Gaetz report: former Congressman paid for sex with minor, drugs in office – National & International News – MON 23ec2024

Last week, Capitol Hill sources revealed that the House Ethics Committee had secretly voted to release the report from their investigation into former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). The report was released today and the findings indicate “substantial evidence” that Gaetz had paid tens of thousands of dollars for drugs and sex in at least 20 separate interactions. The most serious findings were that Gaetz had engaged in sex trafficking and paid for sex with a minor while in office. The girl in question was 17 years old at the time while Gaetz was 35, which constitutes statutory rape in Florida, where the offense took place.

It’s not clear what If any legal consequences there will be for Gaetz. The Department of Justice had previously declined to prosecute Gaetz based on a lack of evidence. DOJ also had serious concerns about the credibility of some of the key witnesses, which could have jeopardized any chance of a conviction.

Gaetz is also no longer a member of Congress, having immediately resigned after he was picked by President-elect Trump to be his Attorney General. Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration shortly thereafter. There was talk at the time of an administration position for Gaetz that did not require Senate confirmation, but no such offer of a position has yet materialized.

The White House announced today that President Biden had commuted 37 of 40 federal death row sentences to life in prison. Fellow Democrats have been calling on Biden to do this, fearing Trump would go on an execution spree as he did in 2020.

There were three federal death sentences that Biden did not commute. These were of: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted in the 2013 Boston marathon bombing; Dylann Roof, who in 2015 shot dead nine parishioners in a Black church in Charleston, SC; and Robert Bowers, convicted of killing 11 worshipers at a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.

When announcing the commutations, Biden alluded to an evolution in his stance on the death penalty. He said he was “more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted”.

Ironically, many of those granted commutations today were on death row because of the 1994 crime bill, which made 60 more crimes punishable with the death penalty at the federal level. Then-Senator Joseph Biden was one of the bill’s most vociferous champions.