about the congressman, and the woman does not discuss whether or not she had knowledge of Gaetz's alleged sexual relations with the then-minor, sources said.

When asked if Rep. Gaetz recalled attending the 2017 party, a spokesperson for the Florida Congressman told ABC News, "No." The spokesperson also said "no" when asked if Gaetz has used illicit drugs since becoming a member of Congress.

A representative for the House Ethics Committee declined to comment.

The sworn statement places Gaetz at a party with the then-minor, who Gaetz has denied ever having a relationship with and previously claimed "doesn't exist" when asked about the allegations on Fox News in March 2021.

"The person doesn't exist," Gaetz told Tucker Carlson. "I have not had a relationship with a 17-year-old, that is totally false."

In March, Gaetz was subpoenaed as a witness by attorneys representing the former minor in a civil lawsuit brought by Gaetz's longtime friend, Chris Dorworth, who alleges he was defamed by her and others during the Justice Department's probe into the matter. Gaetz is not a party to the lawsuit. Gaetz's deposition is slated for June and could see the congressman asked under oath about allegations that he engaged in sexual activity with the woman when she was a minor.

Last week, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made headlines when he claimed he was ousted because he would not stop the ongoing House Ethics probe into Gaetz.

"I'll give you the truth why I'm not speaker," McCarthy said at an event at Georgetown University. "It's because one person, a member of Congress, wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old."

Gaetz appeared to respond on X, formally known as Twitter, writing, "Kevin McCarthy is a liar. That’s why he is no longer speaker."

The House Ethics probe into Gaetz has continued to move forward in recent weeks, with investigators reaching out to more individuals, including young women who were allegedly paid by Gaetz's one-time close friend Joel Greenberg to attend sex parties, sources said.

Committee investigators have asked witnesses whether they had seen or had knowledge of Gaetz using and or purchasing drugs himself, sources said.

News that the committee is asking questions about Gaetz and alleged drug use comes weeks after the Florida congressman grilled President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, about his own admitted drug use during a closed-door session with the House Oversight Committee.

During Hunter Biden's interview with the committee, Gaetz asked if was "on drugs" while serving on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. The president's son responded, "Mr. Gaetz, look me in the eye. You really think that's appropriate to ask me?"

ABC News previously reported that the House Ethics Committee had subpoenaed Gaetz's ex-girlfriend for testimony, which she sat for in late February.

ABC News also reported that the committee had obtained texts allegedly showing Gaetz setting up a trip to the Florida Keys trip with a separate woman that Greenberg had paid for sex.

A spokesperson for Gaetz told ABC News at the time, "Rep. Gaetz has no knowledge of these activities by Mr. Greenberg and was not involved in them. Rep. Gaetz has never paid for sex. Rep. Gaetz does not know anything about the woman you're referencing, though he takes thousands of selfies each year."

Gaetz has criticized the Ethics Committee for "trying to weaponize their process."

"The Ethics Committee is engaging in payback against me for ousting the person who singularly appointed every Republican -- Kevin McCarthy," Gaetz previously said in a statement to ABC News.

gwb-trading · May 7, 2024

'Uhhhhhh': Matt Gaetz mocked for saying he's never been accused of wrongdoing
https://www.rawstory.com/matt-gaetz-mocked/