The House Ethics Committee released a report on Gaetz in December 2024 after four years of investigating allegations of sexual misconduct with several women, including a minor, and use of illicit drugs. Gaetz reiterated his denial of the allegations when discussing them with Maher on his podcast, and the host defended his discussion with Gaetz, saying he wanted to find the truth about the allegations and anyone who does not desire to know the truth is a “hack.”

“The Justice Department, this is Biden’s Justice Department, declined — I can’t believe Biden’s Justice Department wouldn’t have wanted to get you if there was something,” Maher said on his podcast, Club Random with Bill Maher. “So the fact that they said ‘We got nothing’ tells me something, that they had nothing. Now, I don’t know what anybody does behind closed doors, there’s lots of scandals about lots of people, but I got to go with … that.”

Gaetz’s attorneys issued a statement in February 2023 revealing that the Justice Department would not bring any charges against him after concluding its investigation into his allegations.

Gaetz also denied accusations that he had met with women on websites Seeking Arrangements or Sugar Dating, stating he had “never had a dating profile” online. He also pointed to Seeking Arrangements’s statement declaring that Gaetz had never used its website, to which Maher revealed he “never read that” when looking into the stories on Gaetz.

.@billmaher asked me about meeting women on Seeking Arrangements, because media reports led him to believe I had.

I reminded him I never have, as confirmed by Seeking Arrangements.

It was quite a moment. https://t.co/4mCQKW1FHG pic.twitter.com/1sB3FmL8lI

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) January 26, 2025

Maher then suggested that it was possible the media had left this information from Seeking Arrangements out when covering this story, which the comedian described as “one of my biggest complaints” with the news media. He described it as lying “by omission” when an outlet will “cherry-pick” what information to include in a story, forcing him to read “both sides” when researching the news, a process he said “just sucks.”

Since leaving Congress last year after being nominated to be President Donald Trump’s attorney general before withdrawing his name, Gaetz has started his own show on One America News Network, simply titled The Matt Gaetz Show. The former congressman has also announced the launch of a new podcast titled Over the Line with Matt Gaetz, which aims to discuss entertainment and current events.

The former lawmaker has also hinted at launching a gubernatorial bid in Florida’s 2026 election, as Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is term-limited. Gaetz confirmed earlier this month that he is “starting to think” about the possibility, claiming that he is “the most pro-consumer candidate on the Republican side.”