Matt Gaetz has said that he “never had sex” with a woman who accused him of paying her to have sex with him while she was 17 years old, homeless, and trying to save money to buy braces, according to a shocking new report.
Gaetz has vehemently denied all the claims made in the case.
“I never had sex with this person,” Gaetz said in a text message sent to The New York Times. “This person threatened me with a lawsuit if I didn’t pay her $2.3 million.
“She never sued me because her story is fiction.”
The Department of Justice previously investigated Gaetz over allegations of child sex trafficking, but he was never charged. However, the controversy surrounding him hindered his efforts to become attorney general after being nominated by Donald Trump late last year.
Now, a bombshell bipartisan report from the House Ethics Committee has found that there is “substantial evidence” that Gaetz “regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity” and that one of these transactions involved a “17-year-old girl” in 2017.
The girl’s lawyer, Laura B. Wolf, spoke to NYT after a federal judge unsealed documents related to the then-17-year-old’s alleged experience with Gaetz.
Wolf claimed that her client turned 17 in December 2016 and spent time living in a homeless shelter with one of her parents at the time.
Wolf told the NYT that her client worked at McDonald’s, earning minimum wage, to raise money, but eventually turned to a “sugar dating” website. She met a Florida tax collector named Joel Greenberg on that same site, according to the House report.
Greenberg was an ally and friend of Gaetz, according to the report. Greenberg later paid her $400 to meet him on his boat. Although they did not have sex that evening, Greenberg gave her ecstasy, which he told her to take for him at home, documents seen by the NYT suggest.
Eventually, Greenberg contacted her again and paid her for sex seven times before inviting her to a party at the home of Chris Dorworth, a former Republican member of the Florida state House of Representatives.
Gaetz attended the party, which took place on July 15, 2017, and, according to legal documents seen by the NYT, had sex with the 17-year-old twice that evening. One of the incidents was over a “pool table” or “air hockey table,” according to the documents.
Her testimony, which was included in the reports seen by the NYT, stated that she was paid $400 for having sex with Gaetz. The documents also alleged that she danced naked in front of Dorworth and swam naked in the property’s pool.
Wolf claimed that her client moved to Texas during the fall of 2017, where she used her minimum wage income and money made from meetings with men to pay for braces.
However, the alleged incident only came to light when Greenberg was investigated for allegedly mailing fake letters to a school where a political opponent worked, claiming that the opponent had sexual relations with a student. During the investigation into that claim, the Department of Justice learned about the 17-year-old and widened their investigation to Gaetz.
After pleading guilty to sex trafficking a minor and stalking a political opponent, Greenberg was jailed for 11 years.
Dorworth sued the 17-year-old after her lawyer sent him a letter asking whether they could reach a financial settlement, but eventually dropped his case against her.
The scandal crippled Gaetz’s bid to become attorney general, after he was nominated for the prestigious position by Donald Trump last year. Although concerns that he would be unable to garner enough Republican support amid the investigation forced him to withdraw, Gaetz eventually landed his own show on the far-right channel One America News Network.
The Independent has contacted Matt Gaetz, Fritz Scheller (Joel Greenberg’s lawyer), R. Alex Andrade (Chris Dorworth’s lawyer) and Laura B. Wolf for comment.
