The key figure in a Justice Department investigation into sex trafficking allegations involving Matt Gaetz told the House Ethics Committee that the former congressman had sex with her when she was 17 years old, according to a report.
The woman, who is now in her 20s, was subpoenaed by the ethics panel over the summer and testified that Gaetz had sex with her when she was a minor and still in high school, ABC News reported on Thursday.
The Florida Republican vehemently denied the allegations.
“These allegations are invented and would constitute false testimony to Congress,” Gaetz said in a statement provided to The Post. “This false smear following a three-year criminal investigation should be viewed with great skepticism.”
The DOJ informed Gaetz last year that it would not bring charges against him related to the probe, but the House Ethics Committee has been running a separate investigation into the former congressman, who abruptly resigned from Congress Wednesday after being nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to serve as attorney general.
The ethics committee was reportedly set to vote Friday on whether to release its findings in the Gaetz probe, according to Punchbowl News.
Sources told ABC News that the ethics panel conducted interviews with at least six women who allegedly partied with Gaetz and were paid by his former friend, Joel Greenberg.
Greenberg, a former local tax official in Florida, pleaded guilty to multiple federal charges, including sex trafficking, in May of 2021.
As part of the plea deal, Greenberg admitted that he recruited women for commercial sex acts and paid them more than $70,000 from 2016 to 2018, including at least one underage girl – who was the woman who told the ethics panel that Gaetz had sex with her as a minor, ABC News reported.
Greenberg’s plea deal states that the woman “represented that she was an adult” when she met him but that he “acted in reckless disregard” and had a “reasonable opportunity to observe” that she was under the age of 18 when he trafficked her for sex.
The House Ethics Committee also received a sworn statement from Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend during the course of its investigation, in which she claims drugs and the underage woman Gaetz allegedly had sex with were present at a July 2017 party attended by Trump’s attorney general pick, according to ABC News.
Gaetz has long denied any wrongdoing.
He has accused Greenberg and the sex-trafficking victim of being in on a “plot to frame me.”
“The Committee’s star witness, Joel Greenberg, is a felonious liar who involves others in his lies,” Gaetz wrote in a September post on X, which he called his “final response” to the ethics probe.
“On July 10, 2024, I provided the Committee dispositive evidence of my innocence by producing a ‘smoking gun’ contemporaneous, jailhouse writing, documenting the plot to frame me, which includes both Joel Greenberg and his victim. This was authenticated by two former federal agents who interviewed the jailhouse informant who revealed the plot against me,” he added.
By leaving Congress, Gaetz, 42, is no longer subject to the jurisdiction of the House Ethics Committee – ending the probe and denying the panel the opportunity to release its findings.
Several senators from both sides of the aisle, however, have demanded to see the bipartisan panel’s report on Gaetz before the upper chamber deliberates on whether to confirm him to the cabinet post.
The House Ethics Committee declined to comment.