A notable new name has joined the chorus of calls for someone inside the House Ethics Committee to release a “highly damaging” report about its probe into Matt Gaetz, who is now Donald Trump’s attorney-general-in-waiting.
John Clune, a lawyer for the woman who has accused Gaetz of having an inappropriate relationship with her as a high schooler, called on lawmakers to “immediately” release their findings about Gaetz.
“Mr. Gaetz’s likely nomination as Attorney General is a perverse development in a truly dark series of events,” Clune said in a statement. “We would support the House Ethics Committee immediately releasing their report. She was a high school student and there were witnesses.”
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Complicating matters for the committee is that Gaetz, 42, has already resigned from Congress after Trump appointed him to be his attorney general. That means Gaetz is no longer a congressman, nullifying any jurisdiction they had held over him.
That hasn’t stopped Democrats from calling for the report’s release, however, and insiders have suggested they may soon get their wish.
The Miami Herald’s star journalist Julie K. Brown, who revealed the scale of the Jeffrey Epstein sex abuse scandal in 2018, leading to his arrest a year later, reported Thursday that sources confirmed Gaetz’ report is “highly damaging” and “could be leaked today.”
The details of the report remains unknown. Gaetz, however, has been marred by scandal since a sex trafficking investigation into him was opened by the Department of Justice in 2021. The feds ultimately decided to not charge Gaetz, but his buddy, Joel Greenberg, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 11 years behind bars.
The Daily Beast reported in 2021 on a confession letter that was penned by Greenberg in which he claimed that Gaetz had paid him to arrange sex with several women and a 17-year-old girl. The Beast also revealed private Venmo logs which showed that Gaetz sent money to Greenberg and used a nickname for the adolescent.
More recently, court docs emerged in September that alleged Gaetz was at a party in 2017 with a naked high school junior who was there to “engage in sexual activities” while drugs like cocaine and ecstasy were present.
Gaetz has remained steadfast in his denials of any wrongdoing and has claimed that the feds’ probe into him was part of an extortion plot.