Congress

Ethics report alleges Gaetz paid 17-year-old for sex

Published

2 years ago

December 23, 2024

A yearslong House Ethics Committee investigation into former Rep. Matt Gaetz found “substantial evidence” that the Florida Republican committed statutory rape, solicited prostitutes and used illegal drugs, according to a copy of the report obtained by Blue Light News.

The report’s most explosive allegation, which Gaetz has long denied, is that he had sex twice with a 17-year-old girl at a party in July 2017, when he was 35 and serving in the House. Ethics Committee investigators found that he later paid the girl — part of a trend laid out in the report of him paying women after sexual encounters.

Gaetz has repeatedly denied that he broke any laws. “These claims would be destroyed in court — which is why they were never made in any court against me,” he told Blue Light News Friday morning.

But the committee’s 37-page report, which it decided to release in a secret vote earlier this month, alleges several instances of illegal conduct by President-elect Donald Trump’s one-time pick to serve as attorney general. Gaetz withdrew from consideration as Trump’s AG last month as the potential public release of the investigation weighed on his chances of Senate confirmation.

“The Committee concluded there was substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress,” the ethics panel said in its report, adding that he “knowingly and willfully sought to impede and obstruct” the investigation.

The findings are poised to trigger shockwaves in Republican politics, in part because of Gaetz’s close ties to Trump. Gaetz, who resigned from Congress when Trump tapped him to lead the Justice Department, has been floated as a potential Florida governor candidate in 2026, and some Republicans believe he could still win an appointment in the second Trump administration. Gaetz on Sunday also publicly mulled running for Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) likely soon-to-be vacant seat. The report’s findings could make Gaetz’s political future difficult, though Trump has a history of dismissing accusations of criminal behavior against his allies.

The Ethics Committee investigation did not find “sufficient evidence”to show that Gaetz violated federal sex trafficking laws — an accusation that the Justice Department had also investigated. The DOJ did not charge Gaetz.

Gaetz has expressed regret that he once partied heavily and mistreated women, and has said he’s a different person now. In response to accusations that he slept with someone under 18, he has said“unequivocally no”.

In addition to allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use, the Ethics investigation found that Gaetz violated House rules by accepting excessive gifts, including transportation and lodging, in connection with a 2018 trip to the Bahamas. It also alleges that Gaetz violated another ethics rule in 2018 when he arranged for his top staffer to assist “a woman with whom he engaged in sexual activity in obtaining a passport, falsely indicating to the U.S. Department of State that she was a constituent.”

The Ethics Committee’s decision to release the report — a move that required a majority vote by a panel split evenly between Republicans and Democrats — is controversial within the House. Members of the committee and other lawmakers, including Speaker Mike Johnson, argued that the panel shouldn’t break with its regular practice of ending an inquiry after a member leaves the House. But a majority of panel members concluded it was still “in the public interest to release its findings.”

The release of the report means at least one Republican on the panel sided with Democrats in a secret vote. Gaetz has a number of enemies in the chamber, particularly after he spearheaded the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Gaetz blamed the former speaker for the Ethics probe that launched in April 2021, though the Floridian has denied that’s why he moved to boot McCarthy. And McCarthy, at the time, argued he had no control over the internal probe.

The statutory rape allegations

At a party in July 2017 at a Florida lobbyist’s home, Gaetz had sex twice with a 17 year-old, who had just completed her junior year of high school, according to the report. Florida’s age of consent is 18.

In the testimony of the now 24-year-old woman, referred to as “Victim A,” she said that she had sex with Gaetz at “least once in the presence of other party attendees” and that she received $400 in cash from Gaetz, which she understood as a payment for sex. The woman also testified that she had ingested ecstasy before the sexual encounter and said that Gaetz used cocaine that same night as well.

Ethics investigators received evidence that Gaetz was unaware that Victim A was underage “until more than a month after their first sexual encounters,” but noted that “statutory rape is a strict liability crime” — meaning it’s illegal whether he was aware of her age or not. Even after he learned that she was a minor, Gaetz kept in contact with her and then again “met up with her again for commercial sex” less than six months after she turned 18, the report alleges.

Investigators said they heard from the 17-year-old girl in question as well as “multiple individuals corroborating the allegation,” including some who have testified under oath. And it found that while Gaetz has denied wrongdoing, he has also “refused to answer specific questions relating to his interactions with Victim A.”

The panel also notes that while the statute of limitations to bring state law charges against Gaetz has passed, those same time limitations do not apply to the panel’s findings.

Prostitution accusations

Gaetz later boasted that he had slept with multiple women at the same party where he allegedly had sex with the 17-year-old girl, according to testimony the panel received from Joel Greenberg, one of Gaetz’s associates at the time. And it was not the only instance when he paid women after sexual encounters, according to the report.

Greenberg would meet younger women on SeekingArrangement.com, a site multiple women told the committee was used to connect with potential clients who would pay for companionship or sex. The women would then typically attend parties at Greenberg’s invitation and often engage in sex, getting compensated afterward.

“The Committee heard testimony from over half a dozen witnesses who attended parties, events, and trips with Representative Gaetz from 2017-2020. Nearly every young woman that the Committee interviewed confirmed that she was paid for sex by, or on behalf of, Representative Gaetz,” the report reads.

Some women also testified that they witnessed Gaetz take illicit drugs, including cocaine or ecstasy.

In one case, the report details a woman asking Gaetz for financial help paying her tuition when she was 21. Gaetz agreed and asked her to meet him at a hotel room so he could hand her a check, which she found “interesting” because he had normally used Venmo. When she arrived, Gaetz was there with Greenberg and a 20-year-old woman, who she had not expected to be there. She testified that there was an “expectation” of a “sexual encounter,” and the four of them had sex. Afterward, Gaetz handed her a $750 check with “tuition reimbursement” written on the memo line.

“The 21-year-old woman told the Committee she believed that the encounter ‘could potentially be a form of coercion because I really needed the money,’” the report reads.

The report states that all the women who testified described their sexual encounters with Gaetz as consensual, but the panel adds that there was “an exploitative power imbalance” at times. Investigators accused him of taking “advantage of the economic vulnerability of young women to lure them into sexual activity for which they received an average of a few hundred dollars after each encounter.” And the women said that Gaetz guilted them into sleeping with him or Greenberg at various times. One woman testified that she feels “violated” when she reflects on their encounter.

The committee also had documented evidence that Gaetz paid the women, including from “various peer-to-peer electronic payment services,” like Venmo, as well as checks and cash. It also found that Greenberg would sometimes pay the women for having sex with Gaetz and Gaetz would later reimburse him. The committee found Gaetz paid over $90,000 to 12 women between 2017 to 2020, not including his payments to Greenberg.

In one case, one of the women Greenberg met on SeekingArrangement.com and introduced to Gaetz in or around March 2017 later became Gaetz’s girlfriend. The report said they had an open relationship, and that she not only participated in sexual encounters with other women involved in sex-for-money arrangements, but she also acted “as an intermediary between Representative Gaetz and the women he paid for sex.”

This then-girlfriend invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in response to several questions, including the purpose of specific payments and whether Gaetz ever paid her money for sex. She was paid more than $60,000 dollars throughout their relationship, but the panel notes this does not include the $50,025 Gaetz paid her attorneys at the outset of the Justice Department’s investigation.

The committee noted that some of the payments to this one individual may be “legitimate in nature,” but based on assertion of her rights to other “evidence received from other sources, the Committee found substantial reason to believe that most of these payments were for such activity.”

The panel notes it was unable to interview every woman who received payments and were suspected of being part of the pay-for-sex arrangements. Some expressed fear of “retaliation or were unwilling to voluntarily relive their interactions with Representative Gaetz.”

The Bahamas Trip

A trip to the Bahamas, where Gaetz joined two other men who were reportedly linked to the medical marijuana industry and six women, was a focus of the Justice Department’s investigation into human trafficking. While the Ethics Committee report didn’t find evidence of those accusations, investigators found other issues with the trip.

The panel accused Gaetz of evading sharing documentation to prove he paid for his part of the lodging and a private flight for the September 2018 trip. Accepting any of that as a “gift” would violate House rules.

“Contrary to Representative Gaetz’s claims that he provided ‘substantial’ evidence to the Committee ‘demonstrating his innocence’ on this allegation, he provided no evidence showing how he paid for any travel costs other than his flight to the Bahamas, despite being given multiple opportunities to do so,” the report reads.

This was one of multiple cases where the committee said it found Gaetz “uncooperative.” The report says he provided “minimal documentation” in response to its record requests and blew off requests for both a voluntary interview and a subpoena for his testimony on July 11.

The committee concludes that Gaetz’s “attempts to mislead and deter the Committee from investigating him implicated federal criminal laws relating to false statements and obstruction of Congress. Even if Representative Gaetz’s obstructive conduct in this investigation did not rise to the level of a criminal violation, it was certainly inconsistent with the requirement that Members act in a manner that reflects creditably upon the House.”

Blaming the Justice Department for delays

The panel noted its report was delayed because Justice Department attorneys asked them to defer to their criminal probe, as is standard practice. After prosecutors concluded their probe with no charges, the Ethics Committee said they then failed to cooperate with any information requests.

“DOJ’s initial deferral request and subsequent lack of cooperation with the Committee’s review caused significant delays in the investigation; those delays were compounded by Representative Gaetz’s obstructive efforts,” the report reads.

The panel spends multiple pages of the report detailing its efforts to get the DOJ to turn over information. But despite multiple requests and even a subpoena seeking what the committee described as “particularized demands” — including “any exculpatory evidence” — they say prosecutors kept citing a non-legal basis that it does not release “non-public information about law enforcement investigations that do not result in charges.”

The panel typically doesn’t release its findings after a member leaves the House, as it notes in the report. But leaning on past precedent, the panel’s report said it “determined that it was in the public interest to release its findings even after a Member’s resignation from Congress,” while noting it did “not do so lightly.”

Congress

Republicans doubt their big lame-duck ambitions pan out

Published

2 hours ago

October 13, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Republicans have had to defer many of their legislative dreams, hoping the post-election release of political pressure could set up a productive “lame duck” session before a new Congress is seated.

Fat chance, many GOP lawmakers now say.

Beyond the uncertainties surrounding the midterms and a potential transition of power on Capitol Hill, members will return to Washington facing a considerable list of must-pass bipartisan bills but also potentially messy internal leadership fights, a foul national mood and a mere 24 legislative days to get anything done.

One thing on Republicans’ minds is whether some of their members even come back to vote.

“The question becomes: Who shows up for work after the elections?” Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) said in an interview. “Attendance is an issue right now.”

There are some items, Scott added, that “ultimately … have to get done.” Those include an extension of government funding past Dec. 11 and the annual Pentagon policy bill. Major pieces of legislation to reauthorize farm, transportation and surveillance programs are also on deck. All are loaded with potential partisan flashpoints, however, and won’t be legislative chip shots.

Then there are pending bipartisan bills overhauling energy permitting and the college sports industry that many members are itching to get done this year. But many lawmakers fear those could easily get left behind — especially if Democrats can win control of either chamber and seek greater influence on the final products.

“What do you think?” an exasperated Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said about the prospect for bipartisan accomplishments in the lame duck. “I mean, why? If you think about it, if Democrats win the House, why would they?”

Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), who like Tillis is leaving Congress at the end of the year, echoed the belief that Democrats would “want to put their fingerprints more on things before they pass” in a majority-flips scenario.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer suggested as much in a recent interview: “The lame duck will be quite different if we win the Senate,” he said. “Same thing if they win the House, and same thing if we win both or neither.”

Then there are partisan GOP priorities that some Republicans are hoping to ram through in the final weeks of the year — especially if the party’s governing trifecta is about to end — such as enacting hundreds of millions of dollars in new defense funding as well as new voting restrictions.

While GOP leaders are leaving the door open to attempting to pass another bill through the party-line reconciliation process, there are no signs they are closer to having the necessary votes than they were this summer.

While some Republicans believe that losing a chamber would jump-start that process, others privately believe the exact opposite would happen, according to three GOP aides granted anonymity to speak candidly. There will be little incentive for lawmakers who just lost their seats — “free-range chickens,” some call them — to grind out a final legislative win, if they come back at all.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune last month admitted he is facing mathematical realities that make passing another reconciliation bill “difficult” even in a lame-duck session.

That likely spells doom for another GOP wish being bandied about for the post-midterms session: clearing a debt-limit increase through the end of President Donald Trump’s term. Thune has acknowledged that as a possibility multiple times since July, but several GOP senators are skeptical.

“I don’t like that idea,” said retiring Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), who added she had to “hold my nose” in voting for the last debt-ceiling lift.

But other GOP leaders are professing more optimism about the post-midterm environment to overcome some long-standing roadblocks.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise in an interview called it “an opportunity for everybody to focus on getting policy done because the election will be over.”

“I hope we get back to that, because it needs to happen,” he said.

But each piece of legislation still in limbo is riddled with thorny policy disputes. Senate Democrats blocked the defense bill amid a standoff over the Iran war and have objected to giving Trump back some surveillance powers. The farm bill, meanwhile, is mired in a fight over food assistance.

Thune has teed up an initial vote on the bipartisan permitting deal, but Democrats continue to doubt whether Trump will live up to GOP negotiators’ clean energy commitments — and they could push for more concessions if they prevail in the midterms.

Even the must-do government funding bill is a potential minefield, with lawmakers widely expecting a punt until deeper into the holidays or even next year.

Democrats are fuming over the Trump administration’s recent decision to block roughly $1 billion in congressionally approved funding, which could complicate the dealmaking ahead of the deadline. That could make passage of the 12 annual spending bills, or a combined full-year “omnibus” package, impossible.

“I just don’t think we’ll get them done by the 11th,” Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho, a senior GOP appropriator, said about the full-year bills. He predicted another short-term punt.

Beyond the policy disputes, there’s a host of other distractions leaders of both parties will be dealing with once they return to session Nov. 9.

Speaker Mike Johnson will immediately have to deal with a House vote on impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth forced by outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). With the Iran war weighing heavily on voters’ views of the GOP, some Republicans with an eye on the next election could decide to break ranks.

And though the elections will be over outside the Capitol, internal politicking could continue for weeks in both chambers.

A Democratic flip of the House could spark a potentially chaotic cascade of GOP leadership elections, especially with Johnson giving mixed signals about his intentions in that scenario. He broached the possibility he might not remain atop his conference in a Fox News interview last week, then said in a CBS News interview published Monday that he expected “my colleagues would ask me to continue leading this conference” even after a loss.

Thune says he is running again for GOP leader regardless of the election outcome, and no other senator has signaled they will challenge him. That hasn’t stopped some conservatives, in and out of the chamber, from questioning whether Trump will blame him if the majority is lost.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said the lame duck to-do list could ultimately come down to vibes.

“I know what they would like us to do and all that,” Kennedy said. “But you have no idea what the mood is going to be.”

Congress

Trump announces Katie Bailey as new chief of White House-Hill relations

Published

2 days ago

October 11, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump announced the next chief for the White House’s Capitol Hill strategy on Saturday night, picking Katie Bailey, a former Republican Hill staffer.

Bailey will replace James Braid in the role of director of the Office of Legislative Affairs, which oversees nominations and confirmations of Cabinet roles, relationships on Capitol Hill and the White House’s legislative priorities. Braid left the job in September.

Bailey has served as deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs since the beginning of the summer. She formerly worked for Republican Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana and former Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, and served in roles on multiple committees.

Trump commended Bailey for assisting with the confirmations of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, saying she has “already delivered strong results.”

“After previously working on Capitol Hill, Katie understands how the Executive and Legislative Branches of Government can most effectively work together to achieve Great Success for the American People,” the president wrote in a social media post Saturday night.

Bailey takes over the role ahead of the midterm elections, which could alter the power dynamics in Washington substantially if Democrats seize control of either chamber of Congress. The result, which the White House has begun preparing for, could include congressional subpoenas, depositions and investigations, as happened during the latter half of Trump’s first term in office, when Democrats flipped the House.

Trump’s approval continues to sag amid soaring gas and diesel prices driven by the war with Iran, leaving Democrats bullish that the map will continue to grow for them.

Congress

Trump boosts a New York ally in a tough race

Published

3 days ago

October 10, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

SYRACUSE, New York — President Donald Trump came to New York on Friday to help a Republican win an uphill race for governor. But his visit was also a reminder of the complicated role he plays in his party’s fight to keep control of Congress.

Trump rallied alongside GOP gubernatorial nominee Bruce Blakeman, calling on New Yorkers to fire Gov. Kathy Hochul and, referring to the state attorney general, “her totally corrupt sidekick, Letitia ‘Peekaboo’ James.”

“Your city and state are dirty, filthy places, and everybody wants to leave,” he told some 5,000 attendees at a convention center in downtown Syracuse — which, he noted, was “a short distance from the beautiful shores of Lake America.”

“You gotta get your act together, and I tell you what, Bruce Blakeman will get your act together,” Trump said.

For Republicans, the president’s appearance underscored a political dilemma that extends beyond New York: Even as Trump increasingly appears to be a drag on their ticket, they need his loyal supporters to energize their base. While voters have soured on the president’s handling of the economy and costs, he remains a potent force in turning out MAGA voters — even in an otherwise Democratic-dominated state.

“The targeting of where the president goes is not a random exercise,” Marist University pollster Lee Miringoff said. “They’re looking to stir the base without stirring the opposition. They’re picking and choosing, that’s not uncommon. For him to come to New York to help the turnout upstate is a positive for the Republicans and his base.”

Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, hasn’t distanced himself from the president — nor have most of the top officials in New York’s GOP. Nearly every Republican running a competitive congressional race in this half of the state came to Friday’s rally, eager to make their presence known.

“I’m always happy to be with the president,” said Anthony Constantino, who’s running in a nearby red district that’s inched into toss-up territory. “He’s the leader of the free world, and I’m excited to have a great relation with him.”

Some GOP operatives, however, have quietly grumbled that their candidates need to start creating some distance from the president. Republicans from other parts of the state like Rep. Mike Lawler decided that campaigning in their districts was more valuable than trekking to be seen with Trump — as did several down-ballot candidates in Central New York. Democrats, notably, have been just as eager to highlight the visit.

“This is supposed to be a swing district. And the feedback I get is that the president is very unpopular,” said Democratic Rep. John Mannion, who represents Syracuse and the surrounding Central New York area. “He still certainly will have his core base of supporters, but I do think he’s lost support here compared to what he had around the 2024 election.”

Blakeman, for his part, isn’t worried about Trump’s drop in popularity.

“Kathy Hochul should be worried about her drop in popularity,” he said before taking the stage in Syracuse. “She’s the most unpopular governor in the history of the state of New York.”

Trump’s visit came against the backdrop of a darkening political environment for New York Republicans.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement shot a man in Manhattan on Thursday afternoon, stirring fresh condemnation of Trump’s aggressive deportation policies. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who has a surprisingly warm relationship with the president, called on him to cease all ICE activity in the five boroughs. Hochul stressed that the shooting took place with a five-year-old child present and demanded that federal authorities “provide answers.”

Immigration is one of several areas where Blakeman has hewed close to the Trump wing of the party throughout his campaign.

“I’m outraged with Kathy Hochul for taking sides with somebody who was a convicted felon, someone who was an alleged drug dealer, a gang member,” he said Friday about the shooting in Manhattan.

While Trump’s speech repeatedly careened back to the rhetoric one could expect from any of his rallies — boasts about the stock market, complaints about ‘Dumocrats’ — he did manage to seamlessly blend almost all of Blakeman’s oft-used talking points into his stump speech.

“Since Hochul took office, she’s raised your utility rates 48 times, and energy prices in New York have skyrocketed 100 percent,” Trump said. “If Bruce Blakeman gets in, he will cut your electric bills by 70, 80, 90 percent.”

The climate outside of deep blue New York City is also turning increasingly hostile to the GOP. Constantino, who’s running to succeed Rep. Elise Stefanik in upstate New York, trails his Democratic foe Blake Gendebien by 4 points, a Siena Research Institute survey released Friday morning found. A Blue Light News poll showed that nationally one in four Trump voters believe Republican candidates should break from the president in order to win in November.

The wisdom of appearing with Trump has been debated by Republicans throughout the country at a time when gas prices are high and a foreign war drags on. And New York Democrats aren’t viewing the presidential visit as a concern.

Much of Hochul’s messaging this year has focused on making sure New Yorkers know Blakeman and Trump are friends. Her most-aired TV commercial features a puppeteer saying one Republican would do the other’s bidding.

“Puppets are my life. You tell them what to say, they say it,” the narrator says. “But that’s not what you want in a governor.”

Earlier in the day during an MSNOW interview, Hochul dismissed the rally.

“It’s obviously a very political event,” she said. “It seems like a last-ditch effort to breathe some life into a campaign that’s on life support.”

Despite his low approval ratings with voters, Trump’s visit stands to light up a Republican base that Blakeman will need to turn out next month to help him defeat Hochul.

Polling has shown the governor leading the GOP nominee by as much as 18 points in this deep blue state. Yet some Trump supporters maintain the president can help generate much-needed enthusiasm for Blakeman, especially in areas of upstate New York where the Long Island native is not well known.

“We actually have the ability to win these elections, but I just don’t see the enthusiasm out there,” Conservative Party Chair Gerard Kassar said. “Hochul has won the day as far as being a terrible governor, but now we’ve got to get our people out to vote.”

Winning is still a tall order for Blakeman — especially in a tough national political environment where polls show GOP candidates in red states like Texas, Ohio and Kansas struggling against Democratic challengers.

Republicans have not won statewide in New York since George Pataki secured a third term in 2002. Since then, the GOP has lost all levers of statewide power, and Trump’s tariffs as well as his decision to launch a war in Iran have not helped him fulfill his campaign pledge of addressing voters’ cost concerns.

The president’s political woes aren’t going unnoticed.

Privately, Republican operatives grumbled that the president’s visit put swing seat candidates in an uncomfortable spot.

“There’s a lot of commiserating between folks within the party structure — why is this happening? Why is he doing this?” said one Republican operative who was granted anonymity to freely discuss the dynamic. “Then you’ve got the blind loyalists who say, ‘Yay Trump’s coming’ — people who are too politically dumb to understand the ramifications of it.”

Yet the head of the Republican party kept his message very much in line with Hochul’s.

“Please pretend I’m on the ballot,” Trump told Central New Yorkers.