Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., leaves the U.S. Capitol after the House voted on the Spending Reduction and Border Security Act, Sept. 29, 2023. The measure failed to pass.
Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Rep. Matt Gaetz said Thursday that he has learned the House Ethics Committee will subpoena him as it investigates whether the Florida Republican engaged in sexual misconduct with a minor or illicit drug use.
Gaetz, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, made the statement in an angry letter to the Ethics Committee that declared he will “no longer voluntarily participate” in the panel’s probe.
Gaetz said he understands that a subpoena has been “issued, but not served” — but did not say whether he would comply with the subpoena.
“I explicitly reserve all of my rights pursuant to House Rules and the U.S. Constitution,” he wrote in the letter, which he posted on social media platform X.
Gaetz said the committee asked on Sept. 4 whether he has “engaged in sexual activity with any individual under 18.”
“The answer to this question is unequivocally NO,” he wrote.
But his response to whether he has “illegally taken drugs” was less blunt.
“I have not used drugs which are illegal, absent some law allowing use in a jurisdiction of the United States,” he wrote.
“I have not used ‘illicit’ drugs, which I consider to be drugs unlawful for medical or over-the-counter use everywhere in the United States,” Gaetz added.
He called the ethics panel’s questions “uncomfortably nosey,” suggesting it had asked about “the lawful, consensual, sexual activities of adults” which “are not the business of Congress.”
“I have voluntarily produced tens of thousands of records and answered many of your relevant questions over several months,” Gaetz wrote.
“But asking about my sexual history as a single man with adult women is a bridge too far. I will no longer voluntarily participate in this regrettable abuse of the Committee.”
The controversial congressman called the letter his “final response” to the bipartisan panel, and decried the probe as a “political payback exercise, devoid of adequate due process, riddled with leaks, and now seeking deeply personal information that is no business of Congress.”
“I am being investigated and judged by my political opponents. This is Soviet,” Gaetz wrote to Ethics Chairman Michael Guest, R-Miss., and ranking Democrat Susan Wild of Pennsylvania in the letter.
An Ethics Committee spokesman declined to comment on the letter.
The committee in June said some of the allegations against Gaetz “merit continued review” and that it has “identified additional allegations.”
The panel said it is investigating whether Gaetz may have “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.”
But in the same statement in June, the committee said that it “will take no further…