Matt Gaetz’s Venmo History Exposes Everyone He Allegedly Paid for Sex

The Justice Department’s three-year investigation into Matt Gaetz uncovered a web of payments to women who testified they were paid for sex by the ex-Florida lawmaker.

Gaetz sent roughly $10,000 to at least two women who were involved in sex parties he attended between 2017 and 2020, according to the document obtained by The New York Times.

The 42-year-old Floridian—who on Thursday dropped out of the running as Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general—has faced two federal investigations in recent years related to sex trafficking allegations as well as claims that he had sex with an underage girl. The Justice Department’s investigation fizzled out in 2023, resulting in no formal charges against Gaetz (although this does not indicate his innocence, as Gaetz has claimed). Meanwhile, a House Ethics Committee probe into the controversial politico was crushed last week when Gaetz suddenly resigned from his House position following his nomination to lead the Justice Department.

Among the individuals who indirectly received payments from Gaetz was a 17-year-old girl, according to the document.

An attorney representing the two women told lawmakers that Gaetz issued payments using Venmo, while one of the women testified that she personally saw Gaetz having sex with a minor at a party in 2017.

In February, a woman involved in the House Ethics Committee investigation said that she received payments to attend multiple sex parties with people in Gaetz’s circle. While testifying under subpoena to U.S. attorneys investigating Gaetz in 2021, the unidentified woman handed over texts, photographs, and other evidence, according to her attorney.

The woman’s name appeared across several Venmo transactions, tallying up nearly $2,500 between March and July 2017 through Gaetz’s former friend Joel Greenberg, who was later convicted of sex trafficking an underage girl.

The woman’s decision to speak out and come forward was an arduous and taxing one, according to her attorney. In the spring of 2021, a Gaetz associate allegedly berated her over whether she had spoken to anyone investigating the Floridian—a tactic that she interpreted as a pressure campaign to keep her quiet. Gaetz has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

The accusations against Gaetz came to light during a DOJ investigation into Greenberg, a former tax collector for Seminole County, Florida. The initial probe also named Gaetz, who Greenberg claimed had paid him via Venmo in order to have sex with an underage girl in 2017.

Eight months after Greenberg warned Gaetz to “steer clear” of the girl, the lawmaker Venmo’d Greenberg $900 in back-to-back payments, per The Daily Beast, telling the taxman to “hit up” the girl on his behalf. At that point, she was five months past her 18th birthday, while Gaetz had just turned 36.

“This purposeful leaking of classified investigative materials is the sort of politicized D.O.J. weaponization that Matt Gaetz will end,” Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, told the Times when asked about the payment chart. “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.”

This story has been updated.

Matt Gaetz rescinded his nomination to become Donald Trump’s attorney general on Thursday, writing in a statement that he believed his confirmation would become a “distraction” from Trump’s second administration.

“I had excellent meetings with Senators yesterday,” Gaetz wrote on X. “I appreciate their thoughtful feedback—and the incredible support of so many. While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition.

“There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General. Trump’s DOJ must be in place and ready on Day 1,” Gaetz continued. “I remain fully committed to see that Donald J. Trump is the most successful President in history. I will forever be honored that President Trump nominated me to lead the Department of Justice and I’m certain he will Save America.”

Trump nominated the remarkably unpopular Florida politico to become the country’s attorney general last week, a decision that would have effectively handed the keys to the Justice Department to a man facing sex trafficking allegations.

But Gaetz’s confirmation seemed increasingly unlikely in the days since his nomination. He faced immense opposition from inside his own party at a time when any of Trump’s nominees for his upcoming Cabinet can only afford to lose three Republican votes during their Senate confirmation process.

By Friday, estimates from inside the upper chamber predicted that Gaetz could face anywhere from 12 Republican “no” votes to upward of 30, reported The Wall Street Journal.

Gaetz resigned from Congress last week after his nomination was announced, abruptly crushing a House Ethics Committee probe investigating reports that Gaetz had sex with an underage girl.

He reportedly pulled his nomination Thursday just minutes after CNN reached out to the ex-lawmaker for comment on a bombshell revelation that the Ethics Committee had been notified of a second sexual encounter between Gaetz and the same 17-year-old.

In a statement following Gaetz’s withdrawal, Trump said he had “much respect” for the Florida politician for minimizing the distraction and predicted Gaetz would have a “wonderful future.”

Gaetz’s withdrawal from consideration for attorney general now leaves him completely out of power. He could attempt to run in his district’s special election to recoup his lost seat in the House, though it’s unclear if doing so would reignite the Ethics investigation into his alleged misconduct.

This story has been updated.

The Republican-led House Oversight Committee announced plans Thursday to form a new subcommittee to work alongside the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the meme-based advisory group led by right-wing propaganda czar Elon Musk and failed presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

The subcommittee will be headed by the person least interested in actually governing in all of Congress: Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a source familiar told Fox News Digital.

The proposed House subcommittee is expected to investigate government spending and organization in federal agencies, posturing as if it will slash bureaucratic “red tape” while actually making it much harder for the government to get anything done at all.

Ramaswamy confirmed to Fox News Digital that he had met with House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer and Greene to discuss the new subcommittee.

“Looking forward to working together with Congress,” Ramaswamy wrote in a post on X Wednesday. “Proper oversight of agencies & public transparency are critical.”

Musk and Ramaswamy published an op-ed about their plans for the department on Wednesday, outlining their scheme to slash the federal budget and the essential services it provides—such as public broadcasting, Planned Parenthood, and Medicare and Medicaid—with the hopes of cutting government spending by $2 trillion by July 2026 to make life more expensive and miserable for every single U.S. citizen, while private companies and billionaires get rich selling those products that were once provided by the government.

Nancy Mace’s thinly veiled transphobia is getting old fast—just ask Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“What Nancy Mace, and what Speaker Johnson are doing, [is] endangering all women and girls. Because if you ask them, ‘What is your plan on how to enforce this?’ they won’t come up with an answer,” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters after being asked about Mace’s string of targeted anti-transgender resolutions against Delaware’s Representative-elect Sarah McBride, the first ever openly trans woman in Congress.

“The idea that Nancy Mace wants little girls and women to drop trow … because she wants to suspect and point fingers at who she thinks is trans is disgusting,” Ocasio-Cortez continued. “They’re doing this so that Nancy Mace can make a buck, and send a text, and fundraise off an email. They’re not doing this to protect people.”

Mace, a GOP representative from South Carolina, introduced a resolution on Tuesday that would forbid trans women from using the restroom that aligns with their gender identity in the U.S. Capitol Building. The only trans elected official in the Capitol Building is Representative-elect Sarah McBride.

“Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say. I mean, this is a biological man,” Mace said. She added that McBride “does not belong in women’s spaces, women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, period, full stop.”

Mace has continued to shame and harass McBride online. She posted a video of her taping a sign reading “biological” right over a “men’s” bathroom sign in the Capitol building. Early Wednesday morning she posted a video stating that she’d be filing another resolution to “ban biological men from women’s spaces on all federal property all across the country.”

Mace was thus empowered after House Speaker Mike Johnson officially stated that transgender women would be banned from women’s restrooms throughout the Capitol complex. But as Representative Ocasio-Cortez noted, it is very unclear how Johnson plans to enforce this ruling.

Democratic Representative Mark Pocan was also swift to react to Johnson’s decision. “As Chair of the Equality Caucus, I requested a meeting with Speaker Johnson to discuss his bathroom ban and open his eyes to the reality that this policy is cruel, completely unenforceable, and opens the door for abuse, harassment, and discrimination in the halls of Congress,” he wrote on Bluesky.

For her part, McBride has recognized that Mace is out for attention and endeavored to not feed her trollery. “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families,” she said in a statement, “I will follow the rules as outlined by speaker Johnson, even if I disagree with them.”

Mace, who is no stranger to spectacle, has made a habit of doing weird, attention-seeking gender cosplay on Capitol Hill. Last October, she wore a shirt bearing a large scarlet letter A after she joined the infamous Matt Gaetz in voting to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy in a sort of MAGA House mutiny. It was not immediately apparent what the famous Nathaniel Hawthorne character had to do with the speakership fiasco. (Just as confusingly, Mace seems to not be worried about Gaetz lurking around Capitol Hill’s washrooms.) Suffice it to say, her most recent hateful charade, made under the guise of “protecting women,” will likely only result in more women getting hurt.

CNN reports that Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent turned conservative media B-lister, is up for consideration to run the agency for which he once worked. Bongino, who has periodically faced various social media sanctions for posting incendiary content over the years, is on Trump’s Secret Service short list, along with the former head of his personal detail, Robert Engel, and the head of his current Secret Service detail, Sean Curran. Engel was with Trump on January 6, 2021, and testified to the House January 6 committee about Trump’s speech at the Ellipse that day.

Bongino has run for Congress three times, twice in Maryland and once in Florida; he lost all three times. After failing to launch a political career, he went into punditry, becoming a commentator on right-wing talk radio and social media. He quickly became known as a leading election denialist, January 6 insurrectionist defender, and Covid-19 conspiracist.

Bongino would go on to host his own show on Fox News from 2021 to 2023, and today hosts The Dan Bongino Show on Rumble. He was critical of ousted Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle in the wake of the July assassination attempt against Trump, calling her “utterly unqualified” and accusing her of “putting politics ahead of presidential protection.”

That may well have endeared him to the president-elect, who has a personal stake in who takes over the agency in charge of protecting himself and his family. Trump also was a guest on Bongino’s podcast in October—an encounter that could hardly be called a hard-hitting interview, with multiple compliments exchanged.

It’s no secret that Trump watches a lot of television and seems to be favoring a “central casting” approach to his second-term appointments. Among those peppered throughout his agency picks are former Fox News host Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense, daytime talk show host Dr. Mehmet Oz as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and his pick for secretary of transportation—former congressman, Fox News host, and reality TV star Sean Duffy. Should Bongino get the nod to head the Secret Service, he will fit right in with all of those personalities.

That said, heading up the Secret Service is not the best platform for maintaining one’s media infamy—unless, of course, Bongino warps the role to suit his personal needs and desires. The job, which normally has a low media profile, could very likely become part of Trump’s media circus in the hands of someone whose first priority is maintaining their own high profile or remaining a fixture on right-wing media. For someone like Trump who loves high TV ratings, that’s probably just what he wants. Whether that suits the numerous other people under Secret Service protection remains to be seen.