Republican Mike Beltran, a former Florida legislator running to flip the state’s 14th Congressional District, filed a defamation lawsuit against a woman who had been trafficked as a teen — part of his legal work for an associate of Matt Gaetz who is being accused alongside the former congressman of participating in an alleged sex trafficking scheme.
Court records show that in 2023, Beltran filed a defamation lawsuit on behalf of Chris Dorworth, a former Republican state legislator and lobbyist, claiming that the woman had falsely testified against Dorworth and defamed him in statements to federal law enforcement officials.
The woman in Beltran and Dorworth’s lawsuit, which was dropped in 2024, is the same person whom a bipartisan House Ethics Committee probe found Gaetz had sex with as a minor in 2017 at Dorworth’s home. Neither Gaetz nor Dorworth has been charged with a crime, and both have vehemently denied wrongdoing. Beltran has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with the matter.
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“Our country was founded on the bedrock that everyone is innocent until proven guilty and entitled to a defense in a court of law,” Beltran campaign spokesman Will Hampson said in a statement.
Hampson criticized The 19th for reporting on Beltran’s work representing Dorworth and said Beltran was carrying out his “constitutionally mandated duty.”
Beltran is challenging Rep. Kathy Castor, who earlier this year was redistricted into a Republican-leaning seat that voted for Donald Trump by 11 points in 2024. With just days until the midterm elections, Florida Republicans’ plans to easily flip this Tampa-area seat are on shaky ground, as polling shows a close race between Castor and Beltran.
Beltran’s connection to Dorworth and to the allegations facing Gaetz and his associates is notable amid an election cycle that has seen both parties scrutinize candidates’ records on sex crime cases and links to sex offenders. Democrats in particular have focused much of their attention this cycle on voters frustrated about what they perceive as a government rife with corruption and injustice, from the pervasive nature of abuse against women to the government’s handling of accusations against the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Allegations of misconduct involving women have swirled around Gaetz for years. A bipartisan House Ethics Committee probe found in 2024 that there was “substantial evidence” that Gaetz had sex with a minor, solicited prostitutes and used illegal drugs after he was elected to Congress in 2016.
According to the panel’s report, Dorworth’s home was the site of a July 2017 party during which Gaetz twice had sex with a 17-year-old who had just completed her junior year of high school and was paid by Gaetz for the encounter. The report established that the teen at the center of the allegations against Gaetz is the same victim at the center of a child sex trafficking conviction of Gaetz associate Joel Greenberg, who pleaded guilty in 2022.
She’s also the same victim Dorworth went on to sue in 2023 with Beltran’s help.
The lawsuit, filed in Florida state court and later moved to federal district court, alleged that the victim, referred to as “A.B.” was “a minor for relevant time periods in this matter, conspired with [Greenberg’s] family and defamed him,” the lawsuit reads in a filing signed by Beltran. The lawsuit sought damages from Greenberg’s family and from the victim.
From the filing of the original complaint in April 2023 until he was replaced as Dorworth’s counsel in August of 2024, Beltran filed more than two dozen motions, responses and notices as part of the case, according to court records. On the same day that Beltran was formally replaced as counsel on the case, Dorworth, through another lawyer, asked the court to dismiss the sex trafficking victim from the case, saying that he and the victim’s lawyers had “reached a resolution of this matter.”
Beltran’s campaign said Beltran hasn’t been involved with Dorworth since 2024, and no longer represents or speaks for him.
Beltran served three terms in the Florida legislature before declining to run for reelection in 2024 to focus on growing his law practice. At the time, the Florida Republican touted work to “limit government and protect the unborn.” In his campaign for Congress, Beltran is touting himself as a fiscal conservative willing to defy his own party.
Dorworth is one of the three defendants in a civil lawsuit filed in Florida earlier this month, which alleges that Gaetz, Dorworth and Greenberg coordinated the recruitment of young women for sex that the men facilitated with drugs between 2017 and 2019 — while Gaetz was still serving in Congress.
Gaetz has strongly denied allegations of sexual misconduct for years. In a statement to the Miami Herald earlier this month, which first reported on the newly filed lawsuit, Gaetz vowed to defend himself in court and said he will finally have the chance to “confront my accusers.”
The Justice Department had been investigating Gaetz since at least 2021. In February 2023, the agency said it would not bring charges against the Florida Republican, Gaetz lawyers said. Multiple news outlets, including the New York Times, citing people familiar with the investigation, reported that the agency decided against charges out of concern that the central witness would be seen as credible before a jury.
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