A Florida lawyer who represented two women in the House Ethics Committee investigation into former Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz said the women alleged Gaetz paid them for sex, according to multiple media reports.
Another woman said she witnessed Gaetz having sex with a seventeen-year-old, as reported by the Washington Post and ABC News, who interviewed Florida attorney Joel Leppard, who represented the two women.
Leppard has not yet provided a response to a request for comment by USATodayWorld News. Gaetz is the President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be the attorney general.
Since then, House Speaker Mike Johnson stated that the committee should not release the report on Gaetz, while some Republican senators claimed that they want to see it.
The Senate is expected to approve appointments of officials in Trump’s next administration. The Justice Department looked into Gaetz for sex-trafficking but did not charge him.
Gaetz has previously denied any wrong doing in connection with that probe. He resigned from Congress Wednesday, two days before the House report was due to be published.
A representative from Gaetz’s House office, Jacob Bliss, pointed USATodayWorld News to a statement from Trump transition spokesman Alex Pfeiffer, who called the allegations “meritless” in an effort to sabotage Trump’s incoming administration.
“The Biden Justice Department investigated Gaetz for years and never found any evidence of any wrongdoing,” Pfeiffer said. It is my belief that Matt Gaetz will be the next Attorney General. He’s the right man for the job and will end the weaponization of our justice system.
Leppard, the lawyer to the two women, discussed to ABC News that the client who testified that Gaetz engaged in sex with a minor stated that Gaetz ceased as soon as he realized the girl was a minor.
“Her understanding was that Matt Gaetz did not know that she was a minor, and that when he learned that she was a minor, that he broke off things and did not continue a sexual relationship until she turned 18,” Leppard said to ABC News.
