Matt Gaetz was at a drug-fueled party with an underage girl who was naked, witness claims

In a sworn statement, a witness claims that anti-LGBTQ+ Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) attended a 2017 party where illegal drugs and an underage girl were present.

ABC News reports that the House Ethics Committee obtained the written statement as part of its ongoing investigation into whether Gaetz used illegal drugs while he was a member of Congress. In the statement, which was not written specifically for the committee and is not primarily about Gaetz, according to ABC News, a woman claims to have attended a party in Florida during the summer of 2017 at which the congressman was also present. The unnamed woman claims that alcohol, cocaine, and MDMA were available at the party. She also claims to have seen the then-minor with whom Gaetz has been accused of having sex when she was 17 naked at the party. The woman’s statement does not address whether she had any knowledge of Gaetz’s alleged sexual abuse of the then-minor.

Related:

Anti-LGBTQ+ Rep. Matt Gaetz under second investigation for allegedly sex trafficking a minor

Gaetz’s former friend, a confessed child sex trafficker, is helping investigators with their inquiry.

A spokesperson for Gaetz told ABC News that the congressman did not recall attending the party and had not used illicit drugs since becoming a member of Congress.

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Gaetz was the subject of a years-long Justice Department investigation into whether he paid for the then 17-year-old girl to travel with him across state lines in violation of federal sex-trafficking laws, among other alleged crimes. Gaetz has denied all wrongdoing. In February 2023, the DOJ concluded its investigation without bringing charges against Gaetz, reportedly due to a lack of credibility of two key witnesses.

But last year, the House Ethics Committee reopened its probe into allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, and potential lobbying violations by Gaetz, which the committee had paused while the DOJ conducted its investigation. The committee’s investigative team has reportedly reached out to the woman with whom Gaetz allegedly had sex when she was a minor, and to Joel Greenberg, a former close friend of Gaetz, who pleaded guilty in May 2021 to having sex with an underage girl and introducing her to other adult men who also had sex with her while she was underage.

Last week, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) suggested that Gaetz’s successful move to oust him from the speakership last October was motivated by McCarthy’s failure to stop the House Ethics Committee’s investigation of Gaetz. Gaetz reportedly told a close friend that he launched a vote to kick McCarthy out as speaker for “individually… reviving the investigation,” according to The New Republic.

“I’ll give you the truth why I’m not speaker,” McCarthy told Georgetown University students. “It’s because one person, a member of Congress, wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old, an ethics complaint that started before I ever became speaker, and that’s illegal and I’m not going to get in the middle. Did he do it or not? I don’t know. But Ethics is looking at it… and he wanted me to influence it.”

Gaetz has consistently gotten a score of “0” on HRC’s Congressional Scorecard, showing his solid opposition to LGBTQ+ equality. But he has gone beyond voting against LGBTQ+ equal rights and has been an outspoken opponent of LGBTQ+ people.

He has referred to LGBTQ+ people as “degenerate” at least twice, saying that his school prayer bill will keep LGBTQ+ identities out of schools.  He has attacked the military for allowing transgender people to serve their country. He accused USAID, the federal agency that manages foreign aid and developmental assistance to other countries, of having a “perverse ideology” for supporting LGBTQ+ people. He also got the Air Force to shut down a drag event on a military base after he complained about it.