The House Ethics Committee report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz was released today and concluded that there was “substantial evidence” that the recently resigned Florida Congressman paid many women, including at least one minor, to have sex with him, in addition to his likely violating 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 37-page Committee Report is here. Read it and weep, as the saying goes.

Gaetz is clearly what is technically called “a sleazeball,” but we knew that, didn’t we? I found it particularly notable that he wasn’t even defended by his own party, which is what we usually see in the “dissents” in such ethics reports. Gaetz’s defenders on the committee only objected to the report being released despite its subject’s leaving the House, which is not the typical course but is not unprecedented either. The report’s dissenters even goes to the trouble of admitting that they have no objections to the report’s conclusions.

The report was published in full by the House Ethics Committee on Monday morning after the panel secretly voted earlier this month to release it. Gaetz, was investigated for four years by the committee over various allegations.

Of course Gaetz has denied doing anything illegal, while admitting that he was just a wild and crazy guy in his younger days. Lying is small change for someone who has engaged in the conduct described in the report. It does appear that the statutory rape episode was the result of him not knowing how old his sex partner was, which is understandable since he appears to have run through sex partners like they were Tic-Tacs. The committee’s report found that Gaetz had also engaged in more typical ethics violations like accepting gifts in “excess of permissible amounts,” including a trip to the Bahamas in 2018. Even then he “engaged in sexual activity” with at least four women on the trip, giving them money as “gifts.”

The report also alleges that there was “sufficient evidence of Representative Gaetz’s intent to derail the investigation.”

“The Committee determined that Representative Gaetz’s attempts to mislead and deter the Committee from investigating him implicated federal criminal laws relating to false statements and obstruction of Congress. Even if Representative Gaetz’s obstructive conduct in this investigation did not rise to the level of a criminal violation, it was certainly inconsistent with the requirement that Members act in a manner that reflects creditably upon the House,” the report says. Yes, I’d say that Gaetz’s conduct does not reflect creditably upon the House, even a House that contains as many embarrassments as this one.

Gaetz even filed a lawsuit today against the House Ethics Committee this morning in a desperate attempt to block the panel from releasing its report on him, but it was too little too late.

For me, the lingering ethical questions are…

1. How does someone who is this much of a low-life get elected to Congress, ever? This is what the nation has in store when the news media has so destroyed its own credibility that any revelations that reflect poorly on a candidate are likely to be immediately discounted on the presumption of bias. It’s not like Gaetz was careful to hide his sleazy life-style. Who votes for someone like him?

2. For anyone who is optimistic about Donald Trump’s second term being marked by greater prudence and responsible conduct than his political foes warned, the fact that he would nominate Gaetz as, of all things, Attorney General is, shall we say, troubling. Did Trump do no vetting at all? Was Trump just trying to make heads explode all over Washington and throughout the legal community? I didn’t get it when he made the nomination, since it was obviously doomed from the start, and I still don’t get it. As with so much that Trump does, the explanations range from his playing four-dimensional chess, through his just fooling around to being completely foolish and irresponsible.

3. Now Gaetz is joining the conservative One America News Network to host a weeknight political talk show starting in January. I guess this means that at least one network accepts how low the bar is for journalism ethics, if Matt Gaetz can be a broadcast journalist. He will also co-host a weekly video podcast with OANN’s Dan Ball.

Media reports describe OAN as a “little watched” network. I can’t imagine how this will help them build an audience. I would watch it, except that the show conflicts with my personal favorite, “Sock Drawer Tonight!!”