Today, Explained - Gaetzgate

Episode Date: April 14, 2021

Vox’s Andrew Prokop explains Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz’s sex scandal. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit connectsontario.ca. Andrew Prokop, Politics Vox. Lots of talk right now about Florida Representative Matt Gaetz. Why? What is going on with Matt Gaetz? Matt Gaetz seems to be in a lot of legal trouble, is what's going on. Tonight, Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz is defending himself amid reports the Justice Department is investigating his alleged relationship with a 17-year-old girl. Investigators looking into the alleged relationship from two years ago, whether Gaetz possibly violated sex trafficking laws when he allegedly paid for travel and other

expenses for the teen. All things the Republican strongly denies. It is a horrible allegation and it is a lie. He's being investigated for payments he may have allegedly made to women in exchange for sex. In one case, a woman who was underage, 17 years old. In one sense, this is a pretty classic political sex scandal. But the real reason it seems to have struck such a chord is that Gates was one of the most bold, outspoken defenders of former President Donald Trump, who was, of course, plagued by scandal throughout his term in office.

Gates was always there to say, oh, President Trump was just being persecuted by the deep state. Well, when Robert Mueller leaves Capitol Hill, I think the American people will see that there was no collusion and there was oceans of bias. And now it turns out that the Justice Department

has some questions for Representative Gates as well. Before we get into this sordid saga, we should just flag that Matt Gates has not been charged with anything by anyone relating to this sex scandal, correct? That's correct. So this is all stemming from a report initially in the New York Times that Gates was under investigation for perhaps having sex with a 17-year-old and for the payments to women. But this is stemming from charges that have already been filed into a close associate of Gates's, who is Joel Greenberg of Florida. He has already been charged for child sex trafficking related to this same 17-year-old. of follow-up reports have revealed that he seemed to be viewed as a provider of young women for

people in Florida politics. And reportedly, purportedly, allegedly, Representative Gates was one of these men as well. Okay, so let's just talk about where all of this trouble begins for Matt Gaetz and his buddy Joel Greenberg. Yeah, so Joel Greenberg was the tax collector of Seminole County, Florida. A Glock 19 9mm. It is the weapon of choice for Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg, and now could be the weapon of choice for his employees. There are certain times throughout the year that this office has hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in cash with no security. He's basically a hot mess.

In his years at the Seminole County Tax Collector's Office, he was just embroiled in scandal after scandal from anti-Muslim social media posts. ...writing, quote, name just one society in the developed world that has benefited in any way from the introduction of more Muslims. Just one asking for a friend, end of quote. To insisting that his tax collector employees should be allowed to openly carry guns. He tried to pull over a motorist using his tax collector badge, who he said was driving

in an unsafe way. He handed out contracts to his close friends. He had this cryptocurrency angle in which he was trying to use office resources to buy cryptocurrency for himself. And approximately 90,000 was spent to build and install equipment in a server room located inside the tax collector's private office. That equipment was moved here to the Lake Mary branch, where it caused a fire. And then when he was being challenged

in a primary for the job in 2020, he allegedly created fake online accounts to try and smear his rival, accusing this rival falsely of committing sexual misconduct with students. The guy was a teacher and also of supporting segregation and white supremacy. Can I just say he sounds like the lord of all douchebags. Yeah. And this seems to have

piqued the interest of prosecutors. So then in June of 2020, Greenberg was arrested and charged with the first of what would eventually turn out to be 33 separate charges against him. And he resigned his office and later was jailed for violating his release conditions. So he's currently locked up. But, you know, the charges, part of them involved those fake accounts he created to smear his political rival, but they also involved abusing his office to obtain people's personal information and produce fake IDs, embezzling money, and the big one, which was sex trafficking of a child. And he hasn't been convicted of any of this stuff yet either, or he has? Greenberg has not been convicted. He has not faced trial yet,

but he is seeking to strike a plea deal with prosecutors. So expect him to plead guilty if an agreement can be reached to at least some of this stuff in the near future. And plea deal makes And Plea Deal makes me wonder about how this might involve Congressman Gates. Yes. So to return to the sex trafficking of a child charge against Greenberg, details are scant in the actual indictment. But this appears to be part of a broader story of Greenberg recruiting very young women to have sex with himself and his friends in Florida politics. And a lot of this appears to have been consensual. Greenberg is said to have used the website Seeking Arrangement. When it comes to dating, seekingarrangement.com gives me all the options I'm looking for. Which is a site for sugar daddies and sugar babies, basically for older or wealthy men to make connections with young women and lavish money on these women in exchange for...

Hi, I'm happiness. Who said money can't buy happiness? You know, the site claims that this isn't prostitution or sex work, but in practice, it can often look a lot like that. A website that's probably getting a lot of play from this scandal. Indeed, although probably not the kind of press that they would appreciate. Fair. What's interesting is that out of the many, many charges against Greenberg, none of these specifically relate to sex with these women, except for the one of the apparently pretty clear cut case that one of these women was not, in fact, older than 18. She was 17.

And that makes it a violation of sex trafficking of a child. And this is why Matt Gaetz has been drawn into this whole mess? So yes, Gaetz is reportedly involved in patronizing some of these women with Greenberg, who apparently made these connections and met up with some of these women. So the same 17-year-old who is at the heart of the child sex trafficking charge against Greenberg reportedly had relations with Gates as well. Gates denies this. He said he never had sexual relations with a 17-year-old.

But prosecutors know this girl's age, and they apparently have reason to believe that she had sex with Gates while she was underage. When this initial story leaks out via the New York Times, how does Matt Gates respond? So Gates has said publicly that he is, quote, not a monk and that he has indeed, quote, paid for flights for hotel rooms for women he's dated because he is, quote, generous as a partner. But he has aggressively disputed that he paid anyone specifically for sex. And he's also insisted he didn't sleep with anyone who was underage. You know, providing for flights and hotel rooms for people that you're dating who are of legal age is not a crime.

So he's saying that there was no quid pro quo, in a sense. Classic defense. Exactly. And that is what is at the heart of some of these laws that are at play, whether prosecutors can prove the payments was marked with one of the women's names that it should be for this woman. Doesn't Gates go on like Tucker Carlson the night this story comes out to defend himself and do a sort of bizarre job of defending himself? Yes, it was a very strange interview where at one point Gates appeared to bring up that Tucker Carlson himself had been at a dinner with Gates and one of these young women.

Your wife was there and I brought a friend of mine. You'll remember her. And Tucker Carlson gave a response, which was basically like, hey, leave me out of this, man. I don't remember the woman you're speaking of or the context at all, honestly. But the other part of Gates's response has been to claim that this is all deep state plot against him because someone approached his father and tried to extort him, threatening to reveal the existence of this investigation unless he was paid money. Wait, is Daddy Gates also potentially tied up in this sex scandal? No, no. Gates' father is only part of this story because he is a very rich guy. Oh. What seems to have happened is that some operators in Florida politics learned of this investigation into Gates.

They then approached Gates's father with an interesting pitch. They said that they wanted to rescue an American hostage they say was being held in Iran. Side note, the U.S. government says that this hostage has died, but they claim he's secretly alive and they want to fund a secret mission to get him back. And they want $25 million to do that. And they told Gates's father, Hey, we know that the FBI is investigating your son. They claim that they had photos showing Gates in a quote,

sexual orgy with underage prostitutes. And they said, he's going to need some good PR. So why don't you give us $25 million to rescue this hostage from Iran? And then Gates will look really good. Our family was so troubled by that, we went to the local FBI. And the FBI and the Department of Justice were so concerned about this attempted extortion of a member of Congress that they asked my dad to wear a wire,

which he did with. And again, the question here comes down to whether this was a quid pro quo. The fellows involved have basically confirmed that they did this. One of them said this week, Matt Gaetz is in need of good publicity and I'm in need of $25 million to rescue this hostage. So again, was there a direct quid pro quo? It doesn't seem like they actually threatened to leak the news of the investigation if they weren't paid. But it definitely seems to have into some shady stuff, some of it involving underage girls. He's saying he's going to cooperate on charges that have already been brought against him, which might be bad news for Matt Gaetz,

who also has a reputation for paying for young women to go places and have sex with him. And he may have done that with a 17-year-old, though no charges have been brought against him yet. Though his father, who is a very rich man, has been part of some attempted extortion to help Matt Gaetz's reputation at a time where he needs it because Matt Gaetz isn't doing a very good job of defending himself right now? Is that all right? Yeah, I think you covered it. Why this sordid affair is getting so much dang attention in a minute on Today Explained comes from Ramp.

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please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Andrew, you mentioned earlier in the show that this is basically just another political sex scandal, but it seems to be getting an outsized amount of attention for being just another political sex scandal. So I want to try and figure out why. Before we do, tell me, who again is Matt Gaetz for a relatively new member of Congress from Florida who has had a quickly distinguished himself as the guy who is willing to cause controversy. But it's a little hard to believe that Burisma hired Hunter Biden to resolve their international disputes when he could not resolve his own dispute with Hertz rental car over leaving cocaine in a crack pipe in the car.

Say often ludicrous, outrage-inducing things in defense of Trump. The president should pardon himself, his family, his administration officials, and any of his supporters who've been targeted. Look, and really try to pander to the conservative and the pro-Trump base and get a lot of media attention as a result. And it's worth noting that he's still pretty young, too, not as young as the women he appears to like to date. But how did he get into politics? And it seems like it was relatively recently. Yeah, so Gates is 38 years old. But before he joined Congress in 2017,

he joined the Florida state legislature. And the context for this is that Gates's father, the rich guy, Don Gates, was the president of the Florida state Senate and got wealthy from a hospice care business. And so he was the richest guy in the Florida state legislature. And when he was in the state Senate, he helped fund his son's desire to pursue a political career. And so Matt Gaetz joined the Florida state legislature, was first elected in 2010. And there are reports that young men in the Florida state legislature, young state reps, had a game where they would compete and award each other points for who they would manage to have sex with. One point for a lobbyist, two points for a staffer, three points for a fellow state legislator, and six points for a married state legislator. Classy. You know, there have been various reports that have claimed that Gates

was involved with this. I don't know if it has ever actually been proven, but it's certainly revealing anecdote about the culture that existed in the Florida State House at the time that he was there. And how does he get to Congress? So in 2016, of course, the year of Trump, Gates ran in the primary for a congressional seat in Florida, and he won. That's the same year as his soon-to-be pal, Joel Greenberg, won the primary for the Seminole County Tax Collector's Office. And so both of them essentially saw their stars begin to rise in the party of Trump. They embraced Trump's style of politics, his rhetorical style, his willingness to use unusual forms of media, his willingness to court outrage.

These weren't, you know, the buttoned up Republicans of the previous generation. These were, they were the children of Trump, basically. How could Matt Gaetz set himself apart from his fellow freshman Republican legislators who nobody actually cares about? He can do it by making a big splash in the media. He can do it by joining notorious members of Congress like Representative Devin Nunes and Representative Jim Jordan as the people who were the most willing to defend Trump from any accusation that was hurled at him. Gates would be there to explain and to insist why Trump was really being railroaded. The will of the American people also elected Donald Trump to be the president of the United States in the 2016 election. And there's one party that can't seem to get over it.

And Gates has pushed the boundaries in his defense of Trump in the past. Notably, when you remember a fellow named Michael Cohen, when he was about to testify in Congress about his experiences working as Trump's lawyer, Gates sent a tweet. Quote, Do your wife and father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she'll remain faithful when you're in prison. She's about to learn a lot. And he got a lot of criticism for that and eventually pulled down the tweet. But, you know, just it's just this constant, aggressive willingness to go further than anyone else. And this is up until recently what Gates has gotten the most attention for, especially in the wake of the insurrection and the inauguration of Joe Biden. Gates was still out there defending Trump and defending this big lie that he rightfully won the election.

Yes. And even though Trump is out of office now, Gates continues to see his fortunes as being contingent upon being closely linked with Trump. And for instance, when Representative Liz Cheney, Republican from Wyoming, voted for Trump's impeachment the second time around, Gates went to Wyoming to denounce her at a press conference. I'll confess to you, this is my first time in Wyoming. I've been here for about an hour, and I feel like I already know the place a lot better than your misguided representative, Liz Cheney.

So it's likely that he's not the most popular member of the GOP in Congress? fellow Republicans photos and videos of naked women and brag about his sex life, basically, including on the floor of the House of Representatives. So some of his colleagues have made sure to leak this out since news of the investigation broke, just sending the message that they thought he was a sleazy guy all along. So one of the former president's staunchest defenders is now in hot water himself. Is the former president coming to defend him? And if not, are any of his GOP colleagues? Former President Trump was silent for a while about the Gates reports, but he eventually did release a statement saying that Gates was innocent until proven

guilty. Quote, it must be remembered that he has totally denied the accusations against him. However, there have also been reports that he has refused to actually meet with Gates, even though Gates has tried to schedule a meeting with him after this news broke. So he doesn't want to get too close to him, even if he's willing to say innocent until proven guilty. So what does this ultimately mean for Matt Gaetz? Is his political future looking bleak, or is he going to be able to talk his way out of this? I guess there aren't even charges yet. Does any of this matter, Andrew? Well, it depends how the investigation shakes out.

He has been defiant. But actually, earlier on the very day that the New York Times broke the story of this investigation, a report in Axios appeared saying that Gates was considering stepping down from Congress to take a job at the conservative media company Newsmax. So he was already looking for the exits, it seems. And it's very likely that he knew this investigation existed because, again, his buddy had been arrested last year. But now news of the investigation became public, and it's unclear if he still has that exit strategy or whether he could still be offered a job with this hanging over him in conservative media. So, you know, he's been using this story actually to fundraise furiously, saying that he's a persecuted critic of the deep state and so on. So for the time being, he's insisting

on his innocence. He's not yet resigning. But as prosecutors attempt to strike a plea deal with Joel Greenberg, that could be a problem for Gates because everybody believes that if they flip Greenberg, then they will be focusing all their efforts on charging Gates next. And we don't really have a good timeline for how long that might take. But if it does materialize, then he would be in a heap of trouble. You know, the charge for sex trafficking of a child, it contains a minimum sentence if convicted of 10 years. So this is some very serious time, some very serious charges.

And whether prosecutors can manage to put together a solid case, of course, remains to be seen. But they certainly appear to be trying to do so. And that is not good news for Representative Gates. Andrew Prokop, senior correspondent, read his work at Vox.com. I'm Sean Romsferm. This is Today Explained. Matt Gaetz interview. That was one of the weirdest interviews I've ever conducted. I don't think that clarified much,

but it certainly showed this is a deeply interesting story and we'll be following it. Don't quite understand it, but we'll bring you more when we find out.