Files containing statements from witnesses who provided damaging testimony against Matt Gaetz, the former Congressman and President Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney general, were hacked Monday, lawyers say.
The hacked files contained an unredacted statement from a woman who allegedly had sex with Gaetz when she was 17 years old.
An email obtained by the USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida to lawyers in a defamation lawsuit warns them that unredacted files containing statements from several witnesses have been accessed.
The attorneys are involved in a federal defamation lawsuit against former Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg, filed by former state lawmaker and lobbyist Chris Dorworth in 2023. The lawsuit accuses Greenberg, who is serving an 11-year prison sentence, of sex trafficking, and a number of them Greenberg’s relatives of “conspiring with Joel’s sex trafficking victim, AB, to falsely accuse Dorworth and Gaetz of sexual misconduct.”
Greenberg’s attorney, Fritz Wermuth, notified other attorneys in the case that unredacted documents were accessed by an “unauthorized third party” Monday afternoon.
“For example, the exhibits include unredacted copies of the depositions of AB, KM, and Michael Fischer,” Wermuth wrote in the email.
The initials “AB” refer to the woman who was 17 at the time. A witness in the case said she “accessed the bedrooms at the Dorworth Residence to engage in sexual activity,” as well as “alcohol, cocaine, ecstasy, also known as molly, and marijuana.”
Several witnesses in the defamation case also testified before the House Ethics Committee. Florida attorney Joel Leppard told ABC News on Monday that he represents two women who testified before the committee that Gaetz paid them for sex through Venmo, and one witness said she saw Gaetz have sex with her then-17-year-old girlfriend in a house in Florida. party in July 2017.
Gaetz has repeatedly and vehemently denied the allegations.
The House Ethics Committee is expected to meet behind closed doors on Wednesday to discuss whether to release its report on the allegations against Gaetz. House Speaker Mike Johnson has publicly urged the bipartisan committee not to release the report because Gaetz is no longer a member of the House of Representatives. House Ethics Chairman Michael Guest, R-Mississippi, told POLITICO that the committee would make its own decision regardless of what Johnson said.
There is an ongoing battle in federal court to release the unredacted statements that provide full details of the accounts of a “sex party” at Dorworth’s home in Central Florida on July 15, 2017.
Wermuth told lawyers in his email that the hacker appeared to be using the name Altam Beezly, which was linked to a fake email address.
“I have not been able to identify the person who downloaded the files, but I have contacted the email address provided, asked the person to identify themselves, instructed them that their access is not authorized, and told them that they have to destroy them,” Wermuth wrote. “My email was bounced because the email address was not found.”
Tim Jansen, a Tallahassee attorney who represents an ex-girlfriend of Matt Gaetz and was involved in the lawsuit, received the letter from Wermuth late Monday.
“We are concerned that documents, transcripts or other evidence collected in this case that should have been protected and sealed have now been compromised,” Jansen told USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida. “We do not authorize the release of such material on behalf of my client.”
This article originally appeared in Pensacola News Journal: Matt Gaetz prosecutors’ sealed testimony was hacked, attorneys say
