Matt Gaetz issues ‘final’ response to Ethics committee probe of underage sex claims

Matt Gaetz has published a lengthy letter he’d sent to the House Ethics Committee informing the panel’s lawmakers that he would no longer be complying with the Ethics investigation into allegations that he had slept with an underage girl.

The Florida congressman rehashed a number of familiar complaints in the letter, which accused the panel of pursuing the investigation for the purpose of humiliating him and damaging him politically after a Justice Department investigation ended without charges being filed.

But he went further than just denouncing the committee — Gaetz also would go on to write a Twitter thread on Thursday discussing the evidence in his case, and included several pieces of evidence he argued exonerated his name.

The tone of Gaetz’s letter was angry and defiant: “Your correspondence of September 4 asks whether I have engaged in sexual activity with any individual under 18. The answer to this question is unequivocally NO. You can apply this response to every version of this question, in every forum.” He also denied using “illicit” drugs.

Altogether, the thread and letter represent Gaetz’s latest salvo against the Ethics Committee, which clearly aims at repairing his image with both journalists and moderate voters.

The congressman made no mention of the “Deep State” or any overarching conspiracies against him or the former president — instead, he focused on two pieces of information he argued undermined the allegations against him. One was a grainy image of a text message, purportedly from his former friend and confidante Joel Greenberg, stating that he was arranging to pay for legal representation for someone — presumably the underaged girl Gaetz is accused of having sex with. No actual evidence of transferred funds is shown, nor is the identity of the unnamed witness.

In a second image shared by Gaetz, an unnamed “jailhouse informant” describes in an affidavit hearing a plot by Greenberg to smear Gaetz and possibly others in order to secure a sentence reduction deal with federal prosecutors. Greenberg, a former friend and political ally of Gaetz, also served as Tax Collector for Seminole County, Florida, before he was indicted on nearly three dozen federal charges. He eventually pleaded guilty to six, including sex trafficking a minor.

None of the images shared by Gaetz constitute the kind of hard evidence that would immediately exonerate him — as he has claimed. But they do raise questions about the charges that need to be answered, including how much they revolve around Greenberg’s accusations and whether the underage person whom Gaetz supposedly had sex with was financially supported by Greenberg.

The Ethics probe into Gaetz has made little public progress under Speaker Mike Johnson’s tenure as the highest-ranking House Republican, even as Gaetz contends that the investigation was triggered by allies of the former speaker, Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy’s political career did not survive to see the investigation completed; he left the House at the end of 2023 after an embarrassing ouster from the Speaker’s chair.

Gaetz, meanwhile, is widely speculated to be considering a run for governor of Florida after Ron DeSantis, who is term-limited, leaves office. He’s expected to face a competitive Republican primary for the nomination, including potentially against a Republican backed in part by McCarthy, who has funded primary challenges against a number of his former party members who backed his downfall last year.

McCarthy told The Independent at the Republican National Convention in July that the Ethics investigation would prevent Gaetz from winning that primary: “I don’t think he’ll ever be able to run for governor like he wants to.”