Two women are accusing former Florida Representative Matt Gaetz of paying them for sex.
Florida attorney Joel Leppard said Gaetz paid through Venmo both of his clients for sex. The two women testified before the House Ethics Committee as well as in the federal investigation. Gaetz, a Republican from Florida, was nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to become U.S. attorney general.
“The House was very clear about that and went through each. They essentially put the Venmo payments on the screen and asked about them. And my clients repeatedly testified, ‘What was this payment for?’ ‘That was for sex,'” Leppard said.
Newsweek was directed to text Leppard and sent a message. Newsweek also called Gaetz’s office in Washington, D.C. and left a message.
Leppard told POLITICO on Sunday that his clients had attended between five to 10 “sex parties” with the former Florida Representative between 2017 and 2018. Gaetz was already in Congress at the time.
Leppard also said one of his clients witnessed Gaetz having sex with another woman who was then 17 years old. They were at a house party in Florida.
“She testified [that] in July of 2017, at this house party, she was walking out to the pool area, and she looked to her right, and she saw Rep. Gaetz having sex with her friend, who was 17,” Leppard said.
A report from The Daily Beast identified two Venmo transactions Gaetz had in 2018 with Joe Greenberg, an accused sex trafficker, for a total of $900. Greenberg then sent the money to three teen girls in transactions labeled “tuition” and “school.”
Logan Circle Group, a public relations firm that responded on Gaetz’s behalf, told The Daily Beast that the “rumors, gossip and self-serving misstatements of others will be addressed in due course by my legal team.”
Greenberg is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence after pleading guilting in 2021 to multiple federal crimes, including sex trafficking a woman when she was a minor and introducing her to other adult men who had sex with her.
Leppard and others have called for the House Ethics Committee to release its reports.
“As the Senate considers former Rep. Gaetz’s nomination for attorney general, several questions demand answers,” Leppard said. “What if multiple credible witnesses provided evidence of behavior that would constitute serious criminal violations?”
Attorney John Clune, who represents the former minor at the center of the probe, also called for the release.
“Mr. Gaetz’s likely nomination as Attorney General is a perverse development in a truly dark series of events,” Colorado-based attorney John Clune posted to X, formerly Twitter. “We should support the House Ethics Committee immediately releasing their report. She was a high school student and there were witnesses.”
Politico reported that the committee was not planning to release the report.
“What happens in Ethics is confidential. We’re going to maintain that confidentiality,” House Ethics Chair Michael Guest, a Mississippi Republican, told reporters Thursday morning. He said he had “no further comment” about the release of the report.
On Wednesday, Guest told reporters that the probe ended when Gaetz resigned.
“Once the investigation is complete, the Ethics Committee will meet as a committee. We will then return our findings,” Guest said. “If Matt Gaetz is still a member of Congress, then that will occur. If Matt has resigned, then this ethics investigation, like many others in the past, will end again.”
On Friday, House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters he was “going to request that the ethics committee not release the report,” adding to the unlikelihood the investigation sees the light of day.
Gaetz has vehemently denied that he did anything improper and blames the accusations on a smear campaign. The Department of Justice (DOJ) last year told Gaetz that he would not face federal sex-trafficking charges.
The House Ethics Committee is now set to meet on Wednesday. It is still unclear if the report will be released, especially since Gaetz has resigned following Trump’s nomination.
“Ultimately, I hope it puts a lot of pressure on the panel to release the report,” Leppard told POLITICO. “My clients have already been through this several times and they really, really do not want to testify again, especially not on the floor of the Senate.”
“Matt Gaetz will be the next Attorney General,” Alex Pfeiffer, a spokesman for the Trump transition team, told Newsweek Monday. “He’s the right man for the job and will end the weaponization of our justice system. These are baseless allegations intended to derail the second Trump administration. The Biden Justice Department investigated Gaetz for years and cleared him of wrongdoing. The only people who went to prison over these allegations were those lying about Matt Gaetz.”
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