WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, abruptly resigned his Florida congressional seat on Wednesday ahead of the potential release of a House Ethics Committee report about alleged sexual misconduct with a 17-year-old high school girl that a congressional source described to the Miami Herald as “highly damaging.”

Gaetz, 42, resigned just as news emerged that the committee investigating him was preparing to vote on releasing its findings Friday. His resignation effectively closed the probe into lingering allegations that Gaetz had sex with a minor, engaged in illegal drug use and accepted improper gifts.

The panel lost the power to punish Gaetz when he left Congress. Before his resignation, Gaetz could have faced potential expulsion depending on the committee’s findings.

Still, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee responsible for vetting Gaetz’s nomination — across party lines — said Thursday that they expect the committee to turn over its findings in some form, whether it be an initial report, a finalized report or the underlying evidentiary information uncovered during the probe.

The congressional source told the Herald and McClatchy that a prescheduled meeting of the House Ethics Committee regarding the Gaetz report would still take place on Friday.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee issued a statement on Thursday afternoon demanding the Ethics Committee be transparent with the American public about its findings.

“The sequence and timing of Mr. Gaetz’s resignation from the House raises serious questions about the contents of the House Ethics Committee report and findings,” they said. “We cannot allow this critical information from a bipartisan investigation into longstanding public allegations to be hidden from the American people, given that it is directly relevant to the question of whether Mr. Gaetz is qualified and fit to be the next Attorney General of the United States.”

Republican lawmakers on the panel also said that a review of the report would be necessary during the vetting process.

Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the Senate “should gain access to all relevant information by whatever means necessary,” including a possible subpoena.

“I don’t think any of us want to fly blind,” he told reporters in the Capitol. “Part of this is to protect the president against information or surprises coming out later that he and his team weren’t aware of.”

Allegations and investigations

Gaetz has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. But with his nomination to lead the Justice Department, he is likely to be scrutinized over the scandal — if he goes through the normal confirmation process.

Responding to his nomination on Wednesday, Gaetz posted a brief message on social media that “it will be an honor to serve as President Trump’s attorney general.” Attempts to reach him and his representatives on Thursday were unsuccessful.

The girl at the center of the controversy, who is now 24 and lives in Colorado, called for the release of the Ethics Committee’s report, through her lawyer, John Clune. ABC News reported on Thursday evening that she had testified before the House committee that she did have sex with Gaetz when she was underage.

“Mr. Gaetz’s likely nomination as Attorney General is a perverse development in a truly dark series of events. We would support the House Ethics Committee immediately releasing their report. She was a high school student and there were witnesses,” Clune said in a statement Thursday on social media.

The allegations involve Gaetz’s friendships with two of his former associates, ex-Florida lawmaker Chris Dorworth, and former Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg. Greenberg pleaded guilty to underage sex trafficking and a host of other felonies, and then implicated Gaetz in some of his crimes — which led the Justice Department to open a probe into Gaetz in 2020, when Trump was still in office.

Greenberg was sentenced and is serving an 11-year prison term.

Gaetz unsuccessfully tried to obtain a pardon from Trump before he left office. According to the Washington Post, Gaetz told a former White House aide who testified during a Congressional hearing into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that he was seeking a preemptive pardon in an investigation of which he was a target.

Part of the Justice Department probe into Gaetz focused on a party at Dorworth’s Orlando-area home on July 15, 2017. Witnesses said that Gaetz attended the party, where young women, including the minor, were given drugs and bedrooms were made available for sexual activities.

The Justice Department closed the Gaetz criminal probe without filing charges in 2023. The chief problem with the case, sources told the Herald at the time, was the lack of credibility of two key witnesses: Greenberg and the victim, who later became a porn star on social media.

But the Justice Department had other witnesses and forensic evidence, according to several lawyers representing women who provided statements to the government.

Sources said there were text messages, photos, and Venmo transactions to back up many of the allegations against Gaetz.

The Daily Beast reported on the Venmo records, saying that they showed that Gaetz sent $900 to Greenberg and used a nickname they had for the teenager on the transaction record.

Both federal and Florida sex trafficking laws have been rewritten over the last decade. Those who pay minors for commercial sex can be charged as human traffickers. Human trafficking — an umbrella term that includes sex trafficking — involves soliciting, enticing, harboring or using another person for the purposes of exploitation.

Minors cannot consent to commercial sex, and not knowing the age of someone is not a defense for having sex with a minor.

Sex trafficking is a first-degree felony in Florida, and if it involves someone under the age of 18, it could lead to life in prison.

The House Ethics Committee opened its own probe into Gaetz in 2023, but it stalled when they were unable to obtain evidence from the Justice Department. They did, however, obtain testimony and affidavits from witnesses.

Most recently, new details about Gaetz became public in September as part of a federal civil lawsuit filed by Dorworth in 2023. Testimony from witnesses — one of whom was Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend — claimed that Gaetz was at the party at Dorworth’s home. Forensic evidence from Gaetz’s cell phone also indicated that Gaetz was at the home. Moreover, a sworn affidavit by a witness said the underage girl, identified as A.B., was naked, and that party guests were having sex and consuming alcohol, marijuana, ecstasy and cocaine, court records show.

Gaetz was not a party to the lawsuit, which Dorworth had filed against Greenberg.

When the case started to go south, Dorworth dropped his suit earlier this year. Some of the discovery became public when lawyers filed motions in an effort to recoup their legal fees. That discovery — some of it heavily redacted — raised further questions about Gaetz and his activities. The Miami Herald filed a motion to unseal some of the discovery in the case in October, but the judge has not yet ruled on the matter. A previous agreement by the parties designated that the materials — much of it containing “personal sensitive information” be destroyed.

Confirmation in question

It’s not clear whether Gaetz has enough support to be confirmed. His successful ouster of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2023 — as well as his support of unproven conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol, his alliances with the Proud Boys and Holocaust deniers and his inflammatory rhetoric against the FBI and DOJ — have long placed him in the political crosshairs of both Republicans and Democrats.

Gaetz — who married his wife, Ginger Luckey, in 2021 — began his career as a member of the Florida House. He has never been a prosecutor and did not practice law long before going into politics.

In Tallahassee, he was accused by another lawmaker of organizing an inappropriate scoring game that awarded male lawmakers points for having sex with interns, virgins and for sleeping in sorority houses. He was also known to frequent bars where college women congregated, and his conduct made some young staffers in the Capitol take to calling him “Creepy Gaetz.”

He did little to tame his reputation when he was first elected to Congress representing Florida’s heavily Republican first district in the Panhandle in 2017. During his first term, he was lectured by staffers for then-House speaker Paul Ryan about his showboat behavior. Later it was reported that he had shown photos of naked women he had slept with to fellow lawmakers on the House floor.

Since then, he had been accused in news reports of a number of other misdeeds: taking flights to the Florida Keys and the Bahamas with paid escorts, and making a mysterious late night weekend visit to the Seminole County tax collector’s office where Greenberg rummaged through drivers’ licenses.

Gaetz has also denied the results of the 2020 election, and has called for the abolition of the FBI and the Justice Department over various investigations of Trump, his campaign and his allies.

All this has led him to become one of the most openly disliked members of Congress.

“I’ve got very few skills. Vote-counting is one,” said GOP Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina. “I think he’s got a lot of work to do to get 50 votes in the Senate … I’m sure it will make for a popcorn-eating confirmation hearing.”

But Trump’s allies have pointed to the possibility of a recess appointment — a mechanism that allows the president to temporarily install a nominee when the Senate is out of session — as a way of confirming any nominees the Senate may try to block.

Some Republican senators chafed at the idea, but Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, said Trump doesn’t need the Senate to approve his pick for the country’s chief law enforcement officer.

“We recess ... he’s the attorney general, suck it up,” Massie said.

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(Congressional correspondents Daniel Desrochers of the Kansas City Star, David Catanese of the Lexington Herald-Leader and Danielle Battaglia of the Raleigh News & Observer contributed to this report from Washington.)

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©2024 McClatchy Washington Bureau. Visit mcclatchydc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.