Matt Gaetz’s decision on Thursday to end his bid to be the nation’s next attorney general makes it even more unlikely that the American public will ever see what the House Ethics Committee uncovered about the former congressman’s underage sex scandal. But there’s one fact Gaetz would probably prefer everyone to ignore: much of the information is already public.
It just takes some digging.
According to a deposition with one of Gaetz’s closest friends and financial information referenced during that testimony, the former congressman sent thousands of dollars to young women. He attended sex parties where a 17-year-old was present, according to three different affidavits from women in attendance. And he blew off a subpoena investigating him for sex trafficking, resulting in the FBI seizing his cell phone.
All the while, Gaetz kept close tabs on the criminal probe through a back channel to witnesses as they testified to a grand jury, according to a deposition of the politician’s friend.
Publicly, Gaetz has denied all allegations. His office has repeatedly claimed that the DOJ dropping the investigation exonerates him. But in reality, investigators looked into potential obstruction of justice before they ultimately decided against bringing charges against Gaetz, the lobbyist friend said in court documents.
Even without the ethics report, many of the details of the alleged underage sex scandal are public in court documents that have received little attention.
At the heart of the matter is a firsthand account from a woman — identified in filings as A.B. — who testified in sealed court records that she had sex with Gaetz, then a 35-year-old congressman, on an air hockey table when she was 17 years old.
Lawyers and A.B. say this incident occurred at a July 15, 2017, party at the home of Gaetz’s friend, Florida lobbyist Chris Dorworth. Two women, whose testimonies remain sealed but are referenced in Dorworth’s public deposition, swore that Gaetz’s girlfriend at the time — identified as B.G. — also entertained guests by dancing naked with a hula hoop.
These details only came out because Dorworth sued witnesses — including A.B. — in a complex legal battle, claiming the witnesses were engaged in a coordinated lie to ruin his reputation. Although Dorworth dropped the lawsuit in September, he has since attempted to get several records wiped from the court record. One affidavit placed Gaetz at a second drug-fueled party at Dorworth’s home, where young women were paid to attend on July 22, 2017.
There’s cell phone video that shows one of those young women in the lobbyist’s home, referenced in Dorworth’s deposition. (Dorworth agreed under oath that the footage showed this woman, identified as K.M., in his home.)
That woman, whose testimony is again sealed but referenced repeatedly in Dorworth’s public deposition, testified that Gaetz gave her a tour of the house, went upstairs to a room with a tanning bed, and then had sex with her. Defense lawyer Fritz Scheller asked Dorworth during his deposition why Gaetz sent the woman $3,500, memorializing for the public record that the congressman made the payment.
Scheller also claimed during Dorworth’s deposition that Gaetz sent $1,938.45 to another woman, who has previously been reported to be a paid escort who maintained a no-show local government job through a mutual friend.
Neither Gaetz’s nor Dorworth’s attorney responded to a request for comment Thursday afternoon.
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Gaetz resigned from Congress last week upon receiving Trump’s nomination to lead the Justice Department, ducking the Ethics Committee report that members were supposed to vote on releasing two days later. And his decision on Thursday to drop his bid to become attorney general further complicates efforts to make the ethics report public.
More than 100 House Democrats signed a letter to the Ethics Committee stressing that “Representative Gaetz’s abrupt resignation should not circumvent the Senate’s responsibility to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities.” Ethics Chairman Michael Guest, a Mississippi Republican, claimed on Wednesday that the report is not done and cited “reservations about releasing any unfinished work product.”
But Gaetz bowing out of the Senate confirmation process likely removes the impetus to ever see any records about Gaetz. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee had sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday asking for the entire investigative file — including the FD-302 forms that special agents use to memorialize interviews. It’s unlikely the FBI will participate now that Gaetz has withdrawn his nomination.
So far, the American public has only received bits and pieces of what’s in the Ethics Committee’s report and the FBI case file. The New York Times late Wednesday reported that the committee was already informed that two women testified that Gaetz hired them for sex and paid nearly $10,000. ABC News reported earlier that two women told the committee Gaetz had paid them for sex. But many of the answers about the Gaetz sex scandal are contained in court documents related to Dorworth’s lawsuit.
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As lawyers continued to fight over the release of information from Dorworth’s suit, most key documents remain under seal, with attorneys describing affidavits that make lurid allegations without posting the testimony itself. For instance, attorneys cited affidavits from three eyewitnesses that say Gaetz attended the first drug-laced sex party along with the teenage girl.
However, a closer examination of openly available documents show various references to the sealed records.
For example, it is now clear that FBI special agents were specifically focused on figuring out what exactly happened at the party on July 15, 2017. Investigators questioned attendees and obtained security gate logs that monitored who entered the enclosed Heathrow community just north of Orlando.
Those records show that the 17-year-old and several others approached the lobbyist’s home that evening — and the logs are public because of the Dorworth lawsuit.
Dorworth remembered phoning the congressman immediately after the lobbyist met with the FBI, letting Gaetz know what investigators had gathered. But in the August deposition, the lobbyist said he didn’t know whether Gaetz was at the party, pointing to the guard gate records that don’t show Gaetz’s name.
Defense lawyers weren’t buying the story. They pointed to a combination of security records and phone logs that appear to show what really went on the day of the party. Gaetz called Dorworth at 5:28 p.m. while the lobbyist seemed to have been away from his home. Five minutes later, Dorworth called the Heathrow Master Association’s guard gate — a fact pattern that the defense lawyer intimated serves as proof that Gaetz was allowed into the enclosed neighborhood.
“Why would you think to call him if he wasn’t on the guard gate?” defense lawyer Katie Chomin asked Dorworth.
The teenage girl arrived at the guard gate 45 minutes later, according to security records included in a separate court filing.
One of Gaetz’s strongest allies in this investigation has always been his friend Dorworth, an influential lobbyist who considered himself close to the first Trump administration and is personally connected to Gov. Ron DeSantis via his former chief of staff.
Dorworth has maintained that he was never at the July 15 party, pointing to a photo taken from his cell phone showing that he was hanging out with a friend on a boat at 6:04 p.m. — about 20 minutes away on Lake Maitland. Defense lawyers grilled Dorworth on that topic, noting that AT&T phone records also show him traveling with his phone back toward his home that evening just as guests started arriving.
At the deposition, defense lawyer Fritz Wermuth surprised Dorworth with cell phone records that seemed to corroborate the lobbyist’s alibi and show he was indeed near the lake — but only at first. Records then show that he was texting close to his home nearly two hours later. His phone was pinging a tower half a mile from his house when the guard gate called him at 8:48 p.m.; security records show that the young woman known as K.M. entered the neighborhood two minutes later.
“You can’t remember what you were doing, can you?” Wermuth asked.
“I don’t — you’ve got to be kidding me, Fritz. I have … stated repeatedly that I was at Randy Morris’ house drinking and boating. I showed photos of it. There is affidavits of it,” Dorworth said.
Later on, Wermuth noted the contradiction in relying on some phone records but not others.
“The geo data was reliable that you were on Lake Maitland, right?” he asked.
“Right,” Dorworth said.
Later on, Chomin pushed back on Dorworth’s denials by noting that “it would be very weird for people to be at your house partying without you there.”
“I don’t know that there was a gathering at my house on July 15, 2017, ma’am,” Dorworth said.
“Yes, you do,” Chomin responded.
Pressured to explain how Gaetz, several friends and numerous young women ended up at his home, Dorworth offered this: “They were probably already there, or I might have left the side door open. Again, I don’t know.”
Dorworth and Gaetz are close and speak regularly. The lobbyist noted under oath during his deposition that the politician had recently been sharing details about trying to buy a new house; that Dorworth would let Gaetz borrow his Porsche; how Gaetz clued him in on medical treatments, once texting Dorworth that he was about to drop off his girlfriend at a bus stop and “get Botox”; and that at another time, Gaetz joked that he “didn’t use condoms.”
But that close relationship also meant that Gaetz confided in Dorworth when things went south.
At his deposition, the lobbyist testified that the congressman and his ex-girlfriend, B.G., had refused to play ball with the FBI. Dorworth testified hearing how federal agents caught up with Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend outside her job at Florida’s Department of Education and seized her phone.
When Gaetz wouldn’t respond to a federal subpoena, agents apparently took a similar approach with him.
“Matt has always made a hallmark of his career in Congress out of calling out law enforcement,” Dorworth testified. “So Matt, his view was this was purely political … so he refused to do it.”
That close relationship also meant that Gaetz and Dorworth kept in close contact as federal agents investigated allegations that the congressman paid for sex with a minor. Dorworth testified that Gaetz called in September 2020 to tell him that two women — Gaetz referred to them by their first names — had just spent time before a federal grand jury where both men’s names, pictures and driver’s licenses had been displayed.
Dorworth testified that, sometime later, his lawyer informed him that federal prosecutors had moved on from investigating sexual misconduct to exploring potential obstruction of justice.
But no criminal charges ever materialized. The feds dropped the investigation after nearly two years, without ever publicly explaining their decision. Now, Gaetz has dropped his bid to become attorney general, seemingly hoping the controversy will finally be put to rest.
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Jose Pagliery is a reporter at NOTUS.