The House Ethics Committee announced Monday that it found “substantial evidence” that former Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old girl in 2017 and that he “regularly” paid women for sex while in Congress .

The panel also found in a final report of its year-long investigation into Gaetz that he had used illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on multiple occasions between 2017 and 2019.

Gaetz also accepted gifts, including a trip to the Bahamas in 2018, “that exceeded the allowable amounts,” the bipartisan committee concluded.

“Representative Gaetz has acted in a manner that discredits the House of Representatives,” the report said.

The committee said it found “substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz has violated House rules, state and federal laws and other standards of conduct, engaging in prostitution, statutory rape, illegal drug use, accepting improper gifts, and granting special favors and privileges.” and prohibit obstruction.” of Congress.”

However, insufficient evidence was found that Gaetz violated a federal sex trafficking law, although he did “arrange for the transportation of women across state lines for the purpose of commercial sex.” The panel said it found no evidence that these women were under 18 at the time of the trip and could not conclude that the “commercial sexual acts were induced by force, fraud or coercion.”

A lawyer for Gaetz did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the report.

Hours before the long-awaited report came out, Gaetz asked a federal judge to issue a preliminary injunction that would block its release.

The ethics panel report, the final product of an investigation that began in 2021, was recently at the center of a heated controversy surrounding the former Florida lawmaker.

Gaetz, 42, resigned from Congress in mid-November, shortly after President-elect Donald Trump nominated him to be U.S. attorney general. Trump’s nomination to head the Justice Department was immediately met with fury from critics, who were quick to note that if confirmed, Gaetz would take over as head of the agency that had previously investigated him over sex trafficking allegations.

The Justice Department ended that investigation without filing criminal charges. But the Ethics Commission, which had paused its own efforts while the DOJ’s version emerged, reauthorized its investigation in May 2023.

When Gaetz left Congress, Republicans including Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest, R-Miss., said he was no longer under the committee’s jurisdiction, raising doubts about whether his report would be released publicly.

News outlets reported at the time that Gaetz’s departure came just two days before the ethics panel voted to release the report. The panel, made up of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, disagreed on whether the report should be shared, even though Gaetz is no longer a congressman.

But in a secret vote in early December, the committee decided that the report should be made public.

Gaetz withdrew his bid for attorney general after just eight days as Trump’s pick, saying he would “unfairly distract” the Republican president-elect’s transition efforts. He has denied any wrongdoing.

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