Senate Democrats request Matt Gaetz case files from the FBI

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are asking the FBI to provide all documents related to its closed sex trafficking investigation into Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, former congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Florida), to ensure the material is considered at his confirmation hearing next year.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has discouraged the release of a House Ethics Committee report covering similar ground, raising questions about how much information senators will obtain as they weigh whether Gaetz should head the Justice Department. House Ethics Committee Republicans voted Wednesday against releasing the report. The vote fell along party lines on the evenly split committee, said Rep. Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, the panel’s ranking Democrat.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and other Senate Democrats on the committee requested the evidentiary file on Gaetz’s alleged sex trafficking in a letter to FBI Director Christopher A. Wray on Wednesday. That would include interviews with a woman who said she was paid to have sex with Gaetz when she was 17. Gaetz has strongly denied the accusations, and the Justice Department did not bring charges against him.

“The grave public allegations against Mr. Gaetz speak directly to his fitness to serve as the chief law enforcement officer for the federal government,” the Democrats wrote. “The unanswered questions regarding Mr. Gaetz’s alleged conduct are particularly significant given that his associate, Joel Greenberg, pleaded guilty to the sex trafficking charge for which Mr. Gaetz was also investigated.”

The Justice Department generally does not hand over to Congress sensitive case information in ongoing or closed investigations. The sex trafficking investigation would be likely to come up in a background check of Gaetz that the FBI would conduct ahead of the Senate confirmation process. The FBI typically summarizes aspects of the investigations to the committee. The type and amount of information that the FBI would find relevant to provide could vary.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will be controlled by Republicans next year, when Gaetz’s hearing would occur. Some GOP members have said they would like to have access to all relevant information on the allegations. On Wednesday, Gaetz and Vice President-elect JD Vance were meeting with Republicans to push for their support for the former congressman, with Gaetz saying the allegations are false.

Other damaging information may come out about Gaetz after an unidentified hacker was said to have accessed a shared file among lawyers in a civil suit that also concerns the trafficking allegations. The file contains sworn testimony from a woman who said Gaetz paid to have sex with her when she was 17, a person familiar with the hack, which was first reported by the New York Times, said.

The senators argued there was precedent for the FBI to hand over the files, including when the bureau turned over more than 880,000 pages of documents to House committees “pertaining to the investigation and decision not to charge Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server.”

One Democratic committee member, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia), did not sign the letter.