Donald Trump’s former top pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, allegedly paid a vulnerable 17-year-old girl $400 to have sex with him on two occasions, newly unsealed court records show.
Gaetz withdrew from consideration for the position amid a House Ethics Committee investigation last year and resigned from the House in November.
Highlights
- Matt Gaetz allegedly paid a vulnerable 17-year-old girl $400 for sex twice at a 2017 party, per unsealed court records.
- The girl was homeless, working at McDonald's, and used a sugar dating site listing her age as 18 before meeting Gaetz.
- House Ethics Committee found Gaetz likely violated Florida statutory rape laws but did not breach federal sex trafficking statutes.
While the committee released findings in December concluding “Gaetz engaged in sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl,” the girl’s circumstances have now been revealed for the first time.
Matt Gaetz allegedly paid a vulnerable 17-year-old girl $400 to have sex with him at a party in 2017
Image credits: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
According to The New York Times, the girl was living in and out of a homeless shelter and working at McDonald’s to save up for braces when she first met Gaetz in 2017.
The House Committee found last year that Gaetz had sex with the girl, which he denies, and that he regularly paid women for sex between 2017 and 2020, totaling tens of thousands of dollars in payments.
The report said there was substantial evidence he violated Florida’s statutory rape laws, but did not find that he violated the federal sex trafficking statute.
It further concluded that Gaetz used or possessed illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on multiple occasions and sought to impede the investigation into him.
Gaetz was also investigated for child sex trafficking by the Department of Justice (DOJ), but he was never charged.
Image credits: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
The DOJ investigation was part of an ongoing inquiry involving former Florida County tax collector Joel Greenberg, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2022 for sex crimes.
Last month, a Florida federal judge agreed to unseal records from a connected civil lawsuit after the McClatchy media network pushed for their release.
Those files offered details about the girl’s circumstances, noting she met Gaetz when she was “a then-homeless 17-year-old high schooler.”
The girl had signed up for a “sugar dating” website that primarily connected older men and younger women seeking “mutually beneficial relationship” and said on the site she was 18.
The girl’s lawyer, Laura B. Wolf, told NYT, “The vulnerable circumstances most crime victims face are rarely known to the public.
Image credits: Alex Wong/Getty Images
“Although my client’s circumstances were revealed outside of her control, I hope it helps the public to see a fuller and more human picture of her than the press has reported on to date.”
She added, “Power imbalances can be age, but they can also be financial. My client had little economic security, which allowed for financial leverage over her.”
In response to questions from the NYT, Gaetz said, “I never had sex with this person.”
“This person threatened me with a lawsuit if I didn’t pay her $2.3 million,” he added. “She never sued me because her story is fiction.”
Wolf said the girl’s involvement with Gaetz began in her junior year of high school after she turned 17 in December 2016.
With her parents divorced, one of them was struggling financially and living in a homeless shelter, so when the girl and her siblings were with that parent, they also lived in the shelter.
Joel Greenberg was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2022 for sex crimes
She had a job at McDonald’s to bring in some extra cash, but eventually searched for additional ways to earn money, and that led her to the sugar dating website.
There she encountered Joel Greenberg in April 2017, and she went on to meet him on his boat, as per legal documents, where they did not have sex, but he paid her $400.
Greenberg reportedly gave the girl ecstasy and told her to take it at home, then, at a later date, allegedly met up with her in a hotel and paid $400 for sex.
According to court documents, Greenberg paid her for sex seven times before she turned 18, and at times paid on his government credit card.
He allegedly gave her ecstasy during several of those encounters and paid more if she consumed the drug during sex.
The girl was asked by Greenberg to go to a party on July 15, 2017, at the home of Chris Dorworth, a former Republican member of the Florida House of Representatives.
Image credits: House Ethics Committee
The party, attended by Gaetz, then 35, and his girlfriend, was said to be filled with “alcohol, cocaine, middle-aged men, and young attractive females.”
The girl later testified, per NYT, that she swam naked in the pool in front of Dotworth and danced naked in front of him after taking ecstasy and drinking alcohol.
Gaetz allegedly had sex with the girl twice that evening, with the girl quoted in a court document saying that one time was on a “pool table or … air hockey table.”
The girl further said that Dotworth saw this happen and “then laughed about it with other partygoers.”
She testified that she witnessed Gaetz take cocaine and said she was paid $400 for having sex with Gaetz twice.
As reported by the NYT, the girl saved up enough money to get herself braces and moved to Texas to live with a relative.
In late 2022, the girl’s attorneys reached out to Gaetz and Dotworth to explore whether they were open to a financial settlement, but she never filed a lawsuit.
Dorworth initiated legal action against her, leading to depositions and a round of evidence exchanges.
He later withdrew the suit, but some materials produced in the case were passed along to the House Ethics Committee, which relied on them in its report.