Matt Gaetz, the MAGA Republican congressman nominated to be the next attorney general, allegedly paid two women for sex, according to the lawyer who represented the women before the House Ethics Committee.
Attorney Joel Leppard told ABC News Monday that his clients had testified to the Ethics Committee that they’d been paid for sex through Venmo. “They essentially put the Venmo payments on the screen and asked about them. And my clients repeatedly testified, ‘What was this payment for?’ ‘That was for sex,’” Leppard explained.
Leppard said that one of his clients had also alleged that she saw Gaetz having sex with her 17-year-old friend.
“She testified [that] in July of 2017, at this house party, she was walking out to the pool area, and she looked to her right, and she saw Rep. Gaetz having sex with her friend, who was 17,” Leppard said.
Leppard explained that his client had testified that Gaetz was not aware that the girl was underage.
“Her understanding was that Matt Gaetz did not know that she was a minor, and that when he learned that she was a minor, that he broke off things and did not continue a sexual relationship until she turned 18,” Leppard said.
Gaetz has been the subject of a multiyear ethics investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, sharing inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, and converting campaign funds for personal use. The House Ethics Committee is set to vote Wednesday on whether to release its report on Gaetz.
Last week, Donald Trump nominated Gaetz to be attorney general, a mind-boggling pick considering that Gaetz has no experience as a judge or government lawyer. Rather, his only qualification is his unfaltering loyalty to the president-elect. The freshly Republican-led Senate will be forced to weigh the allegations against Gaetz when considering his confirmation, and even if the report is not formally released, the serious allegations against him have continued to mount.
A separate lawsuit filed last week involves a number of people involved in the criminal investigation into Gaetz, leading to a new record of evidence outside of the ethics report, according to CNN’s Paula Reid. Gaetz was previously investigated by the Justice Department over allegations that he’d engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a 17-year-old girl and violated sex trafficking laws, but no charges were ever formally filed against him. The evidence entered into this new lawsuit reportedly included the underage victim’s testimony that she’d had sex with Gaetz on an air hockey table.
Gaetz has repeatedly denied any allegations of wrongdoing.
Last week, Senator John Cornyn said that “there should not be any limitation” on the Senate’s investigation into Gaetz, and insisted that he “absolutely” wanted to see the ethics report on the former Florida congressperson, who has since resigned from his seat.
Last week, John Clune, the attorney representing the underaged woman, posted on X urging for the committee to release its report. “Mr. Gaetz’s likely nomination as attorney general is a perverse development in a truly dark series of events,” wrote Clune. “We would support the House Ethics Committee immediately releasing their report. She was a high school student and there were witnesses.”
Oklahoma’s state superintendent of schools, Ryan Walters, wants every teacher in the state to show a video message from him to their classes which shows him praying for Donald Trump.
Unfortunately for Walters, the state attorney general says that he can’t require students to watch the video, which also announces the creation of a new Department of Religious Freedom and Patriotism, and at least seven of Oklahoma’s school districts say they won’t show it.
“There is no statutory authority for the state schools superintendent to require all students to watch a specific video,” Phil Bacharach, a spokesman for the Oklahoma attorney general’s office, told The Oklahoman. “Not only is this edict unenforceable, it is contrary to parents’ rights, local control and individual free-exercise rights.”
On Thursday night, Walters sent out an email to Oklahoma’s public school superintendents ordering them to show his one-minute-and-24-second video to students. The email contained several grammatical errors, with Walters writing, “We are in a dangerous time for this country. Student’s [sic] rights and freedoms regarding religious liberties are continuously under assault.”
Walters wrote in the email that the new department “will be working to thwart any attempts to disrupt our Oklahoma student’s [sic] fundamental freedoms.” The video closed with a prayer (which he said students did not have to participate in) where Walters asked for blessings on “President Trump and his team as they continue to bring about change to the country.”
But the superintendents of the Edmond, Mustang, Moore, Norman, Owasso, Tulsa, and Midwest City–Del City public school districts said they would not be showing the video, rebuffing Walters.
On the same day, the state superintendent announced that 500 Bibles had been purchased for Oklahoma’s public schools for about $25,000, despite the fact that lawsuits have been filed over Walters’s attempts to integrate Bibles into school curriculum. Walters’s Bible specifications have also been attacked, as only one Bible seemed to fit the specific requirements: Trump’s “God Bless the USA” Bible.
Walters’s video and Bible purchases are only his latest attempts to push Christian nationalism in Oklahoma’s public schools, and like his other efforts, are legally questionable at best. After Trump’s election and the GOP’s takeover of Congress, though, Walters is probably feeling quite emboldened to ramp up his agenda.
Ron DeSantis just can’t seem to drop the wannabe Trump routine.
The Florida governor will stage an Apprentice-style “extensive vetting” process to determine a replacement for Senator Marco Rubio, who is expected to serve as Donald Trump’s secretary of state pending confirmation.
“We have already received strong interest from several possible candidates … with a selection likely made by the beginning of January,” DeSantis wrote on........