Florida court fight gives insight into the House review of sex allegations against Matt Gaetz

(CNN) — Accounts of parties involving drugs, alcohol and young women that were allegedly attended by President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, are in the hands of House ethics investigators under pressure to release its findings on the former Florida congressman.

The evidence related to some of the salacious allegations against Gaetz surfaced in a civil lawsuit brought by one friend of the Florida Republican against another ex-Gaetz associate, now in prison.

Several witnesses who gave depositions in the civil case – including the woman whom Gaetz is accused of having sex with when she was a minor in 2017 – have testified to the House committee.

The House Ethics Committee probe into Gaetz, initially launched in 2021, ran into several obstacles, including a lack of access to records collected by a federal criminal investigation into Gaetz. However, the congressional investigation picked up steam once lawmakers were pointed in the direction of the civil lawsuit, which has played out in Orlando federal court over the last 18 months. Key evidence there remains under seal, but congressional investigators have obtained other non-public evidence in the case, sources told CNN.

What happens to the materials collected by the House ethics panel, including a draft report that was queued up for release before Gaetz resigned to pursue the attorney general post, is a major question for lawmakers as the Senate weighs whether to confirm the former congressman, one of the most contentious of several controversial picks by Trump for his Cabinet.

“If the report includes the information the committee received from the (civil) litigation, it would be highly damaging to the congressman,” a source familiar with the congressional investigation told CNN.

In addition to the House Ethics Committee investigation, Gaetz was separately investigated by the US Justice Department for alleged sex trafficking, obstruction of justice and other potential crimes, but prosecutors declined to bring any charges.

Gaetz has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, including ever having sex with a minor or paying for sex.

“These allegations are invented and would constitute false testimony to Congress,” Gaetz said in a statement to CNN. “This false smear following a three-year criminal investigation should be viewed with great skepticism.”

It’s not clear what information uncovered by ethics investigators made it into the final report. Notably, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will consider Gaetz’s nomination, have requested that the ethics panel hand over not just its report but the underlying materials as well. A lawyer for the formerly underage woman also has called for the report’s release.

However, some witnesses who participated in both the DOJ and Hill investigations are not eager to see the report be made public, people familiar with their thinking told CNN, as those witnesses are hoping to move on with their lives.

The House committee abandoned plans for a closed-door meeting Friday, when lawmakers were expected to consider the release of the report.

One Gaetz friend sues another

Gaetz got on the radar of Justice Department criminal investigators as part of a sprawling investigation into his former associate, Joel Greenberg, who, after initially facing 33 counts, pleaded guilty in 2021 to six federal charges, including sex trafficking of a child.

Greenberg, a former Seminole County tax collector, is serving an 11-year prison sentence and cooperated with federal investigators.

Ultimately, the federal case against Gaetz was closed last year after prosecutors recommended that no charges be brought against the congressman. However, the House Ethics Committee investigation into Gaetz – who took his hostile relationship with House leadership to the next level by leading last year’s overthrow of Kevin McCarthy as speaker – was revived after the DOJ concluded its case.

Meanwhile, Christopher Dorworth, a Gaetz friend, businessman and owner of the Florida house where the alleged 2017 sexual encounter with the underage girl occurred, sued Greenberg and members of his family, accusing them of conspiring to make several false claims about him because Dorworth refused to help Greenberg secure a pardon from Trump. Dorworth, a former Florida House member, also sued the underage victim.

The litigation resulted in an extensive discovery process, including depositions with key witnesses who also participated in the Justice Department probe but had never spoken publicly. The formerly underage woman and her friend who brought her to the party both testified in the case. Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend provided an affidavit.

The women’s depositions remain under seal. But a lengthy two-day deposition of Dorworth and other discovery materials obtained in the civil case are public. In the deposition, the attorneys questioning Dorworth recited portions of the deposition transcripts that are under seal and specifically describe the claims of the formerly underage woman. In one line of questioning, the attorneys recounted that she had testified having sex with Gaetz on an air hockey table at Dorworth’s house while Dorworth watched.

Dorworth vehemently denied the claim in the deposition, testifying he did not know the woman and saying he wasn’t even at his own house during the gathering in question.

The friend of the underage woman who brought her to the party testified that she too had sex with Gaetz at the same gathering, according to the description of her testimony in the Dorworth deposition.

When asked about the friend’s claim she had sex with Gaetz, Dorworth suggested in the deposition that both women made up their stories.

“The thing I didn’t really contemplate when this whole thing started was the idea that people would lie themselves into these stories because of Matt’s political celebrity,” Dorworth said. “I truly believe that is what happened.”

The friend additionally attested that at the party, she and the underage woman had access to “alcohol, cocaine, ecstasy also known as molly, and marijuana,” according to parts from her sealed affidavit that were quoted in another public document in the case.

Another woman, identified only as “LP” in court documents, filed an affidavit in the case alleging that she was present at a party a week later that summer with “alcohol, drugs, middle-aged men and young and attractive women,” and said that Gaetz was among the attendees.

Dorworth dropped the lawsuit in September, but his deposition and other records in the case became public as part of an ongoing fight over whether the individuals he sued were entitled to attorneys’ fees. The Miami Herald is also seeking to unseal more of the records in the case.

Attorneys also questioned Dorworth about a trip to the Bahamas that Gaetz took with the woman who brought the 17-year-old to the party and the formerly underage woman, who may have been 18 by the time of the trip.

In his deposition, Dorworth said he believed both women who traveled with Gaetz to the Bahamas were adults at the time of the trip.

Resignation brings House probe to a halt

The House Ethics Committee probe was started by House Democrats in 2021 but was put on hold while the Justice Department completed its criminal investigation.

When the committee eventually returned to its investigation, it appeared to struggle without access to Justice Department records, people with knowledge of the House investigation told CNN.

One witness who spoke with Hill investigators early last year described them to be “out of their depth” and said they asked questions that appeared to be “based off of news reports.”

Then, in mid-2024, the committee turned its attention to Dorworth’s civil litigation, which provided a trove of evidence. Congressional investigators got access to both the public and non-public records from the case, and also brought in witnesses for testimony, sources told CNN.

The House committee had plans to meet and release the report last week, but those plans were disrupted by Trump’s announcement he had selected Gaetz as his attorney general pick. With the news, Gaetz almost immediately submitted his resignation – a move that effectively forced the ethics probe to end and put in jeopardy the release of its report.

CNN’s Casey Gannon and Annie Grayer contributed to this report.

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