The House Ethics Committee report about former Representative Matt Gaetz has been published, and the findings are, as you might expect, damning. They found that Gaetz committed a slew of transgressions, most importantly statutory rape, the 37 page report concluded. [00:00:19] The committee determined there is substantial evidence that Representative Representative Gaetz violated House rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress. [00:00:37] So let's start with the worst of those findings. The committee said it received testimony from numerous witnesses who said that at a 2017 party, Gaetz had sex twice with victim A, who was 17 years old at the time and had just [00:00:53] completed her junior year in high school. Victim, A recalled receiving $400 in cash from Representative Gaetz gates that evening, which she understood to be payment for sex victim A. Said that she did not inform Representative Gates that she was under 18 at the time. [00:01:09] Nor did he ask her age. Critically, under Florida law, it is a felony for a person 24 years of age or older to engage in sexual activity with a 16 or 17 year old, and gates was at the time, around 35 years old, and the person charged with statutory rape cannot [00:01:28] claim ignorance or misrepresentation of the minor's age as a defense. So whether or not he knew that she was only 17, it doesn't really matter. The report also also found significant evidence that he paid tons of other of age women for sex. [00:01:43] They cite testimony from witnesses who told the committee that they were paid to have sex with gates, and text messages discussing the transactions and Venmo and PayPal receipts. This is reporting from CBS news. It says from 2017 to 2020, 20 representative gates made tens of [00:02:01] thousands of dollars in payments to women that the committee determined were likely in connection with sexual activity and or drug use, noted the report, which lists payments totaling more than $90,000 to 12 different women. [00:02:17] All the women who testified said the sexual encounters with gates were consensual. However, one woman told the committee the use of drugs at the parties and events that they attended may have impaired their ability to really know what was going on or to fully consent. [00:02:33] Another woman told the committee when I look back on certain moments, I feel violated. The House Ethics Committee argues in its report that Representative Gates took advantage of the economic vulnerability of young women to lure them into sexual activity, [00:02:50] for which they received an average of a few hundred dollars after each encounter. Such behavior is not generosity to ex-girlfriends, and it does not reflect credibility. Credibility. To credit creditably upon the House. [00:03:06] There is more, but this report seems to confirm a lot of what people already suspected about Matt Gaetz and his extracurricular activities will say, to put it very, very lightly. I'm skeptical that anything will come from this, especially now that Gaetz is basically out of our government. [00:03:22] But what have you seen so far regarding the response from the right to all of this, or what are you maybe expecting to see? Yeah. So I'm curious what your take is going to be on some of this stuff. First, let me say my conclusions. Then and then I'll ask you what you think about some of the specifics. [00:03:39] So number one, did Matt Gaetz pay for sex and drugs. He says no. Having looked at the evidence, the answer appears to be an overwhelming yes he did. So he says no, no. I sometimes give people women I date gifts of cash. [00:03:56] That seems really weird. Okay, so anyway, I don't believe him. Nobody believes him. He, He very, very likely paid for sex and drugs. B I don't care. I've never cared. I've told you guys that hundreds of times throughout all of the 22 years. [00:04:13] Same thing for Eliot Spitzer, governor of New York. He was a sheriff of Wall Street, going after the bankers and then watch client number nine on Netflix. And then they targeted him. And they always look for sex when the establishment looks to get rid of you. They always look for sex. Same thing. Madison Cawthorn on the right. Spitzer now Gaetz, etc.. [00:04:31] Okay. Conclusion number three, I believe that 80% of the males in Congress have done similar things, but since they didn't piss off anybody in power that's in their secret file and won't be released unless they say something wrong. Okay. And remember, they had all this information on Cawthorn and Gaetz [00:04:48] well before they released it. They released it after they say things that pisses off people in their own party, in leadership, etc.. Point number four. Am I worried about the 17 year old that he seems to have slept with. Yes, of course, of course. [00:05:03] Look, guys, the part that really bothers me about that, on top of the fact that it apparently is statutory rape in Florida law, right? That's that's a pretty big issue. Right. And just to be clear on that, the woman did I read into the details. [00:05:18] She said the girl at the time said that she never revealed her age, and gates never asked. Okay. But under Florida law, you have strict scrutiny of underage sex. If the girl is 16 or 17 and the guy is above 24, what? [00:05:34] That means the government doesn't care. The state doesn't care if you asked or didn't ask if she told you or didn't tell you. If you do that thing, that you're going to be guilty of it. Now, of course, he hasn't been charged, let alone convicted of that, but there seems to be excellent evidence in that direction. [00:05:50] So and then it's especially rich coming from a party that accused everyone else of being groomers, especially people in the LGBTQ community, when in reality they have their own groomer right there in Congress. Okay. So, lastly, look, [00:06:07] the establishment almost always uses sex to go after their opponents, so I hate that they're kind of halfway like, I like that they're exposing something that Matt Gaetz did wrong. I would expose what they all did wrong. I hate how selective they are in revealing the things that people did wrong. [00:06:25] And I know for a fact that no matter whether you're on the left or the right, if you're an outsider, you challenge the system. They will dig and dig and dig until they find something that is inappropriate, especially of a sexual nature. And in this case, Matt Gaetz made it stunningly easy for them [00:06:42] because they didn't have to dig much. They just scratched the surface and oh my God, all this stuff rushes out. So the things I'm curious like, here's two more things that are part of what Yasmin just explained to you guys and part of what I want to ask her about. But this I just these are tangential, but they bother me [00:06:59] when people throw this out there. Like, the woman who said, well, when I look back at it, I feel violated. But when you took the $400, you didn't. So now you're saying in retrospect, okay, maybe that's her true feelings, [00:07:16] but that's an impossible standard. That's an impossible. So whether you're a woman or a man out there and you had some sort of relationship with somebody at some point and everything was totally consensual. And by the way, everybody points out every single one of these instances was consensual. And then somebody says 20 years later or four years later or four months later, [00:07:35] yeah, it was perfectly consensual. But now I feel violated. I don't know what to do with that. Right. And then finally they there was that line about how he took advantage of the poverty stricken or whatever. No, he went to a website that's basically for prostitution. So that means the guy's going there are looking for prostitutes, [00:07:52] but the women that are partaking in that are not unclear, that they're going to get paid for sex. Right. So it's not like they were all like, I don't want to. I think prostitution should be legal. And I principled about that. And I don't change whether it's a Republican or Democrat [00:08:08] or what the situation might be. But if you say that prostitution should be legalized when someone does it, you don't get to say like, oh my God, they should we should arrest the people who gave them money anyway because they were poverty stricken. And they were. And so they shouldn't have been allowed. [00:08:25] Well, should it be allowed or shouldn't it be allowed? Obviously people that are doing it are not are usually not spectacularly wealthy. They're making an economic decision. But I think as grown ups, they get to make that economic decision and we don't have to infantilize them afterwards. So that's all my opinions on that. Yasmin, what do you think about that? [00:08:42] Yeah. You know, like you, I don't really care that he paid for sex just as a matter of prostitution. As a matter of principle. Like that's that's your own prerogative. And, yeah, I suspect that many other people in Congress have engaged in similar activity. As long as it doesn't interfere with their work, then I don't really care. [00:09:00] I don't love the statutory rape, though. You know, it's wrong. It's damaging. It's all those things. But there's, you know, also the idea that there is a wealthy man who's throwing around his money and his position to potentially, again, you know, depending on the circumstances, take [00:09:15] advantage of people who needed the money. You know, if they were presenting themselves as willing to take money for sex. And that's one thing. But I think overall, what is confusing about this story is exactly what you were confused about, right? And as women, I don't think that we've done a very good job of explaining this [00:09:33] phenomenon to men, let alone to ourselves. I don't know if we even really understand it. It comes from like like it's just a feeling. It's a thing about shame, right? It's also about being confused and, you know, maybe being misled and then you maybe made a few bad decisions. [00:09:49] You feel bad about it, but then you're not allowed to say, I felt bad, I shouldn't have done this. Or, you know, I let this happen to me because, like, you're the one who's going to get blamed for it, even though most of the time you're the one being taken advantage of in a court of law. I don't know how to prove something like that. [00:10:05] I don't know how to convince people that, you know. Yeah, I like said it was fine, but I felt weird about it. At the time. I thought it was okay, but looking back, it really was a violation. I shouldn't have done that. A lot of growth happens with people, not just women, but a lot of growth happens, [00:10:21] especially in those early teenage years. You think something's okay, and then you look back and you're like, that really was not okay. What happened to me, you know, and I think that's a relatable thing that a lot of women have have experienced in some way, shape or form in their own lives. But I don't know how you mitigate something like that. [00:10:38] And that's why so many of these cases kind of, you know, get started and they get all this support, especially from women, because there is some sort of empathy there. We all kind of get it. But then how do you explain that to a man? How do you explain that in certain finite terms, that the law can recognize [00:10:55] that a jury can convict? Apart from like a feeling that you have. Yeah. So I think that's. Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. - Sorry. - Yeah. Look, I want to be clear about that. You're totally right. Like, so people can have regrets later or can feel like, hey, you know what? [00:11:11] Maybe I was taken advantage of, and maybe this and that, etc.. And be confused or be clear later, right? I'm not invalidating anybody's feelings or experiences. I'm just saying when we get to litigating things, we cannot say, [00:11:26] they changed their mind later, even though they consented at the time. That is not illegal. It'll never be illegal. It never should be illegal. So there's a difference there. Now, in this case, that's going to come back to some weird irony of the Biden Department of Justice not prosecuting him here. [00:11:45] So but in the court of public opinion, that's that's where it gets that's where it's a gray zone. Right? So let's say it's a senator. I hate Senator Rick Scott. Right. And somebody says, you know what? I when I dated him when he was 28, we did this and this, and now I feel violated. [00:12:04] And he took advantage of me. Is that fair? It's fair for her to think that if she really believes that. Of course. Right. Is it fair to announce that to the world when we can't go back and adjudicate it? And he can't really defend himself on that? I'm not sure about that, but but to the point here with Matt Gaetz, we don't need any of that. [00:12:21] And there's great evidence on the 17 year old. And so that's illegal. No one disputes that. It's a terrible thing to do. So you just don't need to go to tougher and tougher things to prove. But which then gets to the ultimate frustration here. [00:12:38] So I think they're selective in their enforcement. But okay, both things can be true at the same time. They can be selective. And he might have done it. And it looks like yeah, both things are true in this case in my opinion. Right. So why didn't the Department of Justice prosecute him? So why are we now in this gray zone where they chose not to bring [00:12:55] criminal charges against him, but they decided to put it out in public anyway. And so now there's only one tiny thing that gates says in his own defense that makes sense. He's talking about, oh, this is not prostitution, brother. You're not going to win that fight. Okay, so but but he does say, look, at least if it was in a court of law, [00:13:12] I'd get to defend myself and I'd get to call witnesses and etc.. And that part is true. I don't know if he's asking to get prosecuted. Okay. I mean, be careful what you wish for. But why did the Biden Department of Justice choose to put his coconspirator? According to them, Joel Greenberg in prison for 11 years [00:13:30] for the same things and then choose not to prosecute Matt Gates. And I have a theory. My theory is that the Biden Department of Justice, like almost all other administrations, loves the powerful and the elites. So if that was a Joel Greenberg who doesn't have enough power, [00:13:46] he's going to prison. Right. But Matt Gates and Congress. Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, back up. That's the elites. Even if we hate them, it's the elites. And then, of course, they change their mind. About a year and a half before the election when they realized that Trump was going to run again. But anyway, that's my take on that too. Yes. Yeah. [00:14:01] And it is distressing because it just goes to show that like none of these laws, the way that they're put in place or the way that they're enforced, I guess more realistically, it's not there to protect the women. It's not there to protect the youth. Despite what all these politicians who in this case are [00:14:18] the ones committing these crimes, say that their party platform is this, this platform that they all support because it really it's not about us. It's not that they want justice for the women who are involved or for the underage people who are involved in all these things. [00:14:33] They choose when to enforce it. And it's so inconsistent that it's all just politics. It has nothing to do with us. They're just using us as a pawn in all of that. And it's misogyny. It's it's really nothing less than misogyny in this case. And it is obviously hypocrisy, but it's so obvious that I almost [00:14:50] don't even need to make that point. But on that note, let's move on. Because in addition to the statutory rape and the pain for the sex. The investigation found substantial evidence that gates frequently used illicit drugs, also drugs that the Republican Party is against. [00:15:07] The committee said that it obtained text messages that he sent where he referred to drugs as party favors, rolls or vitamins. It also said he created a fake email from his Capitol Hill office for the purpose of purchasing marijuana. The report noted that gates had denied using illicit drugs [00:15:25] in his written answers to the committee. They also found that gates had abused his position as a US representative surprise in 2018. Representative gates arranged for his chief of staff to assist a woman with whom he engaged in sexual activity in obtaining a passport, [00:15:43] falsely indicating to the US Department of State that she was a constituent. He also allegedly accepted a luxury trip to the Bahamas against house rules, and finally the committee said that gates was not cooperative with their investigation and refused to sit for sworn testimony. [00:16:02] He did submit written answers to some of the committee's questions. The only sliver of good news for Matt Gaetz coming out of this report is that the committee did not find sufficient evidence that gates violated the federal sex trafficking statute. [00:16:17] He was previously investigated by the Department of Justice over these claims, but he declined to bring charges. He allegedly transported women across state lines for the purpose of sex, but those women were all 18 or older at the time. [00:16:32] Gates, of course, has denied all of the accusations and is furious that the report has been released at all, as you mentioned, Jake. And on Monday, he filed a lawsuit in federal court to block the release of the report. And in a statement gates released on X last week, he had this to say. [00:16:49] He said, in my single days, I often sent funds to women I dated, even some I never dated, but who asked? I dated several of these women for years. It's embarrassing, though not criminal, that I probably partied Womanized drank and smoked more than I should have earlier in life. [00:17:06] I live a different life now. He's a much better person today than he was back then, I guess. And today he's been on a rampage on X, continuing to deny all the accusations and accusing the committee of targeting him. So, you know, of course we have checks and balances in our government, [00:17:22] but these days we so rarely see people get their comeuppance, even when investigations are done or when evidence is found or when witnesses testify, whatever. But you know, that aside, Matt Gaetz is about to become a right wing talking head. [00:17:38] So one could argue that this investigation and its findings matter even less than they might have just a month or two ago. So what was it all for? Yeah, it was to make sure that he didn't get any government jobs because the people that are in power, including the top Republicans, hate him. [00:17:57] And by the way, if you're wondering, like, why give any grace to Matt Grace gates and not Grace at all? We're not. We're just being honest with you guys. These are our actual opinions. And whether they're Republican or Democrat, you should be principled [00:18:14] and have the same opinions. And second of all, like I keep saying, two things can be true at the same time. And part of the reason and along with being honest, what he was a jerk in so many ways. He's a terrible on the culture wars. He was a jerk in terms of over the top incivility in Congress. [00:18:32] You know me, I don't care about civility. I don't even like civility. But he burst into people's rooms without permission. ET cetera. All that stuff. But really, if we're being honest, there was another factor, which is that he actually did try to prevent Trump from bombing Iran in their first term. [00:18:48] That is real. So you can say, oh, I hate him on the other stuff, but hence I hate him on trying to stop a war. No, don't do that. Be principled? That was a good thing. He did actually propose a couple of bills that were anti-corruption that were genuine. [00:19:03] AOC signed on. Ro Khanna signed on about both money and politics and insider trading. So, it's it's sucks that the the person who did a sliver of good things on the right also did these terrible things. [00:19:20] Both of those things are true at the same time. And lastly, on some of the minor things, like they're like, oh, he used a pseudonym from his congressional office to buy marijuana. Ooh, heaven forfend I mean, here join button below. Wrote in already a hilarious name. He used marijuana. [00:19:36] We must alert the church elders, right? So I don't care about that stuff. And by the way, be part of the show. Hit the join button below in honor of the person with that name. All right. And on obstruction that. Oh, he tried to prevent this investigation. Of course he did. [00:19:51] Look, I don't believe that he did. Illegal obstruction. I think there's just whining about their investigation. And in the last one is, there's a saying that he paid for some of the parts of a trip to the Bahamas, but that others paid for other parts. [00:20:07] And so that's a, you know, receiving a gift that he shouldn't have received. The devil's in the details there. You know, if they were being honest about what all the congresspeople did along those lines, I would love it. I would love that kind of accountability. In this case, a lot of other guys flew in on a private plane. [00:20:24] He flew in on a public plane, but then he flew on a private plane out. Right. So it's like it's gray zone around the edges. They're throwing that in there to try to show that he's corrupt when he was actually calling out their corruption. So I know that it's challenging to do an honest news show [00:20:40] because then you make people angry on the right or the left or both. But that's that's the reality as we see it, both for the better and definitely for the worse. For Matt Gaetz. I think overall, the fallout from all of this is going to be less political, and we're really going to see it play out in the media space. [00:20:58] There's already a lot of people coming out defending Matt Gaetz or just not even talking about it the way that, you know, you might expect people who care so much about these groomers to come out. But you know, the hypocrisy. It's they're in government the corruption. It's they're in government. We know that. [00:21:13] We know that they a lot of our politicians engage in a lot of the behaviors that they don't let the rest of us engage in. Right? It's not for us, but it is for them, right? They can get away with it. We know that. So I think that's where we're going to see a lot of the frustration with all of this. But again, Matt Gaetz is out of our government now. [00:21:29] Whether or not he I mean, he can and should still get prosecuted for statutory rape. But I am doubtful that we'll see that happen. Thanks for watching the video, guys. We also love it if you hit the join button below, because that makes you a member. And members allow us to be independent, honest. [00:21:45] We can be as progressive as we want, no corporate media influence. And that's all because of you guys. We love doing the show with our members. Hit the join button. Become one of the Young Turks.