On Dec. 23, 2024 the Republican-controlled House Ethics Committee released a report on former congressman Matt Gaetz.  The report alleges that Gaetz paid more than $90,000 to 12 women. One of them was allegedly under 18.  Illicit drugs were also reportedly used at parties he attended.  The Committee determined these payments were likely in connection with sexual activity and or drug use.  Gaetz has naturally denied all wrongdoing.  It had become critical for the establishment to discredit Gaetz when Donald Trump nominated him to be attorney general in Trump’s second term.  Gaetz had threatened to expose congressional misdeeds.  He withdrew his name from consideration a week later after facing doubts over his ability to gain Senate confirmation.

The Committee’s allegations had previously been investigated by the Biden Department of Justice.  The Department of Justice declined to prosecute Gaetz because much of the information was obtained from unreliable sources.  DOJ prosecutors understood that a conviction was unlikely.  The ethics report relied on the same testimony the Justice Department considered unreliable.  It relied on testimony from Joel Greenberg.  Greenberg is currently serving 11 years in prison after being hit with a slew of charges, including falsely accusing a local political opponent of having sex with a minor.  A female accuser is also serving time for making false claims of sex with minors on another person.  The Justice Department had spent several years probing the allegations against Gaetz before it announced their closure of the investigation in 2022.

Gaetz has threatened to retaliate by filing a privileged motion to expose every settlement paid by the Congressional Office of Compliance to cover sex-related incidents.  The Office of Compliance disbursed more than $17 million over a period of 20 years — 1997 to 2017.  This may be only a fraction of the taxpayer money paid out.  Rep. John Conyers paid a former employee $27,111.74 out of his Member’s Representational Allowance account to remain silent.  Rep. Raúl Grijalva gave $48,395 to a female employee. The Office of Compliance figure has not been updated for seven years and congressmen have many other taxpayer provided funds available to conceal their misdeeds.

Members of the “elite,” Republican and Democrats, Conservative and Progressive, are aware of this situation.  Cokie Roberts, NPR correspondent and ABC News reporter, once revealed that, “every female in the press corps knew” to avoid being in an elevator with Rep. John Conyers, and had apparently known this “for years.”  She stated, “You know they are so used to it.  I mean, the culture of Capitol Hill for so many decades was men being bad.”

Three female Representatives reported how male officials indecently exposed themselves on the House floor.  This is only one aspect of the widespread corruption on Capitol Hill.  Members of Congress are fully aware of this corruption.  Cindy McCain claimed, “Epstein was hiding in plain sight. We all knew about him. We all knew what he was doing, but we had no one that was – no legal aspect that would go after him.  They were afraid of him.”  FBI possession of Epstein’s video library might explain why Congress never reduces the FBI’s budget.

The attack on Gaetz is a classic example of what Nancy Pelosi calls the “wrap-up smear.”

You smear somebody with falsehoods and all the rest and then you merchandise it.  And then you [the press] write it, and they’ll say, see it’s reported in the press that this this this and this.  So they have that validation that the press reported the smear, and then it’s called the ‘wrap-up smear.’

(This is exactly what they’ve done to Pete Hegseth too.)

Allegations that Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old can easily be morphed into allegations of sex trafficking or pedophilia by an experienced “journalist.”  Attacks on Gaetz will be unrelenting.  Sexual indiscretions are only part of the corruption Gaetz threatens to reveal.  The Deep State cannot allow this.  WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has claimed that “When all is exposed, 98% of Washington will fall.”

John Dietrich is a freelance writer and the author of The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy (Algora Publishing).  He has a Master of Arts Degree in International Relations from St. Mary’s University.  He is retired from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of Homeland Security.  He is featured on the BBC’s program “Things We Forgot to Remember: Morgenthau Plan and Post-War Germany”.

Image: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr, unaltered.