It's not like the guy is going to be running the Justice Dept? Oh, he is? Well, maybe she didn't look like she was 17? Oh, he paid for sex. That's illegal?
Ok, it looks a little "f-cked up" but he's denied the whole thing, and even if he stepped over the line (that's the understatement of the year) he's prepared to say "I'm sorry".
Gaetz Had Sex With 17-Year-Old, Witness Testified
The witness’s lawyer said she told the House Ethics Committee she saw Trump’s pick for attorney general with the minor
By Khadeeja Safdar and Sadie Gurman, WSJ
Nov. 18, 2024 8:29 pm ET
A witness told the House Ethics Committee she saw Matt Gaetz having sex with a 17-year-old girl at a party in 2017, while he was serving in Congress, a lawyer for the woman said Monday.
The woman and another witness also told the panel that Gaetz, president-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, paid them for sex, said Joel Leppard, the lawyer representing the two women.
Leppard said that his clients, who haven’t come forward publicly, received the payments via Venmo and PayPal.
Gaetz has long denied ever having sex with a minor as an adult or paying for sex. On Monday, Trump transition spokesman Alex Pfeiffer said Gaetz is “the right man for the job and will end the weaponization of our justice system.” Pfeiffer added that the allegations were baseless and “intended to derail the second Trump administration.”
The House panel investigated the allegations and in June said it had spoken with more than a dozen witnesses, issued 25 subpoenas, and reviewed thousands of pages of documents. It had expected to release a report on its findings last week, but didn’t do so after Gaetz resigned from Congress to pursue the attorney general nomination.
Details of the testimony, reported earlier by ABC News, emerged as the panel is now deliberating what to do about its report, and is expected to meet Wednesday to discuss next steps, according to a person familiar with the matter. The committee could still release it, if a majority of its members vote to do so.
In the two weeks since Trump won the presidency, he has moved to stock his cabinet and White House staff with loyalists, some of whom have little experience with the agencies they are tasked with leading. He has mostly shunned establishment Republicans, whom he blames for thwarting his first-term goals. Gaetz and Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, have both faced accusations of sexual misconduct that are threatening to bog down their nominations. Hegseth maintains his innocence and said the woman in that situation was the aggressor, according to his lawyer.
The office of former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.), who served from January 2017 until he resigned this month to pursue the attorney general nomination. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Zuma Press
The selection of Gaetz, in particular, a pugnacious Trump ally and vocal Justice Department critic, stunned lawmakers. Senate Republicans warned that Gaetz would struggle to win the support needed for confirmation, and that he would face scrutiny over the sexual-misconduct allegations. The Justice Department also investigated whether Gaetz engaged in sex-trafficking a minor, a probe that began during Trump’s first term and ended last year without criminal charges. Gaetz has denied wrongdoing and has said, “Every investigation into me ends the same way: my exoneration.”
The House ethics report could be released through a floor vote by the full House, if a lawmaker uses a process that essentially makes the case that the allegations against Gaetz impugned the dignity and integrity of the House. That would force House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) to schedule a vote within two days.
Johnson said last week the panel shouldn’t release its report, and the GOP-led House could vote to table the matter by simple majority, but Republicans could afford to lose no more than three votes if Democrats were all opposed.
Asked Monday if he would act to keep the report confidential should the committee vote to release it, Johnson said: “The speaker doesn’t have that power.”
In general, it is rare for votes to come up on the House floor that aren’t backed by House leaders. The House did vote in the 1990s to force the disclosure of a list, compiled by the ethics panel, of lawmakers that had written overdrafts at the House bank.
The woman who said she saw Gaetz having sex told the ethics committee that she witnessed the episode in July 2017, when Gaetz was a freshman lawmaker, according to her lawyer. She walked out toward the pool area of a house and saw Gaetz with her friend, who was 17 at the time, Leppard said.
John Clune, a lawyer for the 17-year-old, said on X that he supported the immediate release of the report, and called the selection of Gaetz for attorney general “a perverse development in a truly dark series of events.”
“She was a high-school student, and there were witnesses,” Clune said.
Leppard said his clients provided details to the committee about gatherings they attended with Gaetz from July 2017 through January 2019. The events, which involved sex and drugs, included parties, political events and trips to the Bahamas and New York, Leppard said.
“The public deserves to know that what we all experienced was real and actually happened,” one of the women said in a statement shared by Leppard.
Lindsay Wise and Katy Stech Ferek contributed to this article.
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