WASHINGTON – Two women told House Ethics Committee investigators that former Rep. Matt Gaetz, who has been tapped to be attorney general in the next Trump administration, paid them for sex, and one of the women testified she saw him having sex with a 17-year-old, according to an attorney for the women.
Joel Leppard, who represents the two women, described the testimony his clients gave the House ethics panel, which has been investigating the Florida Republican over allegations of sex trafficking involving a 17-year-old girl. The Justice Department separately ended its own sex trafficking investigation into Gaetz without criminal charges.
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The House committee's investigation effectively ended last week when Gaetz resigned from Congress after Trump nominated him to lead the Justice Department.
Gaetz has denied ever having a relationship with a 17-year-old, and any other wrongdoing. A lawyer who has represented Gaetz said he would not answer any questions when reached Tuesday by The Associated Press.
A Trump transition spokesperson said Tuesday that they are “baseless allegations intended to derail the second Trump administration," adding that the Justice Department “investigated Gaetz for years and cleared him of wrongdoing.”
Gaetz is facing mounting scrutiny over the allegations, which threaten his complicate his path to be confirmed as the nation's top federal law enforcement officer. Several Republicans in the Senate that have expressed concern about his nomination or refused to say publicly yet whether they will support him.
Leppard told ABC News, CNN and other news outlets that one of his clients saw Gaetz having sex with her then-17-year-old friend at a party in 2017 in Florida, while Gaetz was serving in Congress. The attorney told NBC News that his client testified she didn't think Gaetz knew the girl was underage, stopped their relationship when he found out and did not resume it until after she turned 18. The age of consent in Florida is 18.
Both of Leppard's clients told House investigators that they were paid for sex by Gaetz, sometimes through Venmo, the attorney said.
Trump's pick of Gaetz has roiled many career Justice Department lawyers, who privately have expressed concern about having him lead the same agency that investigated the sex trafficking allegations involving underage girls. Trump, who has railed against the Justice Department over the two criminal cases brought against him, has described Gaetz as the right person to “root out the systemic corruption” within the agency.
The House Ethics Committee began its review of Gaetz in April 2021, deferred its work in response to a Justice Department request, and renewed its work shortly after Gaetz announced that the Justice Department had ended its sex trafficking investigation.
Over the summer, the committee provided an unusual public update into its long-running investigation, saying its review now includes whether Gaetz engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.
The House's investigation is separate from the Justice Department's sex trafficking probe, which began under Attorney General Bill Barr during Trump’s first term focused on allegations that Gaetz and onetime political ally Joel Greenberg paid underage girls and escorts or offered them gifts in exchange for sex.
Greenberg, a fellow Republican who served as the tax collector in Florida’s Seminole County, admitted as part of a plea deal with prosecutors in 2021 that he paid women and an underage girl to have sex with him and other men. The men were not identified in court documents when he pleaded guilty. Greenberg was sentenced in late 2022 to 11 years in prison.
Federal investigators scrutinized a trip that Gaetz took to the Bahamas, with a group of women and a doctor who donated to his campaign, and whether the women were paid or received gifts to have sex with the men, according to people familiar with the matter who were not allowed to publicly discuss the investigation. Prosecutors also investigated whether Gaetz and his associates tried to secure government jobs for some of the women, and scrutinized Gaetz’s connections to the medical marijuana sector, including whether his associates sought to influence legislation Gaetz sponsored, the people have said.