What's in the House ethics report on Matt Goetz

The House Ethics Committee's report on Donald Trump ally Matt Goetz, released Monday, revealed new details about the former congressman's alleged conduct, at least one new indictment and information about the committee's investigation.

At least since 2017. until 2020 the committee concluded that the former Florida congressman regularly paid women to “participate in sexual activity,” had sex with a 17-year-old girl, used or possessed illegal drugs, accepted gifts outside House rules, and assisted a woman receives a passport, according to the report.

The 42-year-old was first elected as a Republican member of the US House of Representatives in 2016.

He resigned in November, days before the report was scheduled to be released and after Trump announced him as his pick for US attorney general. Gaetz withdrew from consideration a week later.

He denied the commission's findings and accused it of conducting an unfair investigation.

Here are four parts of the long-awaited report that stand out.

House investigators said Goetz paid more than $90,000 (£71,843) to women for sex and drugs but created a complex web of transactions that were difficult to trace, according to the report.

“The commission was unable to determine the full extent to which Rep. Getz's payments to women were compensation for engaging in sexual activity with him,” the report said.

He allegedly used his friend Joel Greenberg, who is currently serving 11 years in prison for crimes he committed with Goetz, as a frequent intermediary and logged into Greenberg's account on SeekingArrangement.com, which bills itself as a “luxury site for dating'. to communicate with young women.

Gaetz also paid the women directly, sometimes through platforms like Venmo, according to the report. But the commission said he often used another person's PayPal account or an account linked to an email address with a fake name.

He also concealed payments, the panel wrote. In one example, he gave a college student a check made out to “cash” with “tuition reimbursement” in the memo line. The woman said she got it after a group meeting that “could potentially be a form of coercion because I really needed the money.”

Goetz posted on social media that he gave money to women he was involved with as gifts, not payments. The commission found that two women, aged 27 and 25, did not consider their relationships to be transactional.

Another woman, believed to be his friend, invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when asked if she had been given money for sex or drugs, or to pay others.

The commission tried to prove Goetz often paid for sex through evidence such as a text message in which he allegedly refused a woman's request to send her money after he accused her of “dumping” him on evening. The woman then claimed she was “treated differently” from other women he paid for sex.

In another message, his then-girlfriend said he and Greenberg were “a little tight on their cash flow” and asked a group of women “could this be more than a week to evaluate clients.”

A few months later, according to the committee, she wrote: “By the way, Matt also mentioned that he was going to be a little generous because last time he was going to brag about the 'customer rating.'

As a congressman, Goetz earned $174,000 (£138,843) a year.

His net worth is greater: on his latest federal financial disclosure filed in August, he reported holding assets worth at least $575,000. His father, Don Gaetz, who co-founded hospice provider Vitas Healthcare, is worth about $35 million, Forbes reported.

The committee also said Gaetz bought illegal drugs or reimbursed people for them.

He gives examples of his alleged use of cocaine and ecstasy/MDMA, but focuses on what appears to be a heavy marijuana habit. He allegedly asked women to bring marijuana cartridges to meetings and events and created an email account with a fake name to buy marijuana.

The trip he took to the Bahamas “was paid for by an associate of Rep. Goetz with ties to the medical marijuana industry, who allegedly also paid for a female escort to accompany them,” according to the report.

One woman felt that the use of drugs and alcohol at parties had impaired her ability to “really know what was going on or fully agree”.

“Indeed, almost every woman interviewed by the committee could not recall details of at least one or more of the events they attended with Representative Goetz and attributed it to drug or alcohol use,” the report said .

His then-girlfriend, who was 21 when they met and “received tens of thousands of dollars” during their two-year relationship, was often involved in dating women and acting as a go-between, according to the report.

A woman who told the commission she was 17 when she had sex with Goetz twice at a party in 2017. – at least once in front of other people – while under the influence of ecstasy. The woman, who had just graduated from junior high school, then received $400 from him.

She also told the committee that she did not tell Goetz that she was a minor, and the committee found no evidence that the former congressman knew she was a minor.

The age of consent in Florida is 18, although a 16- or 17-year-old can legally consent to sexual conduct with a person between the ages of 16 and 23. Goetz turned 35 in 2017.

The Justice Department investigated an allegation that he had sex with a minor, but ultimately did not file any criminal charges against him.

In 2021 Greenberg pleaded guilty to sexually trafficking the girl. According to his plea agreement, Greenberg paid for sexual acts with the minor and introduced her to other older men who engaged in commercial sexual acts with her.

Goetz is also alleged to have ordered his chief of staff to expedite the passport application of a woman he slept with, who he said was a voter in his district. He also allegedly gave her $1,000.

Goetz violated House rules that prohibit the use of his position for special services, according to the committee, which wrote: “The woman was not a constituent of his and the case was not handled in the same manner as similar passport assistance cases.”

The commission devoted much of the report to detailing how Goetz allegedly obstructed its investigation, including failing to produce evidence it said would have “exonerated” him.

The report concluded that he “repeatedly attempted to divert, deter or mislead the Committee in order to prevent the disclosure of his actions”.

Goetz, who accused the commission of being “gun-gunned” against him and leaking information to the press, claimed the commission was working on behalf of former chairman Kevin McCarthy, according to the report. Last year, he helped lead efforts to remove then-Speaker McCarthy from his role.

While Goetz claimed to have “voluntarily created tens of thousands of records,” he provided the commission with “only a few hundred records, more than 90 percent of which were inappropriate or publicly available,” the report said.

One sore spot was a trip to the Bahamas, where the commission said he withheld information. In the end, it was concluded that he had broken the gift rules because the trip was too high in value.

The commission also cited the Justice Department's investigation into the allegations against Goetz as a reason for the delay.

Some witnesses asked the commission to use statements they had given the department, but she refused to share them because they did not press charges and because she said it could deter future witnesses in other cases from coming forward.

The report concludes with a one-page statement from ethics committee chairman Michael Guest “on behalf of the dissenting members of the committee,” who were not named.

Those members did not dispute the committee's findings, but they disagreed with releasing the report after Goetz resigned from the House, which had not happened since 2006, they wrote.

It “departs from long-standing commission practice, opens the commission to unwarranted criticism, and will be seen by some as an attempt to weaponize the commission's process.”