WASHINGTON — Ex-Rep. Matt Gaetz allegedly paid for sex with a 17-year-old girl and bought and used illegal drugs during more than 20 parties with female escorts, a congressional report said Monday.

A final report from the House Ethics Committee accuses the former Florida lawmaker, who was briefly nominated to be President-elect Trump’s attorney general, of illegally paying thousands of dollars for sex with paid escorts, including the underage girl.

He also bought and used illegal drugs including ecstasy and cocaine at parties with the women in Florida and on vacation jaunts, the report said.

“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 37-page report said.

The final report, which says Gaetz likely broke numerous state laws, was released after the House Ethics Committee voted to publicly release it in a reversal of its usual policy.

Gaetz sued the committee in federal court on Monday, n a failed effort to block release of the report.

“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 witnesses,” Gaetz tweeted.

Gaetz, 42, an outspoken conservative Republican, has denied breaking any laws and says he is being smeared by political enemies, although he admits partying too hard in his younger years.

Federal prosecutors investigated Gaetz for violating sex trafficking laws in relation to much of the same conduct but declined to charge him.

The report details nearly $100,000 in payments from Gaetz to a dozen women for either sex or drugs during about 20 encounters, all of which took place after he was elected to represent a deep-red congressional district in the Florida Panhandle in 2016.

“From 2017 to 2020, Representative Gaetz made tens of thousands of dollars in payments to women that the Committee determined were likely in connection with sexual activity and/or drug use,” noted the report, which lists payments totaling more than $90,000 to 12 different women.

All of the encounters were consensual, although one of the women told the committee the escorts were too impaired to consent to sex at times.

“When I look back on certain moments, I feel violated,” one woman told the panel, the report said.

A Florida woman told the committee she was just 17 and had recently finished her junior year in high school when Gaetz had sex with her twice at a 2017 house party. He paid her $400 cash after the encounters, the report said.

The woman said she didn’t tell Gaetz she was underage and he didn’t ask. He has emphatically denied ever having sex with any underage girl.

One the report’s most lurid findings surrounded allegations of a drug-fueled 2018 jaunt to the Bahamas, bankrolled by marijuana lobbyists, during which witnesses said Geetz took ecstasy and had sex with at least four paid escorts. The trip skirted rules limiting gifts to lawmakers, the report said.

Gaetz won reelection in November to what would have been a fourth term in Congress. But he resigned on the day Trump nominated him for attorney general in an apparent ploy to prevent release of the damning report.

His bid to become the nation’s top law enforcement officer imploded within a matter of days.

Not long after that, Gaetz inked a deal with One America News. He plans to join the right-ring network’s primetime lineup in January.

The Republican-led panel initially voted against releasing the report because Gaetz was no longer in Congress. But it made a surprising U-turn at a closed-door meeting and voted to release the final version.

©2024 New York Daily News. Visit at nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.