Unauthorized Person Accessed Unredacted Depositions Against Matt Gaetz

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Gaetz said the allegations are untrue, and a Trump transition team spokesperson said they are baseless and intended to derail Trump’s second term.

An unknown person gained access to documents from a legal case that included depositions from a woman who said former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.)—President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general—had sexual relations with her when she was 17, according to a lawyer involved in the litigation.

Attorneys involved in the civil case brought by a Gaetz associate were notified of the unauthorized access this week. according to attorney Joel Leppard, who represented a client involved in the case. The files, which had been shared between lawyers, included unredacted depositions from both the woman and a second woman who claimed she saw the alleged encounter.

The email notifying the lawyers about the apparent hack says a person named “Altam Beezley” downloaded the files and that when an attorney emailed the person to ask them to identify themselves, the email was returned because the email address was not found.

The files the person was able to access were part of a defamation case filed by a Gaetz associate against Gaetz’s onetime political ally Joel Greenberg. Gaetz was not part of the lawsuit involving the files.

Other lawyers involved in the case did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump recently announced he is selecting Gaetz as his attorney general, pending confirmation by the Senate once Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20, 2025. Gaetz then resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives.

A spokesperson for the Trump transition said in a statement to news outlets that the allegations against Gaetz are baseless and intended to derail Trump’s second term. Trump told reporters on Nov. 19 that he was not reconsidering his attorney general nomination.

Gaetz has said he did not have sex with a minor or engage in any other wrongdoing. Federal prosecutors investigated allegations against Gaetz and ultimately brought no charges.

The lawsuit was brought by Gaetz’s friend and developer Chris Dorworth in 2023 against Greenberg and others. Dorworth said Greenberg threatened him as part of a plot to secure a pardon for himself after pleading guilty in 2021 to child sex trafficking and other charges. Greenberg is serving an 11-year prison sentence.

Dorworth dropped the case in September. Shortly after, a lawyer representing Greenberg and other defendants asked the court to permit them to file documents that had been under a confidentiality agreement on the public docket, arguing Dorworth had waived confidentiality designations by not going to the court to keep them in place. That lawyer was among those who did not respond to requests for comment. Lawyers for Dorworth, in a response to the motion, urged the court to keep the documents confidential. The court has not yet ruled on the motion.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.