(Photo by Saul Loeb-Pool/Getty Images)
Matt Gaetz is a disgrace for a whole lot of reasons, many of which were laid out in a House ethics report released this morning. But aside from paying for sex from a girl too young to consent and his rampant drug use at a time when he was feigning outrage at Hunter Biden’s addiction, Gaetz should be disqualified from office for being comically bad at law.
To wit, this morning he filed a motion for injunctive relief at the federal court in DC, demanding that it stop the Ethics Committee from releasing its findings.
His legal theories are … creative. He claims that it violates due process and the Constitution to mention his failure to disclose a trip to the Bahamas with a donor and several nice ladies from the Seeking Arrangement website. It’s defamatory to say he paid for sex, when all he did was give those girls money out of the generousity of his heart. Also it violates the Privacy Act (which doesn’t apply to Congress) to disclose his personal texts.
The filing was also procedurally defective — if you can even believe it. To wit, Gaetz failed to include the name and address of each party, or summonses for each government defendant, the US Attorney for DC, and the Attorney General. He also filed his application for a temporary restraining order along with the complaint, in violation of the local rules.
All those things could be fixed, and eventually they were. But before Gaetz even filed his dumb complaint, every reporter in DC had an embargoed copy of the report and was quoting liberally from it. And while Gaetz’s counsel were still struggling to locate their own genitals by consulting Google Maps and the court clerk, the Committee published its findings.
Indeed CNN reported six days ago that at least one Republican had broken ranks and voted with the Democrats to release the document. And yet Gaetz failed to do anything about it until the cat was all the way out of the bag and coughing up “vitamins” all over the District.
Not that filing in timely fashion would have helped. Persuading a federal judge that the Speech or Debate Clause is more of a suggestion really was always going to be a lift. But docketing this turkey when the report was already in the wild was the legal equivalent of asking a prostitute to comp you a free one for “customer appreciation week.” And so, of course, that’s exactly what he did.
An hour later, Judge Amit Mehta put out a brief order instructing Gaetz to show cause by 5pm today “why this matter should not be dismissed with prejudice for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, insofar as this case appears to be moot in light of the House Ethics Committee’s public disclosure of the report whose release Plaintiff seeks to enjoin.”
Gaetz is currently busy livetweeting his own ethics report and insisting that he paid ladies after sex, not for it, which is totally different, okay?
Giving funds to someone you are dating – that they didn’t ask for – and that isn’t “charged” for sex is now prostitution?!?
There is a reason they did this to me in a Christmas Eve-Eve report and not in a courtroom of any kind where I could present evidence and challenge… pic.twitter.com/HzWODpBBB9
— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) December 23, 2024
Tweet through it, Florida Man. You’re doing great!
And lo, even as we went to press, a Christmas Miracle did appear. Seeing that he would not be able to get relief at this late hour, the former congressman has pulled out of this case.
HO. HO. HO.
Gaetz v. House of Representatives Committee on Ethics [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.