After much back-and-forth, which the former congressman used to try to sow doubt and muddy the waters, the House Ethics Committee has released the full report of its investigation into Matt Gaetz, and it is not pretty, which is why it was so important for it to come out. Thank you to the Republicans on the panel who voted against the wishes of Speaker Mike Johnson to publish the damning facts.
The document lays out in more detail and with more substantiation what has long been suspected of him: that Gaetz allegedly paid women, including a then-underage girl, for sex, used drugs and misused his office, among other things.
The notion that this man could have been however briefly considered a candidate for United States attorney general is, to be blunt, an embarrassment to the Republican Party, the country and our current body politic.
It’s also an indictment on the Trump team’s vetting procedures. Gaetz reportedly convinced the president-elect to name him to the role on board his plane, and the team was blindsided by the details of the ethics investigation despite these allegations having circulated for a while. If they’re missing something that was essentially a matter of public record, what else are they missing about the rest of their nominees?
Gaetz claims that this is another salacious political sex scandal drummed up by the media and his political rivals. It’s not that; the most concerning allegations are not about the Floridian engaging in consensual relationships with other adults in extramarital affairs or unorthodox arrangements. They are about Gaetz reportedly paying a then-17-year-old for sex at a party, learning that she was a minor, and then paying her for sex again after she had turned 18.
For a political movement that has staked its ground so decisively around the idea of protecting children from groomers — now an all-encompassing slur for practically anyone whose manner of living they don’t like — this is about as hypocritical as you get. Beyond that, Gaetz allegedly used multiple unlawful drugs, including hard drugs like cocaine, utilized the powers of his office to benefit himself and personal connections and obstructed the investigation itself. For his now-former colleagues to lay all this out and also conclude that Gaetz also likely violated Florida state law, they had relatively bulletproof evidence.
This all makes it clear that Gaetz not only should not have been confirmed as the nation’s top law enforcement official, but probably should have been expelled from Congress. His House tenure was largely responsible for the chaos at the upper echelons of the GOP ranks that ultimately doomed former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and hamstrung most attempts to actually act on policy that could have benefited the public.
The rebellion Gaetz led was in large part responsible for Congress’ lack of compromise these past years, and it turns out now that the man who twisted the party’s agenda in the House was, in addition to a conspiracist and careerist and altogether unpleasant person, a likely sex offender who abused his power.
Now, he’s at least where he belongs: a third-rate talk show host on a low-rated cable channel peddling conspiracies. Good riddance, and let him serve as a warning about what can happen when voters choose form over function.