By Noreen Marcus, FloridaBulldog.org
The Florida Bar downplayed a congressional finding that Matt Gaetz, President Trump’s first choice for U.S. Attorney General, committed statutory rape before it abandoned his prosecution.
Within the space of two months last year, a Bar grievance committee took preliminary steps toward investigating Gaetz, then used an unorthodox excuse to avoid following through, his Bar file shows. The file, which under Bar rules will disappear from public view within months, was released last week at Florida Bulldog’s request.
“It’s an embarrassment to the legal profession and I think the Florida Bar should be embarrassed because for the system to be respected, it has to be applied evenhandedly,” said Lisa Lerman, professor of law emerita at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Lerman agreed to review the Gaetz Bar file for Florida Bulldog.
Roughly the top half of the 70-page file is a report by a bipartisan U.S. House Ethics Committee that concludes the now-former Republican congressman took illegal drugs and paid women, at least one who was underage, for sex for more than three years. The report recaps the committee’s investigation that derailed Gaetz’s wild ride that let him off short of becoming U.S. Attorney General.
The committee report cites “substantial evidence” that Gaetz committed statutory rape under Florida law by having sex with a 17-year-old girl (“Victim A” in the report) in July 2017, when he was 35. “Representative Gaetz denied the allegation but refused to testify under oath. He has publicly stated that Victim A ‘doesn’t exist,’” the report says.
Still, a Florida Bar grievance committee tasked with examining Gaetz’s actions apparently took a quick look and found no reason to confront the former congressman from Niceville in the Panhandle.
The committee’s May 12 decision to close the Gaetz case without actually opening it “was not based upon a determination that the [House] report’s findings were not accurate,” grievance committee chair Casey Pless Waterhouse wrote to Gaetz on Aug. 15. Waterhouse is a family lawyer in Fort Walton Beach, a city in Gaetz’s Panhandle-area congressional district.
And yet the committee chose to focus on a comment that clarifies a rule about lawyer misconduct. The comment “draws a distinction between offenses of personal morality or alleged crimes which do not have a connection to fitness for the practice of law or otherwise indicate characteristics relevant to law practice,” Waterhouse wrote.
In other words, the committee decided an allegation of statutory rape wasn’t reason enough for the Bar to take on Gaetz because statutory rape has nothing to do with being a lawyer. This defense had been pitched by Gaetz’s lawyer Warren Lindsey, according to the Bar file.
ETHICS EXPERTS DISCREDIT DEFENSE
New York University law professor Stephen Gillers, an expert on legal ethics, told Florida Bulldog thathe’s never seen a disciplinary opinion about statutory rape. “Nonetheless, if proved, that conduct could and would justify some sanction depending on the facts,” he wrote in response to emailed questions.
Asked whether “this doesn’t relate to the practice of law” usually works as a defense, Gillers responded, “No.”
“Lawyers are often sanctioned for conduct having nothing to do with law practice: e.g., failure to pay child support, hit and run, felony-level drug possession, convictions of tax crimes or drunk driving, violence against partners or spouses, dishonesty in business, etc.,” he wrote.
D.C. law professor Lerman, who has studied legal ethics for 40 years, said misconduct doesn’t have to be established in court to be actionable. “Ethics regulators have imposed discipline for allegations of criminality that have not been charged or adjudicated,” she said.
Lerman said lawyers, especially those in government service, should be held to a high standard. “The lawyer disciplinary authorities expect members of the Bar to be law-abiding citizens, so transgressions can lead to discipline even if the alleged conduct has not led to criminal charges or convictions,” she said.
One would never know all that from the Bar grievance committee’s Aug. 15 “letter of advice” to Gaetz, which reads like the gentle guidance of an indulgent parent. The letter assures him the letter itself “does not constitute a disciplinary record against you for any purpose” while appealing to his better angels.
“You are urged, in the strongest terms, to reflect on your responsibilities as an officer of the court. The committee hopes as a result of this letter that you are reminded of the required ethical obligations and that you make a renewed commitment to the core principles in the Oath of Attorney and Creed of Professionalism,” the letter says.
“Never forget that ‘a lawyer is a lawyer is a lawyer’ and you do not take that hat off regardless of what other roles you may fulfill,” says the letter signed by committee chair Waterhouse. She did not respond to Florida Bulldog’s emailed questions.
The Supreme Court of Florida created The Florida Bar as its investigating arm to enforce the standards of ethical conduct of lawyers. If discipline is found to be warranted, it can range from an admonishment to suspension from the practice of law to disbarment.
MATT GAETZ HAS ZERO CONVICTIONS
Now Gaetz works as an anchor for the Trump-and-MAGA-boosting One America News Network. He and his Bar defense lawyer Lindsey, of Winter Park, did not respond to a Florida Bulldog request for comment.
Gaetz hasn’t been convicted of or charged with any crime. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigated him for sex trafficking along with his associate Joel Greenberg, a former Seminole County tax collector. Eventually Greenberg pleaded guilty to sex trafficking and the DOJ ended its Gaetz probe.
The House Ethics Committee’s inquiry didn’t result in charges, either. But commentators agree it cost Gaetz the Attorney General post because of the breadth and specificity of the committee’s work and report.
Notably, the report contains precise details about the encounter between Gaetz and “Victim A,” the unidentified 17-year-old girl at the center of the statutory rape claim, at a party in a private home in Heathrow, near Orlando, on July 15, 2017—six months after his election to Congress. Gaetz resigned from Congress in 2024 shortly after Trump said he planned to nominate him to be U.S. Attorney General.
The committee wrote that evidence showed Gaetz had sex at the party with multiple women, including the 17-year-old girl, and paid all of them. The teenager testified she took ecstasy and Gaetz used cocaine.
Matt Gaetz categorically denied that he paid women for sex or used illegal drugs. He refused to discuss Victim A with the committee but questioned her existence in forums where he couldn’t perjure himself. In public statements Gaetz continually disparaged the investigation and accused committee members of playing politics.
“You ask, in part, whether I’ve had sex with a list of adult women over the past seven years. The lawful, consensual, sexual activities of adults are not the business of Congress,” Gaetz told the committee.
GAETZ IS A-OK IN FLORIDA
Compared to his battle royale with the House committee, Gaetz’s dealings with the Florida Bar were a walk in the Everglades.
The Florida Supreme Court has adopted rules that shield government officials from Bar scrutiny as long as they hold office. So state ethics regulators couldn’t touch Gaetz until he resigned from Congress and lost his chance to become the nation’s chief law enforcement officer.
Then popular demand back home ignited the Gaetz disciplinary process. The Florida Bar received “numerous inquiries and expressions of concern” about Matt Gaetz “as a legislator, and by extension, as an attorney,” the Aug. 15 grievance committee letter says.
Gaetz’s Bar file contains no evidence the committee investigated him. Attorney Aaron White of Santa Rosa Beach was tapped as “investigating member,” but the file suggests he did nothing beyond agreeing to meet with Gaetz’s new lawyer Lindsey.
That was in late March. Yet by May 12, mere weeks after White and Lindsey discussed meeting, committee members had decided they knew enough about Gaetz to remove him from their agenda.
Florida Bulldog tried to find out what happened, but White and others in a position to know didn’t respond to requests for information.
Former Florida Bar president Henry “Hank” Coxe, a Jacksonville lawyer who, early on, arranged with the Bar for Matt Gaetz to have more time to find a lawyer, told Florida Bulldog, “no comment.”
The written record of Gaetz’s brief brush with the Florida Bar will disappear from the public domain later this year. After a case is closed without producing charges, the Bar preserves the case file for one year, then destroys it. When an investigation results in charges, the Bar opens the case file to the public and it’s retained.
If Gaetz were to resume practicing law in Florida, potential clients could be directed to his public-facing Florida Bar listing. It says that Matthew Louis Gaetz II is an attorney in good standing with a clean 10-year disciplinary history.
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