House Ethics panel issues subpoena in sex probe
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., leaves the U.S. Capitol after the House voted on the Spending Reduction and Border Security Act, Sept. 29, 2023. The measure failed to pass.
Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Rep. Matt Gaetz said Thursday that he has learned the House Ethics Committee will subpoena him as it investigates whether the Florida Republican engaged in sexual misconduct with a minor or illicit drug use.
Gaetz, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, made the statement in an angry letter to the Ethics Committee that declared he will “no longer voluntarily participate” in the panel’s probe.
Gaetz said he understands that a subpoena has been “issued, but not served” — but did not say whether he would comply with the subpoena.
“I explicitly reserve all of my rights pursuant to House Rules and the U.S. Constitution,” he wrote in the letter, which he posted on social media platform X.
Gaetz said the committee asked on Sept. 4 whether he has “engaged in sexual activity with any individual under 18.”
“The answer to this question is unequivocally NO,” he wrote.
But his response to whether he has “illegally taken drugs” was less blunt.
“I have not used drugs which are illegal, absent some law allowing use in a jurisdiction of the United States,” he wrote.
“I have not used ‘illicit’ drugs, which I consider to be drugs unlawful for medical or over-the-counter use everywhere in the United States,” Gaetz added.
He called the ethics panel’s questions “uncomfortably nosey,” suggesting it had asked about “the lawful, consensual, sexual activities of adults” which “are not the business of Congress.”
“I have voluntarily produced tens of thousands of records and answered many of your relevant questions over several months,” Gaetz wrote.
“But asking about my sexual history as a single man with adult women is a bridge too far. I will no longer voluntarily participate in this regrettable abuse of the Committee.”
The controversial congressman called the letter his “final response” to the bipartisan panel, and decried the probe as a “political payback exercise, devoid of adequate due process, riddled with leaks, and now seeking deeply personal information that is no business of Congress.”
“I am being investigated and judged by my political opponents. This is Soviet,” Gaetz wrote to Ethics Chairman Michael Guest, R-Miss., and ranking Democrat Susan Wild of Pennsylvania in the letter.
An Ethics Committee spokesman declined to comment on the letter.
The committee in June said some of the allegations against Gaetz “merit continued review” and that it has “identified additional allegations.”
The panel said it is investigating whether Gaetz may have “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.”
But in the same statement in June, the committee said that it “will take no further action at this time on the allegations that he may have shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe or improper gratuity.”
Gaetz is one of the most visible members of the GOP’s far-right flank in Congress.
He helped lead an intraparty effort to oust former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2023, and he has kept a close alliance with Trump, the GOP presidential nominee.
In April, McCarthy claimed that the reason he is no longer speaker is that “one person” wanted him “to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old.”
“Now, did he do it or not? I don’t know,” McCarthy said of Gaetz. “But Ethics was looking at it. There’s other people in jail because of it. And he wanted me to influence it.”
Gaetz reportedly helped Trump prepare for his Sept. 10 presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
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In his letter Thursday, Gaetz alleged that a “Jailhouse Informant” had been told by Joel Greenberg, a former Florida tax official and former friend of Gaetz’s, that Greenberg “planned to lie about me having sexual contact with a minor to reduce his own prison sentence.”
Greenberg in 2021 pleaded guilty to charges including sex trafficking of a minor girl, in a case connected to a federal criminal probe of Gaetz.
Gaetz in his letter wrote that Greenberg told the informant that Greenberg’s victim “would be willing to adopt Greenberg’s lie in hopes of a future financial benefit.”
The Department of Justice in February 2023 decided not to pursue criminal charges against Gaetz.
Three months after that, the House Ethics Committee reauthorized its own investigation of Gaetz.
The congressman in the letter also accused the DOJ of leaking information about him to The New York Times, and claimed the “Biden Justice Department loathes me” because “I ask the most penetrating questions of their top officials.”
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