The former congressman, once lined up to be Donald Trump’s attorney general, has refuted the accusations related to the 2017 interaction with the teenager, including prior claims of statutory rape.
Newly released court documents, cited by The New York Times, reveal further specifics about the teenager who alleged she had sex with Matt Gaetz in 2017.
The girl, who played a major part in both the House Ethics Committee’s and the Department of Justice’s investigations into Gaetz, was reportedly a “then-homeless, 17-year-old” when they allegedly met.
Gaetz, a former Republican congressman who never faced criminal charges connected to the allegations, continues to deny them.
A more detailed portrait of the 17-year-old girl central to the previous statutory rape allegation against Matt Gaetz emerges from newly unsealed court documents reviewed by The New York Times: she was homeless and saving money to get braces.
The unsealed files, obtained in October, originated from a dropped civil lawsuit that Chris Dorworth, a former Republican member of the Florida state House of Representatives, filed against the teen after her attorneys contacted him in late 2022, The Times reported on Thursday, Nov. 13.
In the documents, people refer to the girl, who remains unidentified, as “a then-homeless 17-year-old high schooler.”
The New York Times reported that she was a high school junior in Florida and sometimes resided with a parent in a homeless shelter. She also held a job at a McDonald’s but appears to have misrepresented her age, claiming she was 18 so she could register a profile on a “sugar dating” website to earn cash for braces, the outlet added, referencing the unsealed court documents and a House Ethics Committee report.
Republican Representative Matt Gaetz speaks to the press after the House Judiciary Committee’s vote on House Resolution 755, Articles of Impeachment Against President Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on December 13, 2019. – Democrats and Republicans in the House Judiciary Committee voted along strict party lines, 23 to 17, appearing somber as they put Trump on track to become only the third president in history to be impeached. Matt Gaetz. These new specifics follow the findings of a bipartisan House Ethics Committee investigation in December 2024. That investigation resulted in a report suggesting “substantial evidence” indicated Gaetz, now 43, had sex with a 17-year-old girl at a party on July 15, 2017.
In the bipartisan report, the teen—who also provided key information in the Department of Justice’s investigation into Gaetz—was only referenced as Victim A.
Victim A’s lawyer, Laura B. Wolf, confirmed some details about the girl when speaking to The New York Times. Many of the details align with the findings in the House Ethics Committee Report. Citing the unsealed court documents, The Times reported the girl allegedly met the congressman after Joel Greenberg, a former Gaetz associate, paid her for sex.
According to the documents The New York Times reviewed, Greenberg allegedly met with Victim A multiple times and had sex with her after providing her with ecstasy.
On July 15, 2017, the pair also attended a party Dorworth hosted, where Gaetz and his then-girlfriend were also guests, the outlet added, citing the court documents.
The documents state the event included “alcohol; cocaine; middle-aged men; and young attractive females,” The New York Times reported.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) speaks on stage at Fiserv Forum on Wednesday, July 17, 2024, on the third day of the Republican National Convention in downtown Milwaukee, Wis. President Donald Trump is set to be named the Republican presidential nominee during the convention after he was injured by a bullet in an assassination attempt on July 13 during a campaign rally in Butler, Pa The documents also state that Victim A, in testimony before the House Ethics Committee, claimed she danced naked in front of Dorworth and had sex with Gaetz twice, according to The New York Times.
She further claimed in her testimony that one of those times happened on a “pool table or … air hockey table” and that Dorworth witnessed it, then “[laughed] about it with other partygoers,” the outlet added based on the documents. (Dorworth has asserted he was not home at the time.)
In her testimony to the House Ethics Committee, Victim A said she received $400 for the encounters. The New York Times reported she has since relocated to Texas and still works in the food industry.
Both Gaetz and Dorworth have vehemently denied these allegations.
“I never had sex with this person,” Gaetz wrote in a text message to The New York Times.
“This person threatened me with a lawsuit if I didn’t pay her $2.3 million dollars,” he then claimed. “She never sued me because her story is fiction.”
President Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz US President Donald Trump, Presidental Election Campaigning
In February 2023, reports indicated the DOJ would not pursue charges against Gaetz, who was once Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general. The DOJ also chose not to charge Dorworth.
In December 2024, the findings of the House Ethics Committee investigation suggested they had “substantial evidence” to believe he had violated Florida’s statutory rape laws.
“The Committee received credible testimony from Victim A herself, as well as multiple individuals corroborating the allegation. Several of those witnesses have also testified under oath before a federal grand jury and in civil litigation. Representative Gaetz denied the allegations but refused to testify under oath,” the report stated.
The report added: “He has publicly stated that Victim A ‘doesn’t exist’ and that he has not ‘had sex with a 17-year-old since I was 17.’ The Committee found that to be untrue and determined that there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz had sex with Victim A in July 2017, when she was 17 years old, and he was 35.”
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It continued, noting that Victim A had “cooperated with DOJ’s investigation for years and was let down by the justice system when reports circulated that DOJ would be unlikely to pursue charges.”
“The Committee received evidence that Representative Gaetz did not learn that Victim A was 17 years old until more than a month after their first sexual encounters. However, statutory rape is a strict liability crime. After he learned that Victim A was a minor, he maintained contact and less than 6 months after she turned 18, he met up with her again for commercial sex,” the report added. Authorities have not charged Gaetz with statutory rape in Florida or elsewhere.
Gaetz resigned from Congress in November 2024. Days later, he withdrew his nomination to serve as Trump’s attorney general.
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