Lance Gooden has had a week.

Earlier in the week, the House Ethics Committee announced it was investigating him. Days later, a Dallas philanthropist filed a federal defamation lawsuit naming him and Matt Gaetz as defendants.

The suit, reported by the Dallas Observer, is about a March 2026 episode of The Matt Gaetz Show on One America News Network. Gooden appeared in a pre-recorded interview.

What the lawsuit says happened

The plaintiff is Mark Patrick, a Dallas philanthropist. According to his complaint, the broadcast accused him of committing "perhaps the largest financial charity fraud in the history of this country" and of personally enriching himself with money meant for charity.

The suit says Gaetz and Gooden used words like "criminal," "fraudster," and "confidence man." It says the show ran photographs of Patrick and identified him as a Dallas resident. After that, Patrick says he had to file a complaint with local police about someone tampering with his vehicle.

Here's the part that matters most.

Patrick had faced a lawsuit the year before over moving funds out of a Cayman Islands charitable foundation — money intended for groups including the DFW Charitable Foundation. Patrick's position was that the restructuring protected those funds from a third party.

The Grand Court of the Cayman Islands agreed with him. It ruled there was "no serious issue to be tried." The judicial officer wrote that he was "unpersuaded that there is real risk that [charitable] assets will be diminished or otherwise unlawfully dealt with."

That ruling came out a month before the broadcast.

Patrick's complaint argues that Gaetz therefore had every ability to know Patrick had never been charged with or convicted of anything. The broadcast, the suit says, caused him "shame, embarrassment, humiliation and severe mental pain and anguish," and interfered with his organization's charitable mission.

Being fair about where this stands

This is a lawsuit, not a verdict. No court has ruled the broadcast was defamatory, and Gooden is entitled to defend himself. Texas has a strong anti-SLAPP statute that lets defendants seek early dismissal of speech-related suits, and this case may never get past that stage.

But notice what an anti-SLAPP dismissal would and wouldn't settle. It would decide whether the case can proceed. It would not establish that what Gooden said was true.

And the underlying question doesn't require a jury to think about. A sitting member of Congress went on cable television and helped brand a private citizen a criminal — a month after a court had looked at the same facts and found nothing worth trying.

He has a habit of doing this to people

This is not the first time Gooden has used his platform to point a finger at a specific person.

In February 2023, he went on Fox News and said of Rep. Judy Chu — the first Chinese American woman elected to Congress — "I question her either loyalty or competence," and suggested she should lose her security clearance. Chu called the remarks racist. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries called them "dangerous, unconscionable and xenophobic."

At Trump's March 2025 address to Congress, Gooden grabbed a "This is not normal" sign out of Rep. Melanie Stansbury's hands and threw it behind him on the House floor.

Fox News hit. Grabbing a colleague's sign. OAN taping. It's the same reflex every time: the camera is the job.

And then there's the ethics investigation

Gooden's other problem this week is that the House Ethics Committee has opened a matter involving him. The committee didn't say what it's about — that's standard, and an investigation is not a finding.

Gooden didn't wait to find out. As we wrote earlier this week, his response was to go on television and dismiss it as "bogus spending allegations."

That's the tell. When somebody else is accused, Gooden is happy to say "criminal" and "fraudster" on national TV before any court has weighed in. When he is the one under review, the standard becomes: wait, the charges are bogus, this proves nothing.

Both of those can't be right.

What Texas 5 isn't getting

Gooden represents Texas's 5th District, which takes in part of Dallas County. He is in his fourth term.

He doesn't hold public town halls — constituents in Garland have noted that he'll meet with local Republican groups but not with everyone. He has time for a cable taping about a stranger's charity, and no time for a room in Garland.

A federal court will decide whether Mark Patrick has a case. Voters get to decide something separate: whether a man who talks like this about people he doesn't know is the right person to speak for them.

Source

Emma Ruby, "Matt Gaetz, Texas congressman named in defamation lawsuit brought by Dallas man", Dallas Observer, July 31, 2026. Photo: Official congressional portrait.