US federal inquiry traced sex payments from Matt Gaetz to women

US federal investigators established a trail of payments from Matt Gaetz, president-elect Donald Trump’s choice to be attorney general, to a group of women including individuals who testified that Mr Gaetz had hired them for sex, according to a document obtained by the New York Times and a lawyer representing some of the women.
The document, assembled by investigators during a three-year sex-trafficking investigation into Mr Gaetz, is a chart that shows a web of thousands of dollars in Venmo payments – a US mobile payments service – between Mr Gaetz and a group of his friends, associates and women who had drug-fuelled sex parties between 2017 and 2020, according to testimony that participants are said to have given to federal and congressional investigators.
At the parties, women, and a girl who was 17 at the time, were paid for sex, according to accounts of the participants’ testimony from people briefed on what they said.
The document bolsters recent claims by a lawyer for two of the women who say they had sex with Mr Gaetz for money. It shows thousands of dollars in payments that Mr Gaetz made to both of the lawyer’s clients.
Mr Gaetz (42) represented Florida in Congress from 2017 until last week. He has vehemently denied their accounts, and the federal investigation was closed by the justice department without any charges against him. Vice president-elect JD Vance accompanied Mr Gaetz to Capitol Hill on Wednesday in an effort to build support for his nomination among Republican senators, some of whom have expressed doubt that he is confirmable.
The document was obtained by the House of Representatives ethics committee, which met on Wednesday amid growing pressure to release a report it has compiled on Mr Gaetz but is deadlocked on whether to do so.
Titled “VENMO TRANSACTIONS BETWEEN ALL INDIVIDUALS AS OF 09/14/20”, the document uses thumbnail photographs of Mr Gaetz, dozens of women and several other men to show how payments flowed between them. Lines with arrows connect the men and the women, showing, among other things, how much Mr Gaetz and his associates paid the women.
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Because the justice department declined to charge Mr Gaetz with a crime, the documents amassed during the investigation have remained secret, as the department almost never releases materials that law enforcement agencies develop in investigations in which no charges are brought. But a copy of the chart was obtained by the House ethics committee during its own wide-ranging investigation into Mr Gaetz’s conduct, including whether he had sex with the then-17-year-old.
Steven Cheung, Mr Trump’s communications director, blamed the justice department for disclosure of the document, which he claimed was classified even though it has no classified markings and does not relate to national security.
“This purposeful leaking of classified investigative materials is the sort of politicised DoJ [Departmemt of Justice] weaponisation that Matt Gaetz will end,” Mr Cheung said. “The justice department investigated Gaetz for years, failed to find a crime and are now leaking material with false information to smear the next attorney general.”
The chart does not say what the payments were for, nor does it show that Mr Gaetz made a payment to the 17-year-old girl. But the chart shows payments the authorities believed Mr Gaetz and his associates made to other women, including the two whose lawyer has said they testified to the House ethics committee that they had sex with Mr Gaetz in exchange for money.
It has been publicly known for several years that women have claimed that Mr Gaetz paid them for sex. Shortly after the New York Times revealed the existence of the federal sex-trafficking investigation into Mr Gaetz in 2021, it reported that investigators were focusing on Mr Gaetz’s involvement with multiple women who were recruited online for sex, and on how they received payments.
The New York Times reported at the time that it had reviewed receipts from Cash App, a mobile payments app, and Apple Pay showing how Mr Gaetz and Joel Greenberg, his associate and friend, had paid one of the women for sex with them.
The charts show different payments, all through Venmo, and provide the first documentary evidence from inside the federal investigation, showing how investigators examined Mr Gaetz’s activities in meticulous detail, tracking not just his payments but also those of a large network of people said to have been involved in the parties.
The lawyer, Joel Leppard, said that two women he represents testified before the House committee that Mr Gaetz had paid them in exchange for sex. One of the women said she had witnessed Mr Gaetz having sex with the 17-year-old but that she did not believe Mr Gaetz thought the girl was younger than 18, according to Mr Leppard.
The chart shows that one of Mr Leppard’s clients received $4,025.27 and the other $3,500. It does not show the dates of the payments. The amounts appear to be figures that combine several payments the women received from Mr Gaetz; Mr Leppard said the women were typically paid $200 to $500 for each encounter with Mr Gaetz.
Mr Leppard confirmed in a telephone interview that his clients had received Venmo payments from Mr Gaetz. Some of his remarks about the payments were reported earlier by ABC News.
Mr Leppard said that along with Venmo payments, his clients had received money from Mr Gaetz on PayPal. He said he initially thought his clients had received the amounts listed in the chart but that when his clients were interviewed by the House committee, it turned out that the panel had obtained other evidence that showed additional payments.
Records the committee had, he said, showed payments from Mr Gaetz to one of his clients totalling about $6,000, and showed payments to the other of $4,000.
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He said he believed the committee had obtained the payment information by sending subpoenas to Venmo and PayPal.
The chart also helps to solidify the testimony of Mr Gaetz’s chief accuser, Greenberg, a former local tax collector from Florida. He co-operated with the justice department in the federal investigation, telling authorities about how he and Mr Gaetz both had sex with the 17-year-old, although he said they believed she was older than 18. Greenberg pleaded guilty in 2021 to an array of charges – including sex-trafficking – and agreed to co-operate against Mr Gaetz. He was later sentenced to 11 years in prison.
The chart shows that Greenberg paid the 17-year-old girl $450.
It demonstrates that despite an unwillingness by the justice department to hand over to the House committee much of the evidence it developed on Mr Gaetz during its investigation, the panel was able to obtain some of the information that investigators gathered as prosecutors weighed whether to charge Mr Gaetz.
The House committee sought a range of information from the justice department about Mr Gaetz but was repeatedly rebuffed. – This article originally appeared in The New York Times