Florida Republican Matt Gaetz under investigation for possible relations with 17 year old girl

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

the fact the NYTimes is just saying this openly is NUTS

 

[SilverSamurai]

That's a wrap!

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

this dude cash app'd the hookers?

This dude is GARBAGE at the game

 

[MushroomX]

 

[Gains]

All that shyt he said about Gillum only for all of this to come out. I hope he falls hard.

I wouldn't doubt that foul play was involved in that situation

 

[BigMoneyGrip]

It’s getting worse by the day.. Mans might as well commit that which is the way I think he’s going

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sorvHlewejc

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

 

[Dr. Acula]

Feds looking at alleged payments Rep. Matt Gaetz made to women and online solicitation: Sources
Gaetz previously denied having a relationship with a 17-year-old.

ByAlexander Mallin,Mike Levine,John Santucci,Katherine Faulders, andWill Steakin
April 2, 2021, 12:03 AM
• 6 min read
Matt Gaetz is specifically looking into whether he and an associate in his home state of Florida provided cash or others things of value to women they had sex with after connecting online, The New York Times first reported Thursday evening and a source familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News.

Gaetz's associate, former local politician Joel Greenberg, was indicted last year for allegedly trafficking a teenage girl for sex in 2017, and the Justice Department is also trying to determine whether Gaetz had sex with the 17-year-old, according to sources. Greenberg pleaded not guilty to the charges.

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The details of the investigation were first reported by The New York Times, two days after the paper revealed that an investigation was underway. The disclosure has sent shockwaves through Republican circles, particularly among close associates of former President Donald Trump, who considered Gaetz a staunch ally and loyal friend.

Gaetz's office did not respond to a request for comment, but earlier this week Gaetz insisted on Fox News that he never "had a relationship with a 17-year-old," calling such allegations "totally false."

MORE: Matt Gaetz's controversial rise to MAGA stardom faces renewed scrutiny amid DOJ probe
According to the Times, investigators believe Greenberg met women through certain websites and introduced some of them to Gaetz. As recently as 2019 and 2020, Gaetz and Greenberg told women to meet them at hotels in Florida, laying out how much they were willing to pay beforehand, the newspaper said, adding that party drugs may have also been used by Gaetz and others at times.

"Matt Gaetz has never paid for sex," Gaetz's office said in a statement to The New York Times. "Matt Gaetz refutes all the disgusting allegations completely. Matt Gaetz has never ever been on any such websites whatsoever. Matt Gaetz cherishes the relationships in his past and looks forward to marrying the love of his life."

Sources told ABC News the investigation targeting Gaetz was launched last year, when Trump was still president. Then-Attorney General Bill Barr was briefed on the investigation's progress several times, the sources said.

previously reported by the Miami Herald.

MORE: In investigation of Rep. Gaetz's alleged sexual relationship with minor, feds looking beyond Florida, sources say
One source said Gaetz was often spotted trying to pick up young women at 101 Restaurant, a once-popular watering hole in Tallahassee for some lawmakers and students from nearby Florida State University.

Gaetz's office did not respond to a request for comment.

During an interview on Fox News, Gaetz claimed he was being extorted over the investigation and claimed that someone had alleged there were "pictures of me with child prostitutes," which he said was "obviously false."

"There will be no such pictures because no such thing happened. But really on March 16 was when this got going from the extortion standpoint," Gaetz said.

previously sparked controversy over repeatedly commenting on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's appearance, calling the New York congresswoman "attractive" multiple times and once referring to her as the "attractive lady from Queens."

Gaetz developed a reputation in the U.S. House of Representatives for often bragging to colleagues about his relationships with women, sources told ABC News.

Upon his arrival to Washington, sources said Gaetz was often seen with young women at various social events, including at the Trump Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Gaetz previously told Axios, "The allegations of sexual misconduct against me are false." When asked what the DOJ probe could be about, he added, "I have definitely, in my single days, provided for women I've dated. You know, I've paid for flights, for hotel rooms. I've been, you know, generous as a partner. I think someone is trying to make that look criminal when it is not."

 

[GnauzBookOfRhymes]

Joel Greenberg and U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz on at least one occasion several years ago were recorded together entering the Seminole County Tax Collector’s Office when it was closed on a weekend night, according to a person familiar with office operations who saw the videotape.

The person said the footage showed Greenberg and Gaetz walking into the Tax Collector’s Lake Mary office on Primera Drive. Greenberg was seen going through baskets where driver’s licenses, turned in by residents for disposal, were stored and later went into a back room, the person said.

CNN reported Thursday night the visit was revealed to federal authorities investigating Greenberg in January 2020. Gaetz has since become a target of investigators, who are probing whether an alleged relationship with a 17-year-old girl violated sex trafficking laws, according to reports.

Information about the weekend office visit was shared with the Orlando Sentinel before news broke this week about the Gaetz investigation.

A spokesman for the Tax Collector’s Office, Alan Byrd, told the Sentinel on Thursday that an employee also recalls seeing Greenberg and another man on security camera footage in the office after hours at least once several years ago. But he said the employee did not know who the second man was.

The Sentinel sought the video through public record requests but was told by the Tax Collector’s office that security video is only stored for 60 days. It’s unclear if federal authorities have obtained the footage.

The person who described the video to the Sentinel requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. The person told the Sentinel the late-night visit came to the attention of Greenberg’s staff after it was discovered the following Monday morning that a security alarm had been turned off.

Text messages that were viewed by the Sentinel showed an employee had later asked Greenberg if he’d visited the office that weekend, to which Greenberg replied via text that he had been, and was “showing congressman Gaetz what our operation looked like.”

“Did I leave something on?” Greenberg added in the texts. When told that the alarm was off, Greenberg apologized and said he’d “be more careful.”

The CNN report indicated the nighttime office visit occurred in 2019, but time stamps on the text messages seen by the Sentinel indicated it was in April 2018.

Gaetz, a Panhandle Republican who has not been charged with a crime, did not respond to a text message this week asking him about the late-night visit.

The office visit — and the description of Greenberg visiting the baskets of discarded licenses — is important because the basket of discarded IDs, which other agencies typically store securely until they’re destroyed, figure into some of the nearly three-dozen charges Greenberg faces.

An indictments states that Greenberg used his access as an elected official to look up information about a girl between the ages of 14 and 17 in a state database, in order “to produce a false identification document and to facilitate his efforts to engage in commercial sex acts.”

Federal prosecutors have said that customers visiting tax collector branches that issued driver’s licenses and Florida ID cards would sometimes surrender their old IDs to Greenberg’s staff to be destroyed. But Greenberg, prosecutors allege, “used his access to the Seminole County Tax Collector’s Office to take surrendered driver licenses before they were shredded.”

He then “used the surrendered driver licenses that he had taken to cause fake driver licenses to be produced that had his photograph but the personal information of the victims whose driver licenses he had taken.”

Authorities have said Greenberg had several stolen IDs in his work vehicle the day he was first arrested, on charges that he’d stalked a political rival, as well as a pair of fakes in his wallet and materials for making more in his office.

Inside his work vehicle, agents said they found a backpack, which held three licenses from Canada, Virginia and Florida, belonging to Seminole County residents who’d recently obtained new Florida licenses.

Employees of the Tax Collector’s office also told agents they’d seen Greenberg taking surrendered licenses from the “shred basket” prior to their destruction. When asked what he was doing, Greenberg gave fishy explanations — which federal authorities say were lies.

Greenberg has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against him, which also include allegations that he embezzled funds from his public office and sought fraudulent loans from a COVID-19 relief program.

 

[acri1]

Maybe four years of Trump has made me slightly cynical but it's still hard for me to believe that anything is going to happen to him.

Sounds like he'll probably just retire from politics, maybe pay a settlement, and get a job at Newsmax or something.

 

[BigMoneyGrip]

People don’t have to figure out that the feds ar Greenburg dead to rights... So you already know he’s yappin to cut a deal and is snitching on Gaetz

 

[MushroomX]

Didn't Zuckerberg do this shyt pre-Facebook at Harvard in terms of scoring girls on Campus?

 

[Rain]

Gaetz out here like "I've never paid for sex...the only thing I've ever done is pay for dinner. Now, what my date and I decided to do after dinner is between us "

 

[King Theo]

Maybe four years of Trump has made me slightly cynical but it's still hard for me to believe that anything is going to happen to him.

Sounds like he'll probably just retire from politics, maybe pay a settlement, and get a job at Newsmax or something.

here is the part im having a hard time wrapping my head around. if the feds have all of this as fact why not put his ass in some cuffs like yesterday. do investigation go on this long for this type of stuff. if it was a regular citizen it seems they wouldve been brought in at the very least for questioning by now. i wanna see him do the perp walk out of teh capitol!

its not like hes doing something technically legal and morally wrong. hes doing illegal and morally wrong shyt hes cant escape this unless they have a way to discredit this. this guy needs to be in cuffs.