Washington — Former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz paid tens of thousands of dollars to women for drugs and sex that were violations of a series of House rules and included obstruction of Congress, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Ethics Committee said in a report released on Monday. Among the committee findings were that Gaetz paid $90,000 to 12 women, a substantial portion of which the panel found was likely for either sexual activity or drug use. Gaetz, who has denied wrongdoing, resigned from the House of Representatives last month after he was selected by President-elect Donald Trump to be attorney general. He withdrew from consideration in the face of an uphill confirmation battle in the Senate. The release of the report came despite a last-minute legal challenge from Gaetz in federal court in Washington, DC, in which he arguedthat the Ethics panel no longer had jurisdiction after Gaetz resigned from Congress. That did not stop the committee from its decision to make the 37-page report public. “The committee determined there is substantial evidence that 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,” the report stated in its conclusion. While Gaetz was found to have been involved in transporting women across state lines for the purposes of commercial sex, the panel said it did not find evidence that any of the women were under 18 at the time of travel…Read more