A woman who attended a party with former lawmaker Matt Gaetz in 2017 told the House Ethics Committee that she witnessed the then-recently elected congressman having sex with a minor, according to her attorney.
The woman’s attorney, Joel Leppard, released a statement Friday calling on the commission to release the findings of its yearlong investigation into Gaetz. The committee planned to vote Friday on whether to release their report, but the meeting was canceled after President-elect Donald Trump announced he planned to do so Nominate Gaetz as attorney general and the Florida Republican resigned from Congress.
“As the Senate considers the nomination of former lawmaker Gaetz as attorney general, several questions demand answers,” Leppard said in a statement. “What if sworn testimony detailed conduct that would disqualify someone from serving as our nation’s chief law enforcement officer?”
Leppard’s client is one of at least four women who told the committee they were paid to attend drug and sex parties where Gaetz attended, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. Her story corroborates the testimony of the then-minor, who told the commission that she had sex with Gaetz when she was 17 years old.
“She was a high school student and there were witnesses,” her attorney, John Clune, said in a statement Thursday. He also urged the committee to release its report on Gaetz.
CBS News has learned that the committee also has Gaetz’s Venmo transactions that allegedly show payments for the women.
Gaetz, who has denied any wrongdoing, including having sex with a minor, has called the commission’s investigation a “smear campaign.”
The Justice Department previously investigated Gaetz’s involvement with the minor as part of a sex trafficking investigation, but no charges have been filed against him.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday that he would “strongly request” that the House Ethics Committee withhold the report on its investigation into Gaetz.
Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he wants to see the report. GOP Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota is not on the Judiciary Committee, but said in an interview on CNN: “We should be able to [the report]and we should have access to it somehow, based on the way we do all these nominations.
