Congress

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

Published

1 year 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

Tom Cotton, the Senate’s foremost Iran hawk, is in a Trump-induced jam

Published

20 hours ago

June 20, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Tom Cotton made his name in Washington as an outspoken critic of a Democratic president’s deal to check Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Now, with a president of his own party angling toward a similarly structured agreement, the Arkansas Republican is so far using a softer voice.

Cotton, the No. 3 Senate Republican and Intelligence Committee chair, is not alone among GOP defense hawks in finding himself in an awkward position more than a decade after lambasting President Barack Obama’s Iran deal.

But the combination of his prior ferocity toward the Iranian regime and his current leadership responsibilities have put him into an especially tight spot as President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance sell their 14-point “memorandum of understanding” to skeptical Republicans.

Cotton moved toward critiquing that framework in a Fox News interview Thursday, crediting Trump for “making Iran weaker than it’s been in decades” while airing concerns that “certain aspects of this deal are a step in the wrong direction.”

“We need to make sure that we don’t squander the leverage that we’ve built” against Iran, he said.

That is a far cry from the rhetoric Cotton deployed as a freshman senator in 2015, when Obama was moving in concert with other global powers to force Iran to curb its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief and other economic favors.

Cotton led a brash effort to undermine the deal — most notably by organizing a public letter signed by 46 other GOP senators to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, then the supreme leader of Iran, warning that “anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement” that could be nixed by a future administration.

The letter enraged the Obama administration and congressional Democrats, but it was prescient.

After he was elected in 2016, Trump withdrew from the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, setting the stage for his second-term military campaign against Iran that he is now seeking to end by trading curbs on Iran’s nuclear program for sanctions relief and other economic favors.

If that was the only jam Cotton was facing from Trump this week, it would be plenty. But the discomfiting Iran situation has been compounded by the president’s recent moves to upend Cotton’s careful negotiations aimed at extending a key surveillance program for three years.

After Trump blew up that deal by appointing a political ally to a top intelligence position, Cotton moved quickly to fast-track a permanent replacement through his committee and rekindle the surveillance deal — only to watch Trump blow things up once again.

Majority Leader John Thune, like most Senate Republicans, had nothing but praise this week for the “great job” Cotton was doing amid the tumult over the expired spy law and the director of national intelligence drama.

“He’s a really strong chair on the committee. And he had it all teed up and ready to go,” Thune said in an interview. “Now it’s just … back to the drawing board.”

But Cotton’s moves amid the back-and-forth — particularly his decision to publicly announce a hearing would move forward Wednesday for DNI nominee Jay Clayton even after Trump publicly declared he was “cancelling” it — attracted attention on the right.

Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon voiced blistering criticism of Cotton, calling him “out of control” and suggesting he “should be turfed out” of his safe seat over trying to proceed with the hearing. Cotton is up for reelection and expected to win easily.

Cotton backtracked, postponing the hearing while noting that it was “regrettable” that Trump directed Clayton not to appear. The White House didn’t respond to questions about Cotton.

Thune defended Cotton, saying he was “operating within his rights and prerogatives” as chair in insisting, however briefly, that the hearing would go on.

Unlike most GOP senators, Cotton is unusually tight-lipped around the Capitol, enforcing a blanket “no comment” policy in the hallways this week as reporters tried several times to ask him about everything from the surveillance program to Clayton to Iran. His office did not respond to an interview request.

Cotton has plenty of supporters within the Senate Republican conference, where he is well-liked and won a contested race for the No. 3 leadership spot. And his quick rise through the party has generated speculation that he could one day become Senate GOP leader or run for president.

It’s not lost on Republicans that even the straight-talking 49-year-old, who was under consideration for a Trump Cabinet position, has found himself crosswise with the administration. That speaks to the larger issues the Senate GOP is facing as the president’s rash decisions complicate their carefully laid plans, they say.

“Senator Cotton is surely, surely a big fan and supporter of the president,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said. But, she added, “he’s got a committee to run.”

Cotton is also hardly alone among his GOP colleagues in voicing concerns about the memorandum of understanding signed by Iran and the United States.

Though there are now more senators with MAGA-aligned “America First” foreign policy instincts than a decade ago, Cotton is part of a still-prominent pack of national security hawks that include the likes of Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who recruited Cotton to run in 2014.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who chairs the Armed Services Committee, went even further than Cotton in a Thursday statement that said the agreement is “completely out of step with the president’s goals.” And Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of Cotton’s committee, predicted that the agreement would only be an “intermission” in Iran’s decadeslong conflict with the United States and Israel.

“They get $300 billion — it’s not going to be for constructive or useful purposes,” Cornyn said, a reference to a “reconstruction fund” included in the agreement.

Cotton aired concerns about multiple financial concessions included in the Trump-signed memorandum, including a new allowance for Iran to conduct oil sales that he estimated would provide as much as $6 billion a month

“That money … we know is not going to build new hospitals or day cares,” Cotton said Thursday on KTHV, a Little Rock TV station. “It’s going to go to replenish their drone stockpiles, their missiles, to support terrorists.”

Congress

Mamdani boosts congressional slate ahead of primary election

Published

2 days ago

June 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

NEW YORK — With just five days to go until the primary election in New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued a stark warning to members of Congress who believe “incumbency is a substitute for action”: Watch out.

“People often ask me what I think of the state of the Democratic Party,” Mamdani said to the crowd at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn as he boosted his endorsed congressional candidates. “This slate here today is our answer. The Democratic Party must change.”

The democratic socialist framed Tuesday’s election as much more than what that means for New York, though. In recounting how people also ask him about the 2028 presidential election, he put it bluntly: “It starts now. It starts on Tuesday.”

“For far too long, our party has seen its job as managing decline instead of delivering material change for working people,” Mamdani said. “That old way of thinking will lose on Tuesday. And frankly, it will lose in South Carolina and New Hampshire. It will fall short of 270 electoral votes, because the party of the past will not be what leads us into the future.”

Mamdani, joined by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, urged his supporters to show up for his endorsed candidates “the way you showed up for me.” They include former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who’s challenging two-term Rep. Dan Goldman; state Assemblymember Claire Valdez, who’s vying for retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat; and community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier, who’s trying to unseat five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Mamdani’s endorsed slate of legislative candidates were at the rally, too.

The rally featured standard stump speeches from the candidates, highlighting the need to support working class New Yorkers and immigrants. Speakers called out the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel group that has loomed over many of these primaries — despite no evident spending from its independent expenditure arm. Sanders also emphasized his call to ban super PACs, which have reshaped primaries across the city.

Taking place just hours after the massive ticker-tape parade celebrating the Knicks’ historic championship, there were also Knicks references galore.

“I hate to break it to you, but OG Anunoby is not here to save the day,” said Mamdani, who was wearing a Knicks jersey under his suit. “The only hands we can count on are ours.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks during a get out the vote rally ahead of New York's primary election on June 18, 2026, in Brooklyn.

Sanders, who is wildly popular in New York, previously endorsed Valdez and Lander. Both Valdez and Avila Chevalier are members of the Democratic Socialists of America and are backed by the city chapter in their bids. Sanders had not officially endorsed Avila Chevalier prior to the rally.

“Why are progressives and socialist candidates winning elections all across this country?” Sanders asked. “The answer in my view is not complicated. The working class of America understands that our current economic system is rigged, that it is designed to benefit the wealthy and the powerful.”

Polling has shown Lander with a lead over Goldman, and a tight race for Velázquez’s seat. Public polling is scarce in the Espaillat race, but recent internal surveys suggest Avila Chevalier is posing a real challenge to the incumbent. Mamdani endorsed her just weeks ago, much later than Lander and Valdez, but his engagement in the race has significantly elevated its profile.

“Six months ago, they told us this race was over before it started,” Avila Chevalier said at the rally. “They told us Adriano was untouchable, that he was an institution, that you don’t run against someone like him and win. That this district was his, and that we should wait our turn. And they said it with such confidence, like the outcome had already been written. Look around. Look at what we’ve built.”

Mamdani’s decision to get involved in congressional races is stress-testing how the new mayor navigates relations with powerful, well-respected party figures — many of whom he’s on the opposite side of.

Mamdani’s endorsement is expected to be a significant asset for his picks; he had dominant performances across these districts in last year’s mayoral primary. And that shine doesn’t seem to have dulled. Recent polling has shown that Mamdani has high approval ratings.

Goldman did not support Mamdani during last year’s mayoral primary or the general election, as Lander has often pointed out. Espaillat backed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the primary, but supported Mamdani in the general election. Valdez’s opponents, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and city Council Member Julie Won, both supported Mamdani in the primary.

The mayor has been active on the trail for his congressional candidates of choice in the closing stretch of the campaign. And he touted them all in an advertisement that ran during the first game of the Knicks’ finals run.

Still, Lander has tried to keep some distance. When asked at a recent press conference why he would appear in that ad with Avila Chevalier, who attended a pro-Palestinian rally the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in 2023 — the same rally Lander said he left the DSA over — he said it was an “opportunity to show New Yorkers that politics can be a team sport.” He also clarified that he has not endorsed candidates in any other congressional primaries.

Avila Chevalier told reporters that she went to that rally to “stand against” Israel engaging in “a response that is often disproportionate and creates a greater loss of life.” She added that she has “condemned Hamas” and does “not believe that celebrating the loss of anybody’s life is OK.”

Kings Theatre isn’t located in any of the districts these congressional hopefuls are trying to represent — though it neighbors the seats that Lander and Valdez have their eyes on.

It’s especially far from Espaillat’s district, which includes parts of upper Manhattan and the Bronx.

While handing out campaign literature to people walking out of the subway in Hamilton Heights, Blue Light News asked Espaillat if he had thoughts about Avila Chevalier appearing at the rally.

“I’m rallying right here in my district with my constituents — not in Brooklyn,” he replied.

Jason Beeferman contributed to this report.

Congress

Meta faces calls for Congress to probe scam ads targeting seniors

Published

2 days ago

June 18, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Retirement groups are calling on Congress to investigate Meta over a wave of social media scams targeting older Americans.

In a letter sent Thursday to House Homeland Security Committee Chair Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) and ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the groups alleged Meta has been slow to take down fraudulent ads, leaving seniors vulnerable to financial loss. The letter, shared exclusively with POLITICO, was signed by the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Postal Workers Union Retirees and the American Federation of Teachers, among others.

“Fraudulent Medicare ads have proliferated on Meta platforms and too many seniors are getting scammed while Meta profits,” said Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans. “We are calling on Congress to investigate how these scams are allowed to spread, what Meta knew about them, and why stronger protections are not in place. Seniors should not be left vulnerable while scammers and tech companies cash in.”

The letter’s demands follow a report published last month by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit advocacy group, which alleged that Meta has profited by leaving up fraudulent ads, many of which target Medicare recipients.

“Scammers are determined criminals who use increasingly sophisticated tactics to defraud people and evade detection,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. “We aggressively fight scams on and off our platforms because they’re not good for us or the people and businesses that rely on our services and for years we’ve been one of law enforcement’s strongest partners in the fight against this type of online crime — identifying criminals, disrupting their crimes and helping bring them to justice.”

Stone pointed to several examples of Meta’s efforts to combat scams on its platform, including a recent collaboration with U.S. and Thai law enforcement to disrupt online scams.

It’s not the first time Meta has faced scrutiny over the scams: Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) urged the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities Exchange Commission to open an investigation into the company in November after Reuters reported that Meta in internal documents projected 10 percent of its 2024 revenue would come from fraudulent ads. And in February, a group of bipartisan lawmakers pressed Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over its plans to prevent and combat fraud on its platforms.

Reps. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) and Lou Correa (D-Calif.) also introduced bipartisan legislation earlier this year to combat predatory scam ads.