The House Ethics Committee announced this week that they were ramping up their investigation into Matt Gaetz over alleged illicit drug use and payments for sexual favors from young women. And now new reports say that at least one witness has confirmed that a payment she received from Gaetz was specifically for sex. Other witnesses have said that they were paid by Gaetz to attend parties that featured sex and drugs. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses these new revelations.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
The House Ethics Committee confirmed this week that they are in fact ramping up their investigation into Matt Gaetz yet again. They have issued 25 subpoenas. They have talked to dozens of witnesses, and now people close to the committee have spoken to ABC News and said that one of the witnesses, a young woman, has confirmed that Matt Gaetz paid her for sex. Here is what ABC News is reporting. Investigators have interviewed at least half a dozen women who allegedly attended parties where the Florida Congressman was also present and who were paid by Joel Greenberg, Gaetz’s one time close friend. Greenberg was sentenced in 2022 to 11 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to multiple charges, blah, blah, blah. In the interviews which have previously not been reported, some witnesses have been shown Venmo payments they allegedly received from Gaetz and asked if those payments were for sexual activities, sources said.
Some of the witnesses have been subpoenaed by the committee, while others have agreed to cooperate, according to the sources. One woman who ABC News is not identifying, told the committee that a payment from Gaetz was for sex, while others have said they were paid to attend parties that Gaetz also attended, and that featured drugs and sex, multiple sources told ABC News. Now that all sounds pretty bad, right? But don’t worry folks, Matt Gaetz still says none of this is true, and in fact he, because the Ethics Committee came out on Tuesday and announced, yes, we’re moving forward with a lot of things. But Gaetz said on Monday that, you know, they’ve dropped a bunch of investigations into him. So now they’ve just kind of drummed up these new things, you know, total PR move, trying to stay ahead of the story. But it’s likely that Gaetz knew something big was about to break, and this is about as big as it can get, right?
When you have the receipts, which by the way the Committee does, they did subpoena Venmo itself and they got all the receipts. So they have a receipt and they have a witness that says, this receipt was for me to have sex with Matt Gaetz. I don’t know about you, but that seems pretty damning to me. On Tuesday, the House Ethics Committee provided an update on its investigation into Gaetz detailing in a new statement on Tuesday, that after speaking with over a dozen witnesses, issuing 25 subpoenas and reviewing thousands of documents, the bipartisan panel will continue to review allegations, including that the Florida Congressman engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, and that he quote, sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct. So Gaetz was partially right. These are some new avenues they’re going down, but they’re not trumped up charges. In fact, they did stop their investigation into some of the lesser things.
The committee also detailed that it would no longer pursue allegations that Gaetz 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. So they’re looking at it and they’re like, you know what, these things over here, these are smaller, right? And the sharing of the images of these women, um, it’s disgusting. It’s horrible what he’s doing to the women, but technically not illegal in that context. So it may be improper, but it’s not by definition illegal. So, yeah, okay, we’ll drop that. Did he take a bribe? Nah, it doesn’t look like he took a bribe, so we’re not gonna go there. But we got a woman who has a receipt that says, this receipt was for me to have sex with this man. Other women have receipts saying we were paid to go party with him at parties that featured lots of drugs and sex. Oh, and by the way, the committee says, we also think that you tried to interfere with this investigation, which of course is what Kevin McCarthy has said.
So there’s that. But here’s the thing. The DOJ, of course, in what was it, 2022, 2023, decided they were not gonna pursue charges against Matt Gaetz. Now, if this Ethics Committee comes out with a horrific report, absolutely just detailing every crime that they’re looking into, and if they can prove it all, the DOJ is gonna be left with no choice at that point. They will basically be shamed into bringing charges. Now, whether or not they put a top prosecutor on there, somebody that can actually handle it and get a conviction, that remains to be seen. But Matt Gaetz is not out of legal trouble. If anything, his legal problems today are far worse than they’ve ever been with this witness coming forward and making these allegations. So he is not out of the woods. In fact, again, I think he’s in it a little deeper than ever at this point, but that’s what we know so far.
