Takeaways from the Matt Gaetz Ethics Report

After a yearslong investigation, the House Ethics Committee released a 37-page report on Monday into former Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, and allegations that he engaged in an array of illegal and untoward conduct, including having sex with a 17-year-old girl.

Mr. Gaetz, who had been President-elect Donald J. Trump’s first choice to be attorney general before Mr. Gaetz withdrew from consideration, has repeatedly denied he did anything wrong.

Here are takeaways from the report.

The report says the evidence shows Mr. Gaetz engaged in a range of questionable conduct, some of it illegal.

The committee concluded that Mr. Gaetz regularly paid women to have sex with him for money from 2017 to 2020 and had sex with an underage girl in 2017, during his first term in the House, and that the girl was paid.

The report says that Mr. Gaetz used illegal drugs — including cocaine and Ecstasy — on multiple occasions between 2017 and 2019. It also says that he accepted gifts of transportation and lodging, in excess of dollar limits on what members of Congress are allowed to accept, as part of a trip he took to the Bahamas where he had sex with women whom he paid.

The report adds that he used his position to falsely claim to the State Department that a woman he had sex with was really a constituent who needed help obtaining a passport.

Mr. Gaetz also obstructed the committee’s investigation, the report said.

The report concluded that “there was substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress.”