The Daily Beast Podcast - FEVER DREAMS: How ‘Wannabe’ Instagram Models Kneecapped Matt Gaetz

Episode Date: May 13, 2021

If the federal investigation into Matt Gaetz does indeed end up spelling the MAGA congressman’s downfall, it’ll be partly because of a group of wannabe Instagram influencers. On this week’s episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast, hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng welcome fellow Beast reporters Jose Pagliery and Roger Sollenberger, the duo that’s been breaking story after story on the Gaetz scandal in recent weeks. The pair reveal new details on the Gaetz saga that haven’t been publicly released before, including additional passages from the confession letter secretly written by disgraced Gaetz wingman Joel Greenberg, and sent to Trump associate and longtime GOP ratfucker Roger Stone. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, new abnormal listeners. This is new abnormal producer Jesse Cannon. And what you're about to hear is this special treat. This is the latest episode of fever dreams. And we drop this in your feed because we think you're really going to enjoy this one. This one has some really, really juicy stuff that's lighting up cable news right now, all about the latest on everyone's least favorite congressman, Matt Gates. So I hope you enjoy this episode.

And if you do enjoy it, get subscribed to fever dreams by searching for it in your favorite podcast app. That's fever dreams. I hope you enjoy this. Hey guys. This is Aswin Tsub Singh, but please call me Swin and welcome to the Daily Beast's fever dreams. Hi, I'm Will Summer, a politics reporter at The Daily Beast, where I dig into all the darkest recesses of American extremism and extremely online militants. I'm currently working on a book about QAnon and its disastrous impact on our society. I'm also a senior political reporter at The Beast and co-author of the book Sinking in the Swamp. I've spent years covering the intersection of entertainment in politics. And in the post-Trump era, that seems like the only sensible way to cover politics

in this beautiful, hideously stupid country of ours. On this podcast, we're going to take you on deeply reported plunges into the sometimes hilarious, sometimes scary fanatics infecting the way that millions of Americans view the world and how they vote. Even in the aftermath of the Trump administration, the energy of these conspiracy theorists, the grifters, and the influencers is still pushing our mainstream political landscape closer and closer to a breaking point. We're here to help you better understand how and why this is happening. And who in the halls of power are letting it happen? Along the way, we'll regularly bring on guests, including political pros, hard-nosed reporters, and some influential voices from Hollywood. Well, we got to talk about Greg Kelly and

his pants. For listeners who aren't completely initiated into this, Greg Kelly is a Newsmax host. Newsmax obviously being a very, very Trumpy right-wing media and cable news network, who's not just one of the most pro-Trump people in conservative media, but also almost painstakingly tries to emulate the former president in every way possible, whether it's in his tweets. Yeah, it's kind of a single white female situation. Right, right. Like Trump needs to watch his back.

He says like, you know, Greg Kelly's going to come in with the, you know, the tan and everything one day. Funny, like, don't get me wrong. I get a lot of, like, sick amusement out of it, particularly in his tweets, even in his mannerisms when he's on a TV broadcast on Newsmax TV. He's kind of moving his lips and his hands as if he's some version or pantomime of Donald J. Trump. But anyway, getting on that topic, one of his recent tweets, Will, do you want to read this?

I'm not sure I could get through reading it with a straight face. So, Feverdream's listeners may remember that a special project of this podcast is figuring out whether Greg Kelly's Twitter persona is a bit. And I think after this pant incident, I think it is clear that it is a bit and we will collect our winning. So basically, the backstory here is, and Greg Kelly shows up, it looks like he's gallant. or Trump was just golfing, or I guess Trump just kind of always dressed like he's golfing. But so, and Greg Kelly's hanging out with him and they're giving a thumbs up. And the picture of Greg Kelly tweets to describe his outfit, I mean, from top down, right,

it's like kind of a classic like country club Republican. It's kind of like CPAC casual, I guess. It's like a blue button down shirt with it's not a button down collar. It's just like a regular collar. And then a Navy blazer. It looks so fucking stupid. The fit's not terrible. I mean, for like a kind of like a Republican persona.

But then we like it kind of goes to hell. around the waistline. So we get these, right? And so I should also say there's these black, I think, Farragama loafers, which like, it doesn't really go with the khaki, but whatever. So he's wearing these khaki pants,

but they're like, they're like, basically like pants like a rapper would wear or like, um, like someone in Soho. Like they're just like, they're just like, like really, number one,

they're really tight, which is kind of a weird look for like a middle age news anchor. And they have like a, they have like a pouch on them and then they have a bunch of zippers. I mean, it's just like, it looks like he just got like off doing like Zana and recording a SoundCloud rap.

And inexplicably, he's wearing these to meet the president. And so everyone was dunking on him. And then Greg Kelly goes, oh, well, you know, first of all, these turn out to be $1,500 Balmain in pants. And so he goes, everyone busting my crackers over the pants. And this is all with Trumpian sort of punctuation and capitalization. Pants is in quote marks for some reason. I mean, they're literally pants.

You don't need any quote marks. They are pants. Partially my fault because I called attention to them with the bugle boy comment. says something about Bugle Boy. The truth is they're Balmain, the most prestigious branded pants. My shoes are by Farragamo. Basically, I'm a sharp-dressed man. Thank you. I mean, this is like at Balmain headquarters. They're like, oh, God, we're ruined. Okay. And look, I'm looking at the photo right now of him and Trump in these pants. I'm very generous when it comes to how a man or a woman is dressed, particularly during the pandemic. But he looks like piss. I highly encourage, especially for

someone who's out about meeting the 45th president of the United States trying to look, you know, country club chic of some point, like put a little bit more effort into this. And like, I highly encourage all of our listeners to actually Google what the hell we're talking about because it is a little mesmerizing. He's not literally in a clown outfit or anything like that. It's like an all-time bad fit. I mean, if he wants to like go like full avant-garde, like if we're going to start seeing Greg Kelly like rocking some Rick Owens and stuff, I mean, I think that sounds fantastic to me, but he's kind of trying to square the circle here. He's trying to have it both way. And, uh, and like, especially like, do you think Trump, like, I think Trump's like like a pretty

fashion focused guy? I mean, I feel like he'd be like, Greg, you know, what are you doing, man? That's the thing. Trump, during his presidency and before it was known to pick on some of his top lieutenants and like really senior people in his administration, if he didn't like, if they coughed or sneezed too much, or if he thought they looked like an idiot or if, like, a female official's makeup was off. There is a roughly 0 to 0.4% chance that Trump didn't at least gleefully somewhat rip on Greg for the way he looked that day.

And you know, I want to take this step further, right? We talk about Greg Kelly's Twitter presence being a bit, and I think at this point it clearly is. But what this suggests to me is that Craig Kelly is dressing to get roasted, right? And so, like, he was at, like, a store, and he was like, what if I wore those insane pants to meet Trump? And then I posted it in everyone,

roasted me. So I wonder if this is deliberately now playing into Greg Kelly's real life. Okay, there are two ends of the extremely online Trumpian spectrum in that universe. At the extreme of one end, you have Sep Gorka, who I really don't think delights in the people trying to troll him on Twitter or calling into his radio show or stuff like that. Like, he hates it. You can feel the, every once a while he tries to put on a brave face and smile and kind of troll them back. But you can tell he does not delight in so many people making fun of the size of his head or his accent or just anything just supremely goofy about him. On the completely opposite end of the spectrum, you have Greg Kelly, who, as you point out,

I really do think delights in just having these online pile-ons on him. Like, he just loves being called a pig and a maga dip shit, who dresses funny, who can't tweet a single sentence without having like a brain aneurysm. Like, he loves it. The more you just make fun of him and run. rip on him and give him more attention. He's just smiling behind the keyboard. Greg Kelly, come on the show anytime. You are welcome anytime if you're listening to this. It's ultimately right. I mean, I think this plays into this idea that particularly if you're a conservative personality, you kind of need to be

dunked on in order, unless you have like a Fox News show, but you need, but even then, I mean, you need to be dunked on in order to become broader than just say, newsmax, right? And so I think Greg Kelly is like playing this right. Like, I mean, there's a reason every, knows, or a lot of people who wouldn't be politically minded know like Tommy Lauren's name or Caitlin Bennett the gun girl or Jacob Wool, to use another example. Because these are kind of, they have kind of buffoonish personas and there's always kind of a bit that people do to dunk on them. And so I think Greg Kelly is trying to fit into that zone because there's a lot of people on like right wing media who don't get dunked on a lot and are pretty influential on the right, but whose names mean

nothing to the average person. And so I think like, you know, if Greg can kind of parlay this into some attention, you know, it'll be for the best. For him, not for us. Speaking of MAGA-related lunacy, let's transition to a topic where there's actually more real-world impact than what Greg Kelly is tweeting about. As much humor and joy as we get out, that this is something that is decidedly less. I think you underestimate Greg's, uh, Greg's influence in the fashion world, but okay. Fair. I'll eat my words. But, well, you've been doing a good amount of reporting recently on not just the audit fever on the right. not just places in like in Arizona, they've been getting a lot more press coverage recently,

but how it is actually spreading nationally to places like a small town in New Hampshire that has gotten the attention of Donald Trump, some of his top officials, and other honchos in the Republican Party and in mainstream conservative media. And it's this small town in New Hampshire where Republicans won. And yet it is becoming the next dress rehearsal for how this war against, let's face, it voting and democratic norms is continuing to spread nationally. This just will not die. And the next incubator for it is in this small town of New Hampshire where Republicans already cleaned up. They already won. Right. I mean, it's hard to, you know, overstate too much how much these

recounts and these audits, like, are the story right now in right wing media. Like, there's really not a lot of, like, policy engagement. There's not a lot of, like, reactions to Biden, like, proposals. I mean, it's really all about these audits right now. And so, yeah, so you mentioned Arizona. where the news was that they're looking for bamboo fibers because they believe that the ballots may have been manufactured in Asia. I mean, there's really kind of crazy stuff. It's like, you know, like a panda made the ballot. But more recently, as you mentioned, I mean, in New Hampshire, so here's the backstory in New Hampshire. Like, so there was this state rep race in November, and there were four seats available. I think there were eight candidates. This is in Wyndham, New Hampshire, which is a small town.

Like, when you say small, is it like 500? Is it like 14,000 people? So I guess maybe it's not that small. So, right, so there were four seats available. The four Republican candidates won the seat. This Democratic candidate was, she lost by 24 votes initially. And so she said, well, I want to recount. Then when they did the recount, they found that she had actually lost by 99 votes or her loss increased by 99 votes. It turns out the Republican candidates had been shorted about 300 votes each.

So there is something weird going on here with the ballot count. Is it something with the machine? Is it something with the initial count? Who knows? But the state legislature there and the governor, there was this bipartisan push that said, okay, let's do an audit. But this kind of niche state rep race issue has now become in the larger magosphere, like it's kind of the camel's nose under the tent in terms of maybe we can this,

maybe if, you know, these state rats were shorted 300 votes. Maybe Donald Trump was shorted 100,000 votes. Right. We can extrapolate from that. Right. And really, I mean, I don't think the people involved here. I mean, Donald Trump is talking about this in his random Mar-a-Lago speeches. He's tweeting about it on his blog or whatever you want to call.

all that thing. I mean, the idea here is just generally like, let's like screw with the election. But things are getting pretty rowdy. And I just want to be clear, this, unlike places like Arizona or Michigan, where Trumpian partisans are still hollering on about it and alleged and fictitious voter fraud conspiracies, this is New Hampshire, where Donald Trump was not expected to win anyway this time around. And it has four fucking electoral votes. Right. I mean, he lost by roughly six. 60,000 votes. So now what's going on is, so the town, there's going to be three auditors, and the town selectmen, or would you like their town council, they get to appoint one of the

auditors. And so they went with a guy who seems to be like a pretty reasonable audit guy with a lot history auditing elections and looking at voting machines. But of course, that's not going to fly. Because for the Trump supporters in town, you can't have the deep state running this audit. So right. And kind of their main beef with him is that he said he signed on this thing with a bunch of other people that said the Arizona audit, which I think has turned out to be a real crackpot operation, that he said, you know, this was dumb and they didn't need it. And so now they're saying, well, this guy, if he didn't like the Arizona audit, he's not going to give us mini Arizona here. And so instead, this town is getting riotous because they want another gentleman, Jovon

Pulitzer, who is sort of an itinerant ballot character who's kind of popping up in all of these election audits. He's involved in Arizona. And this guy is a pretty interesting character. Okay, we'll recount to our audience what your interaction with Jovan, Yovan, I hope I'm pronouncing his name correctly. It's Jovan, yeah. Great, Jovan. Because it's not just what is in his public profile. It's the way he acts when you're dealing with him on a one-on-one basis. I mean, it shouldn't surprise anyone at this point, but you'd think that the average person, especially someone trying allegedly, ostensibly, supposedly trying to figure out the integrity of a presidential election in their state.

would turn to someone maybe not quite like this, someone who doesn't remind you necessarily of a Dana Carvey Masters of Disguise character? Right. So, so, so, so, so, so, so Javanna's is, he's got an interesting background. He's kind of this character in the first tech boom. He invented this scanner that shaped like a cat that you were supposed to, you know, basically you'd sit at your computer and scan things in a magazine or a book. And this, I mean, this raised a ton of money. It didn't really go anywhere because people didn't, you know, they, they, they weren't really interested in this kind of cat thing. He became a treasure hunter, and I have to say he's very defensive about his reputation as a treasure hunter, but he claimed to have found this. You challenged him on some of these things. Right, right.

I mean, people have said, you know, he claimed to have found an ancient Roman sword on this island in Canada. It was a whole history channel show. But a lot of experts said, you know, this is not an ancient Roman sword. He insisted it's legitimate. But more recently, after the election, he emerged with what he claimed was this technology that could detect ballot fold. And the, you know, that might seem kind of random, but the, there's kind of this holistic sense of ballots amongst kind of Trump 2020 dead enders that like, if only we had a way to detect the fake ballots.

And so they've sort of seized on this as like, if it isn't folded right, it's a fake ballot. So they've gotten really into this, basically. And so this is sort of, after all of these other audits have failed to find any proof of fraud. A lot of people have seized on Jovan as the guy who's going to do it. And so in Wyndham, the Trump supporters there, hundreds of them flocked to this selectman meeting and got incredibly mad that Jovan had not been selected. We want Javon.

We want Javon. No, I mean, they're holding signs that are like, Javan, Javan. And, but I mean, Javon gets very like, I was trying to ask him, like, has his technology ever been used before in ballot counts? And he gets very defensive and he says, well, I can't say that because of NDAs. And I'm like, okay, so I'm going to say you can't say that. And, you know, he gets really mad. And so, I mean, there was a point where I said, are you involved in the Arizona

ballot count or the audit there? And the people in Arizona have said he's involved. So I'm trying to get a sense of how involved is he. He was one of the first bamboo guys, for example. And I said to him, I was like, so are you involved in this? And he said, well, certainly it would be your right to say that. And I said, well, but would that be accurate? And he's, you know, he's kind of hanging on the line.

And then he's like, well, like, I understand what English is. And I mean, it's just very like. He's a succession character testifying before the U.S. Congress. Right. He's being embraced by these people, but I think he's very reluctant to engage with anyone who might look outside of the kind of Trump world. And so this kind of hit its sort of absurd point where I guess he says this a lot. I mean, Jovan just he looks like a middle-aged guy, like a white guy who, a guy who might be involved with computers.

I don't particularly think of him as a kind of outlandish-looking character. But he gave me this quote where he said he's like, you know, people love me because I'm this, I'm like this nerd and this geek, but I'm trapped in a biker's body. And I thought, what? A biker? Look, I've seen sons. I've seen sons of anarchy. You know, this guy doesn't look like he's out trading arms or like putting down Mayan snitches or something. But like, and so I emailed him. And, you know, this is a guy who has kind of nitpicked our coverage before and, you know, really wants it to be nailed down. And, you know, of course, as do we. And so I said to him, I was like, I just want to make sure that I heard.

You said you have a biker's body? And he goes, yes, I say this all the time that I have a biker's body. I say this all the time. And then he sends me Google image results. So he types in geek and nerd. And so, you know, it's kind of these pencil neck screenshots. And then he sends me a biker's body and it's, you know, guys covered with tattoos and like wearing like leather vests and stuff.

And he was like, clearly I am the third. And like, look, I don't mean to, you know, interrupt Javan's self-conception of himself. But I don't know, man. And so, I mean, this is kind of, this is the guy that they really want. And the other thing I would say since my story ran on Monday is, I mean, there's some serious money behind this thing. I mean, this effort to get Javon into Wyndham has raised, I think, 60 grand so far. And people are like petitioning.

We have to have Jovan, all this stuff. And yet there's really, I mean, there's basically no way that this is going to happen. There's no legal app. Two things. First of all, I'm not sure you have said anything on this show that more accurately encapsulated in my mind what the Republican and Trump base voter is more than Jovan talking about how he has a biker body. Like, if you want to imagine what your average Trump and therefore Republican voter in the base is today, Just think of Will's monologue there. Secondly, I know there is a temptation, even from some of our listeners, to hear about this stuff

and look at and think, okay, yeah, this is a fringy thing. It's kind of funny. But how many, America is a gigantic country. How many people could actually buy this or actually go along with it or believe in it? I mean, just one pseudo-data point, I guarantee you that older person who you know doesn't like Joe Biden, who gets all their news from Facebook, knows about this. They may not know Jovan by name, but it is hard to overstate how much this has proliferated on not just mainstream, well, maybe not mainstream, but right-wing news channels, but on right-wing media online. This stuff has been everywhere for weeks.

This guy is like an internet folk hero. It's crazy. Someone wrote a song about him. And so it goes like, Jovan, you're our brave heart. Like, Jovan, you're going to save the country. I mean, it's just surreal. I made an error, and I have to. correct the record to our audience and to you. I said earlier on this episode that Javan saying

he's built like a biker is the perfect representation of your average Trump voter today. I miscalculated. It is this guy who you have been following named Dan Rodmer, who keeps getting in scuffles at Waffle Houses and then loses an election in Arizona. That is the perfect representation of the Donald Trump base. So I apologize to our listeners. This is actually what you should think of when you're trying to just get into that space of your mind that shows you where a huge chunk of America is today. Will, can you tell us more about Mr. Dan Rodimer for people who have no idea what the hell I'm talking about? Yeah, so Dan Rodimer is a, you know, a really interesting character. He's kind of from this like post-Trump or Trump era thing where

it was like, you know, any sort of claimed any sort of celebrity was like, maybe I'll become a politician. So Dan Rodhamer used to be a wrestler in WWE under the name Dan Rodman and there's really no relation to Dennis Rodman. My sense is he had an all right career in WWE. And then last year he emerged as a guy running for Congress in Arizona. And to give you a sense of his competition, you know, he was also running against this woman, Mindy Robinson, who's kind of a, you know, like a sea list movie actress, whatever. I mean, they both ended up losing the primary, I believe. Okay, so he's running in Arizona, right? So theoretically, you would think he's an Arizona resident? Well, not quite. So in Texas's sixth district, a special election opened up this year,

after the gentleman who won the race, died of COVID. And so Dan, then, there's reporting that he, this was such a last minute decision. He had to, like, charter a flight to turn in his registration on time. And he just, like, registered as a candidate in Texas just a couple minutes ahead. And so, so he had this, the highlight of his Texas race, which came to a head last week, was that he kind of was suddenly like, I'm a real Texan guy. So in Arizona, his voice was like, almost like, it was almost like he was, like, trying to play it down.

Like he was just like, Hey, folks, I'm Dan Rodimer. Don't talk about how I'm a wrestler. I'm just a politics guy now. And then in, he's like wearing a tie. And then in his, so in this ad in the Texas Sixth District, he's like an extra in Dallas Buyers Club. He's like, hey, so he's in, he's riding a bull.

And he's like, hey, folks, I'm Big Dan Rodiver. And I'm going to kick Congress's ass. And all this. I love this guy. He should be president. I mean, he's talking like he just. got off the Chisholm trail. And unfortunately, I must say, though, if you wanted a faux cowboy to really, you know, take on Nancy Pelosi, Dan came in 11th last week with 2.7% of the vote.

Oh, 2.7 isn't bad. You couldn't get 2.7% of the vote in Arizona, will. Or in Texas. Yeah. Or in Texas. Yeah. No, even a native son such as myself. You know, I'm looking at some of his other ads in this Texas race. And frankly, this is like, this is like really like, it's a culture, not a costume for Texans. Because, like, so he had an ad where he was helicopter sniping pigs. So, like, you know, wild hog. So he's, like, sniping them from a helicopter.

And he's wearing, like, a cowboy shirt and a cowboy hat. And it's like, you, I mean, you literally had to charter, you know, you just flew here, you know, to file your, but obviously the Texans were not falling for it. Okay. So tell us a little bit about his platform, besides that he is a wrestler,

but isn't a wrestler. How, I'm guessing, and maybe this is prejudicial someone, one of me, that he is extremely pro-Trump. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, he loves Trump. I mean, that's really the case right now, particularly in these primaries. You know, it's, it's like who loves Trump the most. That was his big thing in Arizona, was I believe one of his opponents had once criticized Trump. In these primaries in particular, and I say this, but I mean, Dan didn't win, so take this what you will. It's about the attitude, right? I mean, it's like we're going

to have this former wrestler and he's going to take down Medicare for all from the top road. But, I mean, for me, Dan, he's such an interesting character because he's a guy with like kind of an interesting criminal record. He has this history of like kind of getting in low level scuffles. And for me, I think the most interesting one was when I reported on, I believe last year when he was running in Arizona, which was this, this scuffle in a waffle house. This was when he was, he was in law school in this, I believe, like a Christian law school. And it was this like late night Waffle House scuffle. And, you know, this guy's a former wrestler. So he's a, you know, he's pretty jacked. And his version of it when I talked to him was, well, a buddy of

mine came in, we went into the Waffle House, and my buddy was wearing my former wrestling outfit. Now, this sounds like a believable story, right, folks? So who wouldn't want to wear someone else's like leotard? I don't have you. And so, so he's like, my buddy was wearing my wrestling outfit and, you know, some bullies at the Waffle House were, you know, causing trouble. So, you know, I had to step in and defend, you know, I guess my wrestling butt or guy in my outfit. The police report paints a rather different story. According to the police and some witnesses, Dan was, I believe, rather inebriated

and was really persistently hitting on some women at the Waffle House. And when Dan was encouraged by one of their male friends to stop bothering the women, he kind of just went wild on the dude and kind of knocked him around the Waffle House. Yeah, there's no mention of a wrestling outfit. Okay, if that account is the accurate one,

good job to local hero who stood up to Dan Rodhamber. Yeah, this guy was like, I think, six years. Or, right, to try to shield the poor women's honor. Yes, good for him. I like this guy. He's literally the version of that meme where it's like this guy, you know, starts hitting on your girl at the club. You know, what are you doing?

I mean, there are all kinds of places where you can get into embarrassing, drunken late-night fights in this vast country of ours. I'm not sure I can think of a more pathetic place to do it than a fucking Waffle House. All right. We're joined now by The Daily Beast Crack Reporter. on the unfolding scandal surrounding Representative Matt Gates. Jose Pallieri is the politics investigations reporter for The Daily Beast, and Roger Salenberger is a politics reporter here,

and they're both relatively new additions to the team, but they have been knocking out scoops on the investigation into Matt Gates' alleged conduct with a disgrace tax collector, including allegations that Gates slept with an underage girl. Most recently, they reported that the disgraced tax collector and former Gates wingman wrote a letter to, of all people, Trump associate and longtime ratfucker, Roger Stone laying out his and Gates' alleged crimes in detail. You can follow them at Jose Pallieri and Solenberger R.C. on Twitter. And, of course, find their stories all over the Daily Beast.com.

Gentlemen, welcome to Fever Dreams. Hi. Thanks, guys. So, Roger, if you could explain where the Gates situation is now and what the revelations have been since it was initially reported that he was under federal investigation. Yeah, sure. So the DOJ is reportedly investigating Gates for a child sex trafficking crime, sex trafficking or minor. specifically a 17-year-old girl that reports say that both he and Greenberg had sex with.

And Gates has since that report acknowledged the existence of the investigation. So he does not deny that he's under investigation for this. He does deny having sex with a 17-year-old as an adult. But we have found a confession letter, right? We received a confession letter from Joel Greenberg that says that, yes, Matt Gates did, in fact, pay to have sex with this 17-year-old girl and that also he had sexed with the girl and other people. So right now the investigation, we haven't heard many developments and reported on investigation into Gates himself, but we do know that Joel Greenberg has been cooperating with federal investigators and that that is probably

bad news for Matt Gates. So Jose here, I think one thing that's really relevant is that you're asking us this question on Tuesday, May 11th. And we know that by the end of this week, Joel Greenberg, who was Matt Gates's wingman for years, is set to finalize a plea deal with the Feds. And so what we're about to see is this central character to this story suddenly turn into essentially an agent of the government helping them full force in this investigation. And we know that the Feds have also been talking to and pressuring other people who knew about this. So we're at the precipice here. We know that very soon there could be further action, which makes it all the more relevant that the congressman has,

yet to fully acknowledge just how serious this truly is. Right. And regardless of how the investigation or the allegations shake out, this is obviously far more serious than how Matt Gates has at least in his public relations apparatus been trying to portray it to the public. He's going on tour with MTG. He's pretending that he still has the full-throated support of people like Donald Trump, even though he absolutely does not at this point. But since you guys have been digging into this hardcore for the past several weeks, as you've been vetting this information and breaking all these stories on things like the confession letter that were not publicly known before, what sense do you get that Greenberg, and maybe this is a question that is unknowable at this point, that Greenberg

is telling the truth in these written documents? So there's something that's particularly pivotal about the documents themselves, which is that a lot of the records that we've accumulated from our sources, actually were put together either just before Greenberg started cooperating with the feds or long before. So we're talking about Venmo records and electronic transactions with cash app. And this letter even that we got a hold of, multiple versions of was actually authored before it was publicly known that he had actually turned or thought about turning on gates. And actually, so if you want something that didn't make it into our stories that we have in our notebook, you know, we never published the letter, but I'm happy to read from it so many of these sections

that go into explicit detail that tell more of this story so that people can get a sense of what their friendship was like, but also the level of detail that Greenberg is willing to expose his former friend. So I'll start it from here. So this is on page seven of this handwritten letter. It's got tons of little errors, little scratch marks. And so you can tell he is thinking through this process as he's writing it. This really is a first draft. He said, this is Greenberg, saying, during the summer of 2017, I invited a group of young ladies,

mainly from the local university, to attend to get together at a friend's house, wanting them to meet my single friend, who was also a member of Congress, and was becoming famous for his frequent appearances on cable TV news, such as Fox News. Now, you can imagine who it is he's talking about. So back to the letter here, having grown up in the Orlando area and being a former talk radio show host,

I had plenty of female friends, all of who enjoyed meeting new people and having a good time. All of the girls were either in college or post college, and it was not uncommon for either myself or the congressman to help any one of these girls financially, whether it was a car payment, a flight home to see their family, or something as simple as helping pay a speeding ticket. It was at this time that one of the girls who had represented herself to be 19 years old and was just, due to move to Texas that upcoming August to attend a new college was in fact 17 years old, roughly five months shy of her 18th birthday. She had a fake ID, her best friends were all in college, and there was absolutely no way a reasonable person could know this individual was not yet 18.

On more than one occasion, this individual was involved in sexual activities with several of the other girls. The congressman from Florida's first congressional district and myself. From time to time, gas money or gifts, rent or partial tuition payments were made to several of the these girls, including the individual who was not yet 18. Now, this is me speaking. What we're about to read is what I think is the most pivotal thing in this 15-page letter, which is when Greenberg says, I did see the acts occur firsthand, and Venmo transactions, cash app, or other payments were made to these girls on behalf of the congressman. So, you know, a lot of this is obviously revolving around this Joel Greenberg character. I mean, if you could explain who this guy is and what your favorite

Joel Greenberg and Tick is. Joel Greenberg is the former Seminole County tax collector. It's an elected position and it's pretty powerful at the county level because the tax office is the sole source of revenue for the county. So Greenberg won this seat in 2016 the same year that Gates first got elected to Congress. And he beat this older fellow who'd been there for I think like 30 years, Frank Artile. And almost immediately when he got into office, he started, you know, apparently abusing his power. And he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money on just a bunch of insane shit. Like my favorite one is this cryptocurrency mining rig that he built in the office.

And it broke this. It tripped the circuit breakers. And they forced him to move it to another office. And so he set it up in this other place. and it almost immediately caught fire. And the overall cost of building this machine to mine crypto was, taxpayer cost was about $100,000 after fire damage was in rebuilding. The more you learn about this guy, the more you've reported on him,

like set aside the sexual misconduct allegations, anything that has to do with Matt Gates. This person clearly had no business being on the taxpayer time. Right, exactly. And, you know, part of what he was doing as taxpayer with the money, I mean, you know, this sort of ropes into the women. But he was paying his friends out of taxpayer dollars. And he would offer these sweetheart contracts to his buddies for really doing, you know, no discernible work at all. And again, this is hundreds of thousands of dollars that he's just throwing around.

So he's been, you know, the indictment against him is 33 counts. The child sex trafficking count is one count. Is that a lot? Yeah. It's so sweeping. And, you know, take it back to the confession letter, right? It's really notable. Back to your first question, too, this goes back to his credibility. That confession letter focuses almost entirely on the sex trafficking charge and specifically the 17-year-old that he says Matt Gates also had sex with. He doesn't really allude almost in any way whatsoever to any of the, other crimes that he's been charged with. And he's writing this letter to try to get Donald Trump to pardon him, right? He has an audience of one. He's not out there trying to create PR campaign to spread public lies about any of his friends. He's not motivated that way. He's trying to tell Donald Trump, hey, you should pardon me. And one reason you should pardon me, probably the most important reason, is that your good buddy, your surrogate, Matt Gates, is also involved with this. And, you know,

could speculate all sorts of reasons, you know, why he'd have that motivation to include that detail. But it wasn't written in a malicious way. It seemed to be written a way to, you know, to get on his good side. Now, this actually touches on one of my favorite antics of Joel Greenberg, and that is that what we reported on in revealing this letter and the desperate text messages between him and Roger Stone is that this is a man who is essentially a nobody. He's got a rich dad. He's in central Florida, which as somebody who grew up in South Florida, I can tell you, is very much feels like the armpit of the country. And when he grows up there, he does nothing with himself. His dad, who runs this big dental empire, makes a ton of money, but his son just

kind of like floats around for years. And this is what so many of his friends growing up have told us. And so he becomes this radio show host. That doesn't really go anywhere. He has a small digital marketing company. That doesn't really go anywhere either. And so he runs for office mostly because he's kind of bored. He just doesn't have anything else really to do or to his name. And so this letter where his audience of one is the president is actually the culmination of a years-long effort to get Donald Trump's attention. I mean, this is a guy who in 2016, with his own money, put up this giant billboard of a Superman Trump that no one asked him to do. He just did it because he was a fan boy and he wanted to get on the map. And so when he's finally asking Roger Stone,

these text messages. Please, please, please, can you get me that pardon from Trump? This is my Hail Mary. This is all I've got left. This is actually, guys, after years of dragging his family to Washington, D.C., in hopes of snapping a single picture with the president. And I've got sources telling me that they've made that trip multiple times because he just couldn't get it. He was a nobody, and the president wouldn't let him get that close. And so it took a long time to even get on the radar. And being partners with Matt Gates was part of him trying to break into politics, even though he was, as I've stated, basically a nobody. You have to be a really tiny nobody in the MAGA orbit or even MAGA periphery at that point

during the Trump presidency to not get an audience with Donald Trump, even in the Oval Office, when he was president of the United States and leader of the free world, just the long roster of nobody's who were able to get an audience with this guy. Yeah, like a bunch of QAnon people got, or a QAnon guy got in there. You and that guy got a photo op with the president. That gets at something else about this. It's always struck me that Matt Gates doesn't really have most of his heart in national politics. And I know that that might sound weird, but if you pull back and think about it for a moment,

Matt Gates goes home all the time. He goes back in his district every single chance he gets, right? He's making friends in Florida. I think his politics are a lot more focused on his state. He cares a lot more about that than he does with national politics. I mean, one anecdotal example is that Matt Gates never gave Donald Trump any money, ever, until after Donald Trump lost the election, he throws him $4,000, right? By comparison, Matt Gates gives Ron DeSantis $75,000 and like back-to-back payments in 2018.

Gates really does seem to care mostly about Florida. There are a number of reasons for that. But then you get down to this Joel Greenberg level, and you see some. something that you could call, you know, something like a cartel sort of forming around like these local politics. A lot of it involved in medical marijuana and in the budding marijuana industry in Florida. And that has been an issue that Gates has been championing for years all the way back to 2013. And we see them, you know, working with a lobbyist from Ballard Partners, which is a massive, massive lobbying firm. Brian Ballard is very close to Donald Trump. One of their key lobbyists,

is friends with Greenberg in Gates, and then you sort of see it spiraling out from there into this small cartel of people trying to get their clause on the, I guess it's more than a billion dollars a year now, the medical marijuana industry in Florida. And I think it seems to me that Gates is trying to consolidate power in the state. That seems to be where his focus is. His dad was the president of the Senate in Florida. He's very Florida-centric, and I really think that he's either tired of national politics or thinks it was maybe not the right move for him. And he wants to get back home. You guys mentioned the Venmo payments.

I mean, I think one of your first great scoops on this story was this idea that there were these Venmo payments between Gates and Greenberg and these women. What was that like when you realized that these payments were public? Well, I'd seen the New York Times article and it mentioned only cash app, I believe, and Apple Pay. And that was at, I think that came out on March 30th. And then in early April, we had to pay our mortgage, right? And so my house is in my wife's name. And so I Venmo her half of the mortgage every month. And I Venmoed her payment. And I was like, wait a minute. All this stuff is public. They said cash app and Apple pay. But I wonder about Venmo. And then I found Matt Gates is Venmo. And I took a screen recording of all of his friends. And That's where that whole network started from. And it was just a few days after that story broke.

And I was shocked that no one else had thought to look at it yet. But then beyond that, we got the goods after that. Then we got receipts. So it wasn't just looking at the Venmo. But that allowed us to establish the network. Yeah, actually, Will, that's a fascinating question because lots of people assumed that they were public when we first wrote our story. But the fact of the matter is, what was public on Venmo were the real. relationships that Matt Gates and so many of these women had, but wasn't public, were the

transactions themselves. And that's something that I've got to say, we got that from sources. I mean, we were able to get a pretty massive collection of years worth of Enmo transactions that may have been public at one time, but actually were not public by the time that the New York Times had reported this. And so what we got were transactions that no one else in public has seen. and they really map out the women, the young women, Greenberg, and then Gates and the interactions that they have over time. The memos in so many of these transactions are, I mean, frankly, hilarious. I mean, they range from $500 payments for makeup and travel and food. There's a span of a few days where Joe Greenberg pays separate women for $500 for school, $200 for ass, $300 for something.

sum and $400 for lipstick kiss. Sum-Sum is my favorite. Some, some, wait, spell that. S-U-M-S-U-M. Have you ever seen the movie, the Moines-Corsese masterpiece casino? You know when they were talking about like how they got taken down

because they just said everything out loud? This reminds me a lot of that. Right, or the classic name of the wire, right, with Idris Elbeau with Stringer Bell saying, is you think a motherfucker nose on a motherfucker conspiracy, you know? Like, that's, that's a, it's in the same thing. Like, the level of arrogance or obliviousness to this is, is pretty insane. It is absolutely astounding at how time and time again, we don't just find sources who talk to us, but we find receipts.

I mean, it's not just payments. They're electronic payments that are logged in a spreadsheet. It's not just memories, it's pictures. Actually, it's a live photo, and we can hear the conversations. It's disappearing text messages with one of the most. shady political operatives in the universe and you screenshot them before they disappear. I mean, it's almost as if they're screaming,

we want the world to know what we have done. Yeah, there's something like, you know the OK Boomer meme? Like there's also like there's like an inverse of that that applies to younger generations too, which is like they can't let go of these. They can't. Everyone has to know how cool they are, where they are, like what they look like when they look good. And all of this stuff is public. So it's like there's like an okay zoomer, right? It's like, you've left this trail of social media networks and posts that tell us exactly where you are

when you're there. And they started, you know, a lot of the women started shutting down and making those accounts private. But some of them like, they still can't help it. There are people who changed their Venmo name and changed their like Venmo handle and picture. But they still have the Venmo. We know, like, we still know who they are. All these people... They just can't let it go. All these people did was tattoo every crime they've ever did in their life to the skin of their chest, and they're wondering how they got caught.

These are people who are amateur Instagram models. So many of these were, like, want to be escorts. They wanted to project a version of themselves out to the galaxy. And, you know, I got so... I was so incredulous at one point a few weeks ago that I just decided to tweet, you think you're doing it for your brand, but you're actually doing it from my investigation. Because these people are just putting it out their front and center.

And, you know, there's something that I don't want to lose track of or sight of in this conversation, which is that Gates keeps shrugging off this entire ordeal as if it is nothing. But there's something that we haven't quite put, you know, front and center in our stories yet, which is the idea that the allegation here is that he had sex multiple times with a 17-year-old when he was 35. See, that's something that a friend of mine called me after our stories came out and said, you know, people look at Matt Gates and they see he's, you know, some young punk in Congress who is really, really Trumpy, but they forget that he's not that young, right? I mean, he was in his mid-30s when, with the evidence we've got, he slept with a 17-year-old girl.

This is a teenage girl. And I want to go back to this letter because, again, there's so much in this letter that we haven't been able to publish yet. I'll read this little excerpt. This is again from Greenberg. None of us would have ever engaged in any of these behaviors or had any such relationship with this person. Had we known the truth about her age?

As a matter of fact, on September 4, 2017, I received an anonymous tip about this individual causing me to use the database I had access to at work where I pulled up her driving information and was absolutely horrified to see that she was, in fact, just a few months shy of her 18th birthday. I was stunned and alarmed

because I was aware that this could cause problems for a lot of people who did nothing wrong other than being lied to by this individual about her age. A lot of people, including me. Right. See, this is the thing, right? Will, I mean, like, this is a guy. He's a father of two. He's a public official. He is partying with a sitting congressman. They're both rich boys. Their dads are super rich. They're wealthy. They had great childhoods. They are placed in a position of privilege. And here they are laying all. of the heat on a teenage girl. Well, the fact of the matter is, with the other reporting we've done, we've been talking

to a lot of these girls. And you know, he, in this letter, Joel might be trying to absolve himself of this, but the people who were involved in these encounters knew what was going on and they knew what they were doing. Yeah, I mean, just to build on that for a second,

there is a real seriousness that dismayes about this, that I get very dismayed about when it passes. You know, But there's people get hung up on the legality sometimes of like, well, you haven't proved that Matt Gates had sex with a 17-year-old and like, oh, well, looks like this payment happened when she was 18, so that means that she's an adult. First of all, we have payments from Joel Greenberg to more than 40 young women, 40 of these young women. Most of them at the time were about, I'd say the

median was about 19 years old, 19 or 20. And just looking at this, it's been hard to report. emotionally, especially talking to some of these women. It's been really difficult. They are young. A lot of them feel a degree of shame or embarrassment that I don't think is merited on their end, but I completely understand why I look at them as being victims, not to rob them of their agency in this either, because it's pretty complicated. Some of them want to own their agency for this. Someone want to say, yeah, I don't care. What's the big deal? I was just doing this. But keep in mind that age discrepancy, keep in mind the power discrepancy, keep in mind the wealth discrepancy. These kids are like, you know, like sophomores in college, basically. Notably, a couple of

details about about this 17-year-old girl. In those letters, in a second draft, Greenberg changes one word. He says in the first one that the 17-year-old was going to move to Texas to go to college. In an edited draft, he changes college to school because she's not going to college, because she's that young. Another detail about how young this girl is is that she got her braces on after the payments afterwards. And just to put that out there, Greenberg is the heir to a, you know, I think Florida's largest private dental chain. So guys, I mean, where is this headed next? I mean, and what are you looking for out of what looks like some court action for Greenberg? This is Jose here. Here's what we're hearing. Look, federal agents who interviewed people months ago

are circling back. We know that the U.S. Secret Service is front and center on this investigation because, of course, it started with Greenberg's finances and his Bitcoin mining as a public official. It's spiraled out of control at this point, includes so much more. But the Secret Service agents are coming back to some of the people we're talking to and asking them about what more do you know about these specific instances. What more do you know about flights, about specific payments, specific parties? What do you know about videotapes that appear to have disappeared that would have shown Congressman Gates in certain places. And so we know that this is heating up, particularly, again, because we've got a

deadline on May 15th for Greenberg to become a fully cooperating witness for the government. And there's not just that. We also hear that the feds are pressuring other people who have direct knowledge of this, which I think it's a good time for us to make two points. One is that it is very clear to us who are so close to the center of this. investigation to see that the world for Matt Gates in the near term looks extremely difficult, because it's not just that there's some evidence. There's a lot of evidence, and there are several witnesses. Now, at the same time, there's another point that we have to consider, which is that as far as we know, several of these young women are speaking to each other. And so there is a degree of coordination

between them about how they are interacting with people like us, who are reporters trying to figure out what happened. And it's going to be curious to see if these girls are coordinating what they're going to be telling investigators with the federal government, but also what it is, who it is that is paying for their representation. Because I think that will, I'm hinting at a lot here, but I think that's going to point out how this is going to shake out in the next few months. Yeah, and to pull back a little bit, too, as far as the investigation is developing, the feds are looking at a political influence campaign that's tied to all this stuff. So there's this trip to the Bahamas that's been reported that Gates was on with a number of these young women and also with other adults, hand surgeon who is a medical marijuana investor and also another Florida state representative who went on this trip with these young women.

And that trip is being looked at because they're like, well, were these escorts, were these women? and was this trip a gift to Gates in return for political favors. This was in 2018, right? And then medical marijuana was really high on the ballot in Florida. It was a huge issue. And DeSantis hadn't really come out and said what he was going to do at that time. Gates has DeSantis' ear. After this trip, you see a lot of lobbying towards DeSantis to get him to, you know,

come down in favor of medical marijuana, a smokable medical marijuana, I think. It's the first bill that he ever signs then once he gets elected. and he appoints Gates' friends to this powerful board at Orlando Airport, and all of these people are involved in what is apparently also a political influence campaign. So we can see that the sex ring that we've found is maybe a little bit more than that. That it's tied to a corrupt political ring in Florida as well, with Gates apparently being at the center of both. Well, I think that sums it up in a great way.

Roger Salenberger and Jose Pallieri, thank you all so much for joining us. It was a pleasure. Thanks, guys. That was fun. Fever Dreams, like all Daily Beast Journalism, exists because of the generous support of Beasts Inside members, the people who pay to access Daily Beast

Reporting and who are, quite frankly, our favorite people on the face of the planet. Want to get in on all the action? Join now and get unlimited access to Beast Reporting, plus access to members-only podcast episodes, events, and much more. Head tofebredreams.com today to see what you've been missing.

Okay, so, Will, some of our listeners may have noticed that there is supposedly this lumber shortage going on in America. But did you know, sorry, but did you know that there is a rise of politically energized individuals who are saying with one strong, decadent voice, there is no lumber shortage in America? Yeah, so this is something I just reported on actually for Beast Inside, our membership program. So there is a lumber shortage. I can speak to this from personal experience. I'm trying to get a door installed in my house. And Loz, we had everything ready to go, and they just ghosted me, they're, like, just not willing to give me this door.

So the lumber shortage is being created by some kind of predictable effects, which is, you know, everyone's sitting at home. They've saved up money. A lot of people have saved up money from the pandemic. And they're doing a lot of DIY stuff. Other people want homes. So there's a lot of new houses being built. And at the same time, a lot of sawmills had kind of, you know, cut production in anticipation of a

slowdown that didn't really have. So lumber is, like, triple in price right now. But what I found is that there's kind of this budding community of lumber truthers. And these are people who believe that there is no lumber shortage. After all, they have filmed a stack of lumber. So this is, you know, this is mainly going down. You know, I'm seeing a lot of action on TikTok around this. These videos are getting like millions of views.

And so it's like someone goes to a lumber depot in their neighborhood or they go to, you know, oftentimes these are truckers who are trucking lumber. And they get on TikTok and they pan around and they go like one guy was like, y'all, they're lying to us about the lumber shortage. And then he shows like, you know, eight stacks the lumber. I mean, it's like a global issue, right? I mean, you know, it's, the question is not, did all the lumber disappear? You know, leftover style rapture, right?

The lumber, we know the lumber is real. There's just not enough of it. It reminds me of a North Korea propaganda video. It's like, they say we have a food shortage. Look at this bag of hay. Right. I mean, it's very like, it kind of for me, you know, and so this stuff is blowing up. I mean, it's getting into QAnon land where people are saying, you know, the cabal doesn't

want you to have a home because of, you know, they don't want you to have the American dream and to be independent. So the Democratic pedophiles are stealing your lumber. Basically, like, what happens is usually it's like they'll go to a lumber depot and you see these big stacks of lumber and the implication being that, you know, someone is hoarding the lumber. But, you know, I don't normally go to lumber depot, so I don't know what that looked like, you know, before the lumber shortage. It kind of seems to me like a lumber depot is a place. Right, right. It seems like a lumber depot is a place. where you will pretty much always be able to find lumber.

You know, whatever the situation of the lumber depot or the lumber market. And so these guys are posting this. And then you see people saying like, hmm, well, I saw a video where a trucker said there's no lumber or there is lumber. I also just got a kick out of one of these videos because a lot of these lumber depots, they're kind of in out of the way areas. So they might be like near a highway. They're kind of in areas no one else wants to live.

And so there's a lot. This footage is often shot in kind of a serptitious way. Like, it's like, you know, I, you know, I went out of the way and I'm filming this. Or one of these truckers was like, I can't tell you what my job is. But, you know, here's my inside footage. But then his TikTok handle was just like read the trucker. And it's like, well, I guess you're a trucker. Everyone wants to be something between a secret agent and an investigative reporter at some point in their lives.

Or at least a romanticized version of those things. So this reminds us a little bit of the film your hospital. And is there any overlap in terms of online personalities of these people? or are they kind of distinct, but kind of running in parallel group? Right. Well, I mean, there certainly is an overlap in terms of, you know, a lot of QNon people are into it. Zero Hedge, which is like a big right-wing blog, is really getting into. Was Zero Hedge ever sane?

I remember seeing it like in the mid-Obama era not thinking it had completely gone off the deep end. It was like an aggregator. It seems like it does like some relatively reasonable business stuff. I mean, I think a lot of like business people read it, but then it just has wacky stuff like this lumber thing. And so Filmier Hospital was a thing last year. year, a couple months into the pandemic, where people would go to hospitals and they would often film, like, the parking lots were kind of empty, or they would go into the lobby and they wouldn't see, like, COVID victims, you know, stacked, like lumber, you know? And they would say, well,

clearly there's no pandemic because in the lobby, people aren't just, like, falling dead. I think both this and the lumber saga get to me to kind of a ontological crisis in how people understand the world, where it's sort of like, well, I can see this on a video and it's given sort of the trapping of an investigative reporter, like kind of a Blair Witch style found footage thing. And to me, that has the same amount of weight as, it's kind of like larger analysis of what's going on with lumber or with COVID. Right.

I'm looking out my window right now and I see no police brutality happening on the sidewalk. Can't be that systemic or widespread. Right, exactly. And I think it kind of hits at this spread of people sort of just being like, well, who can say? Like, it was so many things these days. Like, we were talking about the ballots. And if you can just kind of introduce enough sort of confusion

about it, then people can go, you can kind of go with, it's sort of a choose-your-own-adventure in terms of whatever facts you want to believe. You can say, well, it's a matter of dispute. Personally, I believe that a nefarious cartel is hoarding the lumber and doesn't want me to own a home. You got to see both sides. Right, exactly. On that note, let's wrap up this episode of Fever Dreams from The Daily Beast. In future installments, we'll also be speaking to some awesome reporters and other colleagues of The Daily Beast and beyond, from politics, popular culture, and other overfed, underdeveloped

institutions. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your preferred podcasting app and share the show on social media or at your family dinner table. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm at Will Summer and Swin is at Swin 24. Come say hello. This podcast is produced by Jesse Cannon with music by Brian D'Miglio. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you next time. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studed The Daily Beast podcast at thedailybeast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.