The Justice Department’s three-year investigation into Matt Gaetz uncovered a web of payments to women who testified they were paid for sex by the ex-Florida lawmaker.
Gaetz sent roughly $10,000 to at least two women who were involved in sex parties he attended between 2017 and 2020, according to the document obtained by The New York Times.
The 42-year-old Floridian—who on Thursday dropped out of the running as Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general—has faced two federal investigations in recent years related to sex trafficking allegations as well as claims that he had sex with an underage girl. The Justice Department’s investigation fizzled out in 2023, resulting in no formal charges against Gaetz (although this does not indicate his innocence, as Gaetz has claimed). Meanwhile, a House Ethics Committee probe into the controversial politico was crushed last week when Gaetz suddenly resigned from his House position following his nomination to lead the Justice Department.
Among the individuals who indirectly received payments from Gaetz was a 17-year-old girl, according to the document.
An attorney representing the two women told lawmakers that Gaetz issued payments using Venmo, while one of the women testified that she personally saw Gaetz having sex with a minor at a party in 2017.
In February, a woman involved in the House Ethics Committee investigation said that she received payments to attend multiple sex parties with people in Gaetz’s circle. While testifying under subpoena to U.S. attorneys investigating Gaetz in 2021, the unidentified woman handed over texts, photographs, and other evidence, according to her attorney.
The woman’s name appeared across several Venmo transactions, tallying up nearly $2,500 between March and July 2017 through Gaetz’s former friend Joel Greenberg, who was later convicted of sex trafficking an underage girl.
The woman’s decision to speak out and come forward was an arduous and taxing one, according to her attorney. In the spring of 2021, a Gaetz associate allegedly berated her over whether she had spoken to anyone investigating the Floridian—a tactic that she interpreted as a pressure campaign to keep her quiet. Gaetz has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
The accusations against Gaetz came to light during a DOJ investigation into Greenberg, a former tax collector for Seminole County, Florida. The initial probe also named Gaetz, who Greenberg claimed had paid him via Venmo in order to have sex with an underage girl in 2017.
Eight months after Greenberg warned Gaetz to “steer clear” of the girl, the lawmaker Venmo’d Greenberg $900 in back-to-back payments, per The Daily Beast, telling the taxman to “hit up” the girl on his behalf. At that point, she was five months past her 18th birthday, while Gaetz had just turned 36.
“This purposeful leaking of classified investigative materials is the sort of politicized D.O.J. weaponization that Matt Gaetz will end,” Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, told the Times when asked about the payment chart. “The Justice Department investigated Gaetz for years, failed to find a crime and are now leaking material with false information to smear the next attorney general.”
This story has been updated.
