Attorney for Matt Gaetz’s Alleged Teen Victim Calls for House to Release ‘Damning’ Ethics Report

Gaetz—who harassed a teen abortion activist in 2022—resigned from the House shortly after Trump nominated him to head the DOJ, a position that would give him significant power over abortion rights. 

By Kylie Cheung  |  November 14, 2024 | 2:38pm
Photo: Getty Images Politics
Attorney for Matt Gaetz’s Alleged Teen Victim Calls for House to Release ‘Damning’ Ethics Report

It’s been less than a day since Donald Trump tapped alleged sex trafficker and now-former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) to head his Department of Justice as attorney general. And the immediate, bipartisan fallout is about what you’d expect when a man who allegedly trafficked a 17-year-old girl is nominated to be the nation’s top law enforcement officer. On Thursday afternoon, ABC News reported that sources familiar with a House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations against Gaetz told the outlet that the alleged teen in question, now an adult, testified that she’d had sexual relations with Gaetz when she was 17; she met Gaetz through one of his associates in 2017. I’m sure some Congressional Republicans would take less offense to those allegations against Gaetz if it weren’t for… well, everything else about him, but alas. 

From 2021 to 2023, Gaetz was under investigation by the DOJ for allegedly trafficking a minor and bringing her to a party in 2017. But even though one of Gaetz’s close associates confessed to having sex with the teen at the party in question, and confessed that he’d paid Gaetz to bring her, the DOJ ultimately declined to charge Gaetz. Still, the Ethics Committee investigation into the same trafficking allegations remained ongoing—until Gaetz’s abrupt, quiet resignation from his House seat this week. The move was a pretty deliberate ploy to curtail the investigation, which was reportedly almost finished, as the Ethics Committee will no longer have jurisdiction over Gaetz. But that hasn’t stopped key voices from calling for the committee to release its report anyway.

On Thursday morning, an attorney for the unnamed young woman who Gaetz allegedly exploited as a minor responded to the news, calling for the Ethics Committee to make its findings about Gaetz public. “Mr. Gaetz’s likely nomination as Attorney General is a perverse development in a truly dark series of events. We would support the House Ethics Committee immediately releasing their report,” John Clune, wrote. “She was a high school student and there were witnesses.”

Hours earlier, Republican House Ethics Committee Chair Mike Guest told Punch Bowl that he no longer has the jurisdiction to release the report. “What happens in ethics is confidential,” he said. “We’re going to maintain that confidentiality.” We shouldn’t have to just rely on leaks about the investigation’s findings from unnamed sources. I would personally argue that if the potential next-attorney general trafficked a teenage girl, that information isn’t or at least shouldn’t be “confidential”—but that’s just me! 

While Republican senators like Lindsey Graham, Thom Tillis, and Josh Hawley all oppose releasing the Ethics Committee’s report, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, crucially said he “absolutely” wants the report released. As does Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Democrats’ ranking member on the committee: “We cannot allow this valuable information from a bipartisan investigation to be hidden from the American people,” he said in a statement. “Make no mistake: this information could be relevant to the question of Mr. Gaetz’s confirmation as the next Attorney General of the United States.” Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) also called for the committee to release its report on Gaetz on MSNBC on Thursday: “Look, if Rep. Matt Gaetz wants to serve as the highest law enforcement officer in the land, we need to vet him—that’s my job as senator.”

By Thursday afternoon, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told CBS News he knows of five to 10 Republican senators who will vote against confirming Gaetz. I’ll believe that when I see it, I guess!

The stakes for our next attorney general are incredibly high. The Justice Department could effectively halt doctors from mailing abortion pills, even in states where abortion remains legal.  This wouldn’t require creating or passing a new law—the DOJ would just need to enforce the Comstock Act of 1873.

I doubt there was a single good option on Trump’s shortlist for attorney general, but Gaetz is a uniquely vile choice. On top of his spotty, personal legal record, lest we forget, in 2022 he very publicly body-shamed and harassed a teenage abortion rights activist, suggesting she was too unattractive to ever need an abortion. (The activist, Olivia Julianna, raised tens of thousands for abortion funds off his comments.)

Meanwhile, on Trump’s end, Gaetz’s appointment seems like a poor political choice, unless he’s just trying to flex his power at this point and dare anyone to defy him. There are plenty of awful characters Trump could have selected who would enforce his vengeful, right-wing agenda and who aren’t loathed by Congressional Republicans. As you’ll recall, Gaetz, already a pretty unlikable personality, led the coup to remove Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker in 2023, earning the ire of large swaths of the caucus. McCarthy, himself, on Thursday, said, “Look, Gaetz won’t get confirmed. Everybody knows that.” Of course, if McCarthy had good political instincts, he probably would still be holding the Speaker’s gavel, so I’d take his appraisal with a grain of salt.

One way or another, whether you’re concerned about abortion rights or not having an alleged sex trafficker running the Department of Justice, these are dire times. Frankly, it’s always a dire time when you find yourself relying on Republican Congress members to do the slightly-less-terrible thing.

 
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