Matt Gaetz Dropped AG Bid After CNN Inquiry About NEW Allegation Involving Threesome with 17-Year-Old

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) announced Thursday that he was withdrawing his name from consideration as Attorney General — shocking news that came shortly after CNN contacted him for comment about a new allegation regarding a sexual encounter with a 17-year-old girl.

Former and future President Donald Trump’s announcement that he intended to nominate Gaetz to head the Department of Justice sent shock waves even amidst breaking news about Trump’s other controversial nominees.

The firebrand from Florida’s deep-red Panhandle practiced law for only a short period of time and has no prosecutorial or judicial experience. Gaetz has also burned many a bridge during his tenure in the House — especially when he instigated a plot that ousted former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from the speakership last year.

And then there is Gaetz’s reported entanglement in a sprawling series of schemes and crimes that led to a House Ethics Committee investigation on allegations that he “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.” Gaetz has denied all wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crimes so far, but new reporting continued to reveal details about the allegations against him and, rumors continued to swirl about the potential release of the House Ethics report.

According to CNN chief legal correspondent Paula Reid, “we [CNN] called to say we were going to report that ‘Ethics committee told there was a *second* sexual encounter between Gaetz and 17 year old in 2017,'” and Gaetz withdrew 45 minutes later.

Reid reported on how the story unfolded on Inside Politics, telling anchor Dana Bash that Gaetz announced his withdrawal just before she was about to go on air to report on the story, and that she and CNN Capitol Hill reporter Sarah Ferris had just finalized their reporting “that the Ethics Committee had been informed of a second sexual encounter between Gaetz and the woman, who was just 17 years old at the time.”

According to Reid, this woman “had said the same thing consistently in a civil deposition,” and she and Ferris reached out to Gaetz’s team shepherding him through the nomination process to give them “the opportunity to weigh in.”

“They asked us to give them an hour. We did,” said Reid, explaining that they had told Gaetz’s team they would go live at 12:30 pm, “and about a moment before I was supposed to come on air and share the new reporting…we didn’t get a statement from Gaetz, and instead we got the statement saying that he was withdrawing as the attorney general pick.”

Reid summarized what the new reporting was that “the woman who is at the center of these allegations that he had sex with a minor, has told the ethics committee that when she was just 17, she had not one but two sexual encounters with Gaetz at a party in Florida. And that that sexual second encounter involved an adult woman.”

Bash thanked Reid for the report and then commented as her panel seemed stunned, “So it was an alleged threesome that included a minor. That’s what did it.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.