We Are Going To Learn More About Matt Gaetz’s Sex Life Than We Wanted
The fact that former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz lacks relevant legal experience should be enough to kill his nomination as attorney general. The poor judgment he has repeatedly demonstrated, including pointless stunts and intraparty squabbles that irritated his Republican colleagues, only lengthens the odds of his confirmation. But the clincher may end up being the salacious details of a House Ethics Committee report that Gaetz would like to keep under wraps.
The committee reportedly looked into several possible ethical violations by Gaetz, including allegations that he had sex with an underage girl, used illegal drugs, accepted prohibited gifts, misappropriated campaign funds, and shared sexually explicit videos with his colleagues on the House floor. The New York Times describes the resulting report as “highly critical.”
Because Gaetz gave up his seat after President-elect Donald Trump announced his nomination, the House Ethics Committee no longer has any jurisdiction over him. As House Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.) sees it, that should be the end of the matter. “I’m going to strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report, because that is not the way we do things in the House,” Johnson said last Friday, adding that releasing the report “would be a terrible precedent to set.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R–Texas), who sits on the committee that will consider Gaetz’s nomination, sees things differently. “We need to have a complete vetting of the nominees, not only so we know that the nominee is qualified, but also to protect the president,” Cornyn said last week. “I’m sure it’s not in [Trump’s] best interest to have any surprises in the House Ethics Committee report.”
What sort of surprises? On Monday, the Times reports, “an unidentified hacker” gained access to a confidential file that “is said to include sworn testimony by a woman who said that she had sex with Mr. Gaetz in 2017 when she was 17, as well as corroborating testimony by a second woman who said that she witnessed the encounter.” The file was produced in connection with a defamation lawsuit that Gaetz’s friend Christopher Dorworth, a Florida businessman, filed against “both the woman who says she had sex with Mr. Gaetz when she was a minor and Joel Greenberg, an erstwhile ally of Mr. Gaetz who is serving an 11-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to federal sex trafficking charges involving the woman.”
Another Times report notes that Joel Leppard, “a lawyer representing two women who testified that [Gaetz] paid them for sex,” told ABC News one of his clients “was walking out to the pool area” during a July 2017 “house party” in Florida when “she looked to her right” and saw Gaetz “having sex with her friend, who was 17.” According to Leppard, “both women also told th
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