report<\/a> was released and denied wrongdoing. But the report helped to tank his nomination to become attorney general in President Trump\u2019s second administration.<\/p>\nTwo women said they were in their early 20s in 2017 when they met Gaetz through Joel Greenberg, who was a tax official in Seminole County and is now in prison for a raft of crimes, including a sex crime. <\/p>\n
Gaetz provided drugs and paid the women for sex, out-of-state travel, lodging and other expenses, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
\u201cMuch of the conduct alleged against me is false,\u201d Gaetz said in response.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe lawsuit relies almost exclusively on a Congressional Committee report that didn\u2019t allow me to confront my accusers. Now I will finally have that chance,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Gaetz also appeared to mock the women on the social platform X, sharing a 2018 social media photo of the backs of three women in bathing suits looking at the ocean in the Bahamas.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m shocked nobody responded to their repeated cries for help, posted to instagram,\u201d he said Thursday. <\/p>\n
The lawsuit also names Greenberg, another man and businesses tied to Greenberg\u2019s family.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery part of this venture ran on an exploitative power imbalance,\u201d the women\u2019s attorney, Spencer Kuvin, said in the lawsuit. \u201cOn one side stood a sitting congressman, an elected tax collector, and a former state legislator, men with public office, private homes, and money to spend. On the other stood young financially vulnerable women in their early twenties.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gaetz hosts a political talk show on One America News Network. He was recently appointed to the board of Triumph Gulf Coast, which oversees how Florida spends money recovered for damage from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.<\/p>\n
White writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two women filed a lawsuit Thursday against former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, saying they were sexually exploited by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8232,265,168547,28,30,29,73931,71125,168546,63678,833,2159,660,168545,9105,4176,9454,192],"class_list":["post-428921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-attorney-general","tag-crime","tag-ex-florida-rep-matt-gaetz","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-florida-republican","tag-gaetz","tag-illicit-drug","tag-joel-greenberg","tag-lawsuit","tag-money","tag-office","tag-other-man","tag-president-trump","tag-report","tag-sex-trafficking","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}