(The Hill) – The House Ethics Committee released its long-awaited report into former Rep. Matt Gaetz on Monday, putting a bookend on the panel’s roughly 3 1/2-year investigation into the firebrand Florida Republican.
The report — which spans 42 pages and includes several more in exhibits — found “substantial evidence” that Gaetz violated House rules, state and federal laws, outlining allegations of prostitution, statutory rape and illicit drug use, among other accusations. Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing.
Here are five takeaways from the report.
An embarrassing blow to Gaetz
Most of the allegations in the Ethics Committee’s report are not new, given that the panel publicly released the areas it was investigating.
But the vast — and salacious — details included in the body of work are dealing an embarrassing blow to Gaetz, who tried until the final hours to keep the findings under wraps.
The biggest bombshell accusation in the report is that Gaetz, then a 35-year-old, first-term congressman, twice had sex with a woman who was then 17.
The woman, identified as Victim A in the report, told the committee she had sex with Gaetz two times when she was at a party on July 15, 2017. The panel said it did not know whether Gaetz was aware of the girl’s age.
The woman recalled receiving $400 from Gaetz that evening.
The report also detailed Gaetz’s alleged use of drugs, including cocaine, ecstasy and marijuana; accused him of accepting improper gifts in the form of transportation and lodging related to a 2018 trip to the Bahamas that featured sexual encounters and drug use; and alleged that he used “the power of his office to assist a woman with whom he was engaged in a sexual relationship in obtaining an expedited passport,” despite that woman not being his constituent.
Top Republicans couldn’t keep a lid on the report
Top Republicans tried to keep a lid on the Gaetz report, but their efforts failed.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) urged the Ethics Committee not to release its report into Gaetz after he was nominated by President-elect Trump to be attorney general.
At the time, he told reporters: “I think it’s a terrible breach of protocol and tradition and the spirit of the rule of law” and called the prospect of making the findings public “a terrible precedent to set.”
He re-upped that position a number of times.
Rep. Michael Guest (R-Miss.), the chair of the Ethics Committee, told reporters he had “reservations about releasing any unfinished work” when asked Gaetz once he was nominated to be attorney general.
Guest then said Gaetz’s decision to withdraw his name from consideration for the top job at the Department of Justice “should end the discussion of whether or not the Ethics Committee should continue to move forward in this matter.”
At the end of the day, however, Johnson and Guest lost that battle, with at least one Republican voting with all Democrats to release the report.
On the evenly divided committee, a majority vote is needed to release reports.
Reps. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) and Dave Joyce (R-Ohio) voted in support of publishing the findings, a source confirmed to The Hill. Axios first reported those votes.
The committee released its report on Dec. 23, one day before Christmas Eve and at a time when both the House and Senate are out of session.
The findings, however, still drew widespread headlines, and Guest sharply criticized the ultimate decision to make the body of work public in a statement on behalf of those who opposed its release.
“While we do not challenge the Committee’s findings, we take great exception that the majority deviated from the Committee’s well-established standards and voted to release a report on an individual no longer under the Committee’s jurisdiction, an action the Committee has not taken since 2006,” Guest said in the statement, which was included in the final report.
Does the Gaetz report’s release change precedent?
The Ethics Committee’s decision to release its report into Gaetz, a former member of Congress, was a rare one.
That raises questions about what the panel’s precedent is as it looks to continue its work investigating alleged wrongdoing in Congress going forward.
The last time the committee released a report on a former member, as Guest noted, was in 2006, when the panel published its findings from its investigation into former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), focusing on the conduct of House GOP leaders.
The committee did the same in 1987, when it published its report into former Rep. William Boner (D-Tenn.) after he resigned from the House.
Despite those previous instances, several Republicans who were against publishing the Gaetz findings contended that such a move would set a new, dangerous precedent. Guest made that argument in his statement in the report.
“We believe that operating outside the jurisdictional bounds set forth by House Rules and Committee standards, especially when making public disclosures, is a dangerous departure with potentially catastrophic consequences,” Guest said.
Gaetz’s future is in question
The release of the Ethics report is also raising questions about what Gaetz’s future looks like, now that the salacious allegations, evidence and details are out in the open for the public to read.
Gaetz resigned from the House after Trump nominated him to be attorney general, later withdrawing his name from consideration amid mounting GOP opposition. It is likely that the contents of the Ethics report would have tanked his bid, leading to the same conclusion.
The former congressman then announced he would not take the oath of office for the 119th Congress, which he won election to, before revealing that he would join One America News as an anchor in January, giving him a perch to continue his involvement in politics off of Capitol Hill.
Gaetz, however, has recently floated future bids for public office, efforts that could be complicated by the contents of his Ethics Committee report being public.
On Sunday, the ex-congressman said he might run for Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) Senate seat, which he is leaving to be Trump’s secretary of state. Gaetz’s name has also been floated as someone who could run for governor of Florida in 2026, since Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) will be term-limited.
Gaetz likely will be pressed on the evidence and allegations detailed in the Ethics Committee’s report if he runs for public office in the future, which could make his path to victory difficult.
Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.), a member of the panel, said the panel’s work includes information future voters or employers would want to know before making a decision about Gaetz.
“I don’t know if he’s ever going to run for office again or whatever, but whether he’s in public or private life, I think there’s information in here that voters or employers or whoever would want to know before they made certain decisions about him,” Ivey told The Hill in a phone interview after the release of the report.
Gaetz denies wrongdoing
Gaetz has strongly denied any wrongdoing at every step of the committee’s investigation, particularly allegations that he had sexual contact with a woman younger than 18 years old, issuing statements and posting on social media to push back on the allegations.
Last week, after news broke that the panel had voted to release its report into Gaetz, the former congressman said some conduct from his past was “embarrassing, though not criminal.”
The Florida Republican, however, stepped up his criticism on Monday morning, shortly before the committee officially released its report — but after it had leaked to some outlets. He filed a lawsuit against the panel in an effort to block it from publishing its body of work.
“The Committee’s apparent intention to release its report after explicitly acknowledging it lacks jurisdiction over former members, its failure to follow constitutional notions of due process, and failure to adhere to its own procedural rules and precedent represents an unprecedented overreach that threatens fundamental constitutional rights and established procedural protections,” Gaetz’s attorneys wrote.
The former congressman told The Hill the claims “would be destroyed in court — which is why they were never made in any court against me,” referring to the Department of Justice’s decision not to charge Gaetz in 2023 after investigating whether he violated sex trafficking laws related to a 17-year-old and traveling with her across state lines.
The lawsuit, however, is largely moot now since the Ethics Committee released its report mid-morning on Monday, putting its findings out for the public to review.
Emily Brooks contributed.
