A leaked chart created by federal investigators shows a web of alleged Venmo payments made to various individuals by Donald Trump’s attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz—including some women who testified that they were hired for sex by the former Florida congressman.
The document, obtained by The New York Times and corroborated by a lawyer representing some of the women, purports to show thousands of dollars in payments between 2017 and 2020, the same period during which several people included in the chart allegedly testified to a congressional committee that Gaetz and friends hosted drug-fueled sex parties.
The chart does not divulge why the money was sent.
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The steady drip of revelations from the federal investigation into Gaetz, and a subsequent House Ethics Committee probe into the former congressman—who quit the chamber last week just hours after Trump nominated him—has complicated his chances of confirmation in the U.S. Senate.
Despite the salacious details it reportedly gathered over the course of its time looking into Gaetz, the Department of Justice ultimately closed its investigation without filing any charges against him.
Gaetz has denied all of the allegations, with a spokesperson telling Politico this week: “Merrick Garland’s DoJ cleared Matt Gaetz and didn’t charge him. Are you alleging Garland is part of a cover up?”
President-elect Donald Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung told Times that the chart from the investigation into Gaetz was never supposed to see the light of day. He asserted that the document was “classified” despite no markings indicating that it had been categorized as such, and added that the leak was an example of “the sort of politicized D.O.J. weaponization that Matt Gaetz will end.”
“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,” he said.
The document, titled “VENMO TRANSACTIONS BETWEEN ALL INDIVIDUALS AS OF 09/14/20,” is just the latest headline-grabbing detail to surface in recent days from the probe.
On the image, arrows are used to connect a flow of alleged payments to thumbnail photos of Gaetz and dozens of other women and men—with Gaetz’s former friend and convicted fraudster Joel Greenberg seemingly serving as an intermediary to several unnamed women.
The former local tax collector reportedly cooperated with a three-year federal sex trafficking investigation and the House Ethics Committee investigation into Gaetz, which effectively ended last week when Gaetz resigned from his role as a representative.
The revelations have also spurred growing calls for Trump to jettison his controversial attorney general pick—including some from his own party members.
There have also been growing calls for the House Ethics Committee to release their report on Gaetz.
In a Wednesday vote on whether to make the findings of the report public, Republicans on the committee voted to keep the details sealed and away from the Senators who will likely vote on whether to confirm Gaetz’s attorney general appointment, reported CNN.
The former Florida representative returned to Capitol Hill Wednesday to meet with skeptical senators in an attempt to bolster his embattled Cabinet bid. He had some help in the form of Vice President-elect JD Vance, who tagged along for some of the sit-downs.
“Senators have been giving me a lot of good advice,” Gaetz told reporters. “I’m looking forward to a hearing. Folks have been very supportive, they’ve been saying we’re going to get a fair process, so it’s a great day of momentum for the Trump-Vance Administration.”
