A lawyer representing a woman accusing former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) of having sex with her when she was a minor is pressing the House Ethics Committee to release a report on their investigation into the allegations despite Gaetz’s resignation from Congress.
On Wednesday, Gaetz tendered his resignation after President-elect Donald Trump tapped the Florida congressman to serve as his attorney general. The resignation came days before the Ethics Committee was scheduled to vote on the release of an investigative report into allegations that he had engaged in sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, and public corruption.
Gaetz’s exit from the House strips the Ethics Committee of the jurisdiction to punish the former representative, but lawmakers could still release the report via majority vote, or pass along their findings to federal prosecutors.
House Ethics Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) so far is not entertaining suggestions that he move the committee to release the report despite Gaetz’s resignation. “What happens in Ethics is confidential. We’re going to maintain that confidentiality,” he told reporters on Thursday.
Before Gaetz’s resignation on Wednesday, Guest said that “once the investigation is complete, the Ethics Committee will meet as a committee. We will then return our findings. If Matt Gaetz is still a member of Congress, then that will occur. If Matt has resigned, then this ethics investigation, like many others in the past, will end again.”
On Thursday, John Clune, an attorney representing Gaetz’s alleged victim, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that “Mr. Gaetz’s likely nomination as Attorney General is a perverse development in a truly dark series of events. We would support the House Ethics Committee immediately releasing their report. She was a high school student and there were witnesses.”
Members of the Senate — both Democrats and Republicans —- are already calling for the release of the report ahead of Gaetz’s confirmation process. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Punchbowl News on Thursday that he “can’t understand any situation under which we would deny ourselves access to full and complete information.”
“Part of this is not only to determine fitness for the nominee, it’s also to protect the president. Because there may be information that the investigation would find forthcoming that would ultimately be an embarrassment to the president. So this is for all of the above reasons, we need to get access to everything,” he said.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who also serves on the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement on Thursday that “in light of Donald Trump’s selection of former Congressman Matt Gaetz to be his Attorney General, I am calling on the House Ethics Committee to preserve and share their report and all relevant documentation on Mr. Gaetz with the Senate Judiciary Committee.”
“The sequence and timing of Mr. Gaetz’s resignation from the House raises serious questions about the contents of the House Ethics Committee report,” Durbin added. “Make no mistake: this information could be relevant to the question of Mr. Gaetz’s confirmation as the next Attorney General of the United States and our constitutional responsibility of advice and consent.”
In 2021, news broke that Gaetz was under federal investigation over an alleged sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl, and accusations that he had violated sex trafficking laws by traveling with her across state lines. The investigation stemmed from a separate probe into Joel Greenberg, a long-time friend of Gaetz’s who in 2021 pleaded guilty to charges of underage sex trafficking, falsification of documents, stalking, and wire fraud, among others. Greenberg, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison, agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in their investigation into Gaetz as part of his plea deal.
In April of 2021, The Daily Beast obtained a letter from Greenberg to former Trump adviser Roger Stone in which he stated that Gaetz had paid for sex with a 17-year-old girl.
That same year, the House Ethics Committee opened its own investigation into the allegations against Gaetz. The committee temporarily stalled its work during the Justice Department’s probe into the allegations. The DOJ ultimately declined to recommend charges against Gaetz, citing an unlikelihood of conviction, but the Ethics Committee reopened the investigation in July 2023, and requested testimony and documents from witnesses.
Others close to Gaetz are calling for any records related to the case to be “stricken from the judicial record.” Court records reviewed by Rolling Stone show that Christopher Dorworth, a self-described “close friend” of Gaetz, has filed a lawsuit requesting that records related to the DOJ’s investigation into Gaetz be kept from public view.
“The public interest is not served in any way by releasing confidential information upon which the court has never relied to make any decision in this case,” attorneys for Dorworth wrote in an Oct. 16 filing. Dorworth “intends to request the exhibits be stricken from the judicial record entirely,” his attorneys added.
Gaetz is now slated to take over the Justice Department. The allegations against Gaetz could still tank his nomination if he’s subjected to a confirmation vote, but given Trump’s public demands that senators allow him to use recess appointments to confirm his nominees — Gaetz may manage to avoid the Senate’s scrutiny entirely.