The 10-member committee, which rarely discloses information about ongoing investigations, clarified the status of its review of Gaetz in the lengthy statement. Since initiating its investigation in April 2021, the panel wrote that it has “determined that certain of the allegations merit continued review” and that the committee has identified additional allegations that “merit review,” while at the same time dispensing with other charges.
The committee detailed the new avenues of investigation, including whether Gaetz “dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.” The committee added that it will “take no further action at the time on the 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.”
The update was released the morning after Gaetz took to X, the website formerly known as Twitter, to criticize the House Ethics Committee for “opening new frivolous investigations” into his activities, castigating the committee as “Soviet” and working at the behest of former speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who Gaetz last year helped oust from the speakership.
Gaetz has “categorically denied” the allegations before the panel, the committee wrote in the statement, before noting the “difficulty in obtaining relevant information” from the lawmaker. Still, investigators have “spoken with more than a dozen witnesses, issued 25 subpoenas, and reviewed thousands of pages of documents in this matter,” the committee added.
The update laid out a timeline of the investigation into Gaetz: The review was initiated by Ethics in April 2021 but was deferred after a request from the Justice Department. When federal prosecutors closed a long-running sex-trafficking investigation into Gaetz in February of 2023 without pressing charges, the committee resumed its investigation in May 2023. The Justice Department investigation, opened in the final months of the Trump administration with approval from then-Attorney General William P. Barr, focused on whether Gaetz had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old, paid for sex, and paid for women to travel across state lines to have sex. Gaetz repeatedly denied wrongdoing at the time.
In September 2022, career prosecutors recommended against charging Gaetz due to credibility issues with two central witnesses, The Washington Post reported at the time. One of the witnesses was Joel Greenberg, a former Gaetz friend and tax collector for Seminole County, Fla., who pleaded guilty to sex trafficking of a minor and other crimes as part of a cooperation deal in May 2021.
