A woman who attended a 2017 party with former Rep. Matt Gaetz told the House Ethics Committee that she witnessed the recently elected congressman having sex with a minor.
The woman’s attorney, Joel Leppard, issued a statement Friday urging the commission to make public the results of its multi-year review of Gaetz. that committee A vote was scheduled to take place Friday on whether to release the report, but the meeting was canceled after President-elect Donald Trump announced his intention to release the report. Nominate Gaetz The attorney general and a Florida Republican resigned from Congress.
“As the Senate considers former Rep. Gaetz’s nomination for Attorney General, several questions need answers,” Leppard said in a statement. “What if I were to detail, in sworn testimony, conduct that would disqualify me from holding the office of 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 that Gaetz attended, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. Her statement corroborates the testimony of a then-minor who told the committee she had sexual intercourse 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 had Venmo transactions from Gaetz that purportedly showed payments to women.
Gaetz, who has denied any wrongdoing, including sex with a minor, called the committee’s investigation a “smear campaign.”
The Justice Department previously investigated Gaetz’s involvement with minors as part of a sex trafficking investigation, but no charges were brought against him.
Speaker of the House mike johnson He said Friday that he would “strongly request” that the House Ethics Committee withhold its report on its investigation into Gaetz.
Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would like to see the report. South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds, who is not on the Judiciary Committee but is not on the Judiciary Committee, told CNN: “We should be able to get (the report) and have access to it in some way. “It’s based on the way we conduct all these nominations.”
