House Ethics Committee confirms what we already knew

[Scooter]

This was supposed to be your Attorney General, folks. This is how low your country has sunk.

Matt Gaetz paid thousands for drugs and sex, U.S. House panel finds

The House Ethics Committee on Monday accused Matt Gaetz of "regularly" paying for sex, including with a 17-year-old girl, and purchasing and using illicit drugs as a member of Congress.

The 37-page report by the bipartisan panel includes explicit details of sex-filled parties and vacations that Gaetz, now 42, took part in from 2017 to 2020 while representing Florida's western panhandle.

Congressional investigators concluded that Gaetz violated multiple state laws related to sexual misconduct while in office, though not federal sex trafficking laws. They also found that Gaetz "knowingly and willfully sought to impede and obstruct" the committee's work.

"The Committee determined there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress," the report states.

Ahead of the report's release Gaetz denied any wrongdoing and criticized the committee's process.

"Giving funds to someone you are dating — that they didn't ask for — and that isn't 'charged' for sex is now prostitution?!?" he posted on X, the website formerly known as Twitter. "There is a reason they did this to me in a Christmas Eve-Eve report and not in a courtroom of any kind where I could present evidence and challenge witnesses."

Lawmakers paint a damning portrait of Gaetz's conduct, using dozens of pages of exhibits, including text messages and financial records, travel receipts, checks and online payments, to document a party- and drug-fuelled lifestyle. The committee said it compiled the evidence after issuing 29 subpoenas for documents and testimony and contacting more than two dozen witnesses.

In addition to soliciting prostitution, the Ethics Committee report states that Gaetz "accepted gifts, including transportation and lodging in connection with a 2018 trip to the Bahamas, in excess of permissible amounts."

That same year, investigators say Gaetz arranged for his chief of staff to obtain a passport for a woman with whom he was sexually involved, falsely telling the State Department that she was his constituent.

In some of the text exchanges, Gaetz appears to be inviting various women to events, getaways or parties, and arranging airplane travel and lodging. At one point, he asks one woman if she has a "cute black dress" to wear. There are also discussions of shipping goods.

One of the exhibits is a text exchange that appears to be between two of the women concerned about their cash flow and payments. In another, a person asks Gaetz for help to pay an educational expense.

Mounting a last-ditch effort to halt the publication of the report, Gaetz filed a lawsuit Monday asking a court to intervene, citing what he called "untruthful and defamatory information" that would "significantly damage" his "standing and reputation in the community." Gaetz's complaint argues he's no longer under the committee's jurisdiction since he resigned from Congress.

"The committee's position that it may nonetheless publish potentially defamatory findings about a private citizen over whom it claims no jurisdiction represents an unprecedented expansion of congressional power that threatens fundamental constitutional rights and established procedural protections," Gaetz's lawyers wrote in their request for a temporary restraining order.

The often secretive, bipartisan panel has investigated claims against Gaetz since 2021. But its work became more urgent last month when Trump picked him shortly after Election Day as his first choice to be the nation's top law enforcement officer. Gaetz resigned from Congress that same day, putting him outside the purview of the Ethics Committee's jurisdiction.

But Democrats had pressed to make the report public even after Gaetz was no longer a member and had withdrawn as Trump's pick to lead the Justice Department. A vote on the House floor this month to force the report's release failed; all but one Republican voted against it.

The report brings to a close a nearly five-year investigation into Gaetz. Its release comes after at least one Republican joined all five Democrats on the panel earlier this month in a secret vote to release the report about their former colleague despite initial opposition from GOP lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, to publishing findings about a former member of Congress.

Earlier, CNN, which said it had obtained a copy of the report before its release, said that the panel investigated transactions Gaetz personally made, often using PayPal or Venmo, to more than a dozen women during his time in Congress.

The report found that Gaetz paid more than $90,000 US to 12 different women, payments the Ethics panel determined were likely in connection with sexual activity and drug use, reported CBS. which also said it obtained a copy of the report before its release.

The Ethics panel received testimony that Gaetz had sex twice with a 17-year-old girl, described in the report as "Victim A," at a party in 2017, CBS reported.

"Victim A recalled receiving $400 in cash from Representative Gaetz that evening, which she understood to be payment for sex," CBS quoted the report as saying. "Victim A said that she did not inform Representative Gaetz that she was under 18 at the time, nor did he ask her age."

The Ethics panel said there was not sufficient evidence that the three-term congressman violated the federal sex trafficking statute, CBS reported.

All of the women who testified said the sexual encounters with Gaetz were consensual, according to CBS.

However, one woman told the committee that the use of drugs at the parties and events they attended may have "impair[ed their] ability to really know what was going on or fully consent."

Another woman told the committee: "When I look back on certain moments, I feel violated."

The report found that Gaetz violated House rules and other standards of conduct banning prostitution, statutory rape and drug use, CBS reported.

It also found "substantial evidence" Gaetz engaged in illicit drug use, CBS reported. It accused him of accepting gifts of luxury travel in excess of permissible limits with a 2018 trip to the Bahamas, CBS added.

[BoSoxGal]

Americans don't trust the courts anymore, anyway. We might as well have a scumbag AG to top it all off with a cherry. Only 35% of Americans trust the US judicial system.

[Big RR]

The Guardian appears to have little familiarity with our court system saying that judges are appointed by the president, while many US courts are state courts that the president has little if nothing to do with. But saying people don't trust the federal court system wouldn't make a good headline as most Americans have little, if any, contact with the federal courts (a few may get federal jury duty, but otherwise very few are ever criminally charged or have civil suits tried in the federal courts. But they hear the blather over and over again about the unfairness of the federal courts and just lap it up.

Does the mistrust extend to the state courts? I would like to see that data.

As for courts being "antidemocratic", isn't that pretty much how they have been designed? Courts are designed to get around the mob mentality and mob justice--even elected judges are rarely part of campaigns, and life tenure reinforces this.

Certainly the court system in the US is not perfect and it can be improved, but until I see mob justice replacing the criminal court system, I will not agree that a majority o Americans do not support the courts. Personally, I have far more faith in the courts, state and federal, than in any executive--president or governor.

[Sue U]

Certainly the court system in the US is not perfect and it can be improved, but until I see mob justice replacing the criminal court system, I will not agree that a majority o Americans do not support the courts. Personally, I have far more faith in the courts, state and federal, than in any executive--president or governor.

You have already seen mob justice replacing the criminal court system because the head of the mob has been protected by his lackeys and appointees, escaping all consequences for his crimes. I had held out faith in the judicial system until the Supreme Court put the lie to our belief that "no one is above the law," even if that principle had been more practically honored in its breach. But now Marmalade Mussolini is back and if there's anything he's learned in the interim, it's that he is untouchable by the law.

[BoSoxGal]

It's true that polls show greater confidence in state judges than in the SCOTUS, but that's not likely to last in these times considering these factors: https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2016/06/22/ ... hey-serve/

Watching the Karen Read case unfold here in Massachusetts, and seeing more of the online phenomenon of true crime 'fans' and websleuths second guessing both law enforcement and the judiciary in cases like the Delphi murders, the Menendez brothers, even Scott Peterson . . . we are on a slippery slope, I think.

[Bicycle Bill]

Impeachment doesn't work any more.   The subject of the impeachment could die of old age before anything ever gets done.

Assassination, on the other hand?   Well, didn't another one of our former presidents (Thomas Jefferson) say, "The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants?"   Trump and his ilk think they're the patriots; I take the opposite viewpoint.   

And don't look at me like I'm some sort of whacko.   If you'd have been around in 1944 I'm certain you wouldn't have shed a tear if Valkyrie (the plot to assassinate Hitler) had been successful, or if some of the tons of bombs we dropped on Berlin had been able to penetrate the Führerbunker...  and that was in an entirely different country.   We're talking about preserving the good old U.S. of A. here, instead of letting it devolve into a super-sized version of North Korea.

-"BB"-

[Bicycle Bill]

-"BB"-

[Big RR]

Certainly the court system in the US is not perfect and it can be improved, but until I see mob justice replacing the criminal court system, I will not agree that a majority o Americans do not support the courts. Personally, I have far more faith in the courts, state and federal, than in any executive--president or governor.

You have already seen mob justice replacing the criminal court system because the head of the mob has been protected by his lackeys and appointees, escaping all consequences for his crimes. I had held out faith in the judicial system until the Supreme Court put the lie to our belief that "no one is above the law," even if that principle had been more practically honored in its breach. But now Marmalade Mussolini is back and if there's anything he's learned in the interim, it's that he is untouchable by the law.

Well Sue, I see your point, and I have lost some of my faith in the judiciary, but I am still not ready to violently storm the bastille because I still have some shred of hope. I will wait and see, but not forever. If the time comes, I will grab my torch and pitchfork as well.

[Sue U]

Well Sue, I see your point, and I have lost some of my faith in the judiciary, but I am still not ready to violently storm the bastille because I still have some shred of hope. I will wait and see, but not forever. If the time comes, I will grab my torch and pitchfork as well.

I am certainly realistic enough to know that in truth we are not all equal before the law, but I had always thought it was an aspirational goal in building a more perfect union and establishing justice under the constitution -- or at least one to which we would piously pay lip service. And while I recognize that the courts and especially SCOTUS are necessarily political institutions, it is disheartening, to say the least, to see them devolving to base political hackery.

An early mentor once told me, "Forget about the law, we are not in the law business; we are in the business of redistributing wealth, taking money from corporations and insurance companies and giving it to people who really need it." And maybe that's all law is -- just a tool for securing whatever measure of wealth and power we can grab. Maybe that's all it's ever been. Maybe that's what justice looks like in a late-stage capitalist society. Sure sucks, though.

[BoSoxGal]

This seems like a good place for this quote which came up in my internet wanderings today:

“It is only in folk tales, children’s stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them.”
~ Noam Chomsky

[Burning Petard]

I was a student for one year at Delaware Law School about fifty years ago. Jurisprudence was not a topic first year students were supposed to be concerned with, But one instructor did say the basis for the law system was to give individuals an alternative to killing each other.

I have seen no data to persuade me otherwise.

snailgate.

[Big RR]

BP--I agree with that; I think the law exists to provide people (or mae people believe that) there is some fair way to redress their complaints and grievances without resorting to their own form of violent justice. When people stop believing that, mob justice will reign. I am afraid that we may be approaching that tipping point.