Birds of a feather flock together. 'Troubled teen,' domestic violence, 'involuntary psychiatric commitment': Tales of Gaetz's pal Joel Greenberg https://www.rawstory.com/republican-joel-greenbergs-life/
I know this is upsetting to you, but her (Gabby Orr) story is nonsense. https://thenationalpulse.com/news/cnn-faked-a-story-about-matt-gaetz-but-still-wont-remove-it/
Indicted Matt Gaetz Pal Paid Former Teen’s Legal Fees While Under Investigation: Politico Former tax collector Joel Greenberg discussed young woman he referred to as “Vintage 99” in WhatsApp chat while he was caught up in a sex trafficking probe https://www.huffpost.com/entry/matt...intage-99-whatsapp_n_6074ca8fe4b08f435f23658c The indicted ex-tax collector friend of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) paid for a lawyer for the underage teenager at the heart of sex trafficking charges against him, according to a bombshell WhatsApp chat obtained by Politico. Politico reported that Joel Greenberg was in a “panic” just days before the federal indictment on 33 different charges including identity theft, financial crimes and sex trafficking. In a chat with a friend who later discussed the messages with Politico, the former Seminole County tax collector referred to the unidentified young woman as “Vintage 99,” a name with her birth year that she reportedly used online. “I’m having to pay for vintage 99 to retain [a] lawyer,” Greenberg wrote in the chat, saying federal agents “contacted her and are wanting her to talk,” Politico reported. “She doesn’t want to talk to them,” he added. Greenberg has been charged and Gaetz is under investigation for alleged sex trafficking involving women, including “Vintage 99,” who was 17 at the time of the targeted activities. She’s now 20. It’s not illegal for Greenberg to pay the lawyer’s fees of a potential witness against him, but it could “raise questions,” Politico noted. Greenberg discussed his fears in the WhatsApp chat that investigators would trace his payments to women via Venmo, according to Politico, which is apparently what happened. Gaetz also paid money via Venmo to Greenberg, who allegedly forwarded it to women, The Daily Beast reported. The payments were marked for “school” and “tuition.” Greenberg pressured Gaetz to use his influence to solicit a pardon from Donald Trump, sources told Politico. Gaetz has said he did not ask Trump to pardon Greenberg. Greenberg is reportedly now cooperating with federal authorities and is expected to reach a plea deal. A Justice Department probe launched during the Trump administration is currently investigating whether Gaetz had sex with the 17-year-old and paid for her and other young women to travel across state lines for sex. Federal investigators are reportedly also looking into whether Gaetz used any federal campaign money to make the alleged payments. The FBI is also examining Gaetz’s trip to the Bahamas with a group of women that a Florida cannabis entrepreneur funded in late 2018 or early 2019, several sources told The New York Times. Greenberg was reportedly along for the ride. Gaetz is also under investigation by the House Ethics Committee. The lawmaker has denied any wrongdoing.
Women detail drug use, sex and payments after late-night parties with Gaetz and others https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/14/politics/gaetz-parties-women-drug-use-sex-payments/index.html The first thing some of the women were asked to do when they got to the house parties in the gated community in suburban Orlando was to put away their cellphones, according to two women in attendance who spoke to CNN in recent days. The men inside, a who's who of local Republican officials that often included Rep. Matt Gaetz, did not want the night's activities documented. The partygoers, at times dressed in formal wear from a political event they'd just left, mingled and shared drugs like cocaine and ecstasy. Some had sex. Gaetz, the brash Republican, liked to discuss politics, said one of the women. He behaved like a "frat type of party boy," she said, sometimes taking pills she believed were recreational drugs. Details of the parties, which have not been previously reported, were described to CNN by two women who attended several of them over the past few years. Both spoke on condition of anonymity. The behavior of Gaetz and the other high-powered men at the events, and a pattern of digital payments that followed, will likely be items of interest to the Justice Department as part of its probe of Gaetz that includes allegations of sex trafficking and prostitution. Federal investigators are examining whether Gaetz engaged in a relationship with a woman that began when she was 17, according to people familiar with the investigation. The investigators have also pursued allegations from witnesses and other evidence that Gaetz may have used cash and drugs in his dealings with the young women. After some parties, money would change hands. According to receipts reviewed by CNN, Gaetz and his associate Joel Greenberg, a former county tax commissioner indicted last year on multiple federal charges, used digital payment applications to send hundreds of dollars to at least one woman who attended the parties. The receipts viewed by CNN record payments that took place between 2018 and 2019 and include at least one that indicated in a label that it was to compensate for travel. One of the women said she received money from Greenberg after some of the parties. She said that some of the payments were for providing sex but would not say who she slept with. She did say she never received money directly from Gaetz. Some of the parties were more low-key affairs, the other woman said. Some took place in hotel suites at the end of alcohol-filled political functions. "No one ever wants to stop partying, stop drinking, once you've had a few glasses of champagne in you," she said. A spokesman for Gaetz did not respond directly to CNN's request for comment but challenged the use of anonymous sources. According to people familiar with the investigation, authorities have spoken with some of the women involved with the congressman and his close friend, Greenberg, the former tax commissioner in Seminole County, Florida, who is currently facing 33 federal charges, including sex trafficking of a minor. One of the women who spoke to CNN said she did so in part because the picture of Gaetz as potentially connected to sex trafficking that has emerged in recent days does not align with what she saw. Both women said that they never saw anyone at the parties who appeared to be underage. Neither has spoken with federal investigators, they said. Gaetz has denied ever paying for sex and over the past two weeks has sought to frame the allegations against him as the result of political bias in the justice system and the media. He has also accused investigators of twisting his generosity towards women into something criminal. "Providing for flights and hotel rooms for people that you're dating who are of legal age is not a crime," Gaetz said in an interview with Fox News late last month. The New York Times first reported that Gaetz made digital payments to women, and last Thursday, The Daily Beast also reported on Venmo transactions between Gaetz and Greenberg, and Greenberg and young women. Greenberg has been providing investigators with information since last year, including about encounters he and Gaetz had with women who were given cash or gifts in exchange for sex, a source familiar with the case confirms to CNN. Greenberg has met several times with investigators, and his cooperation, which was first reported by The New York Times, could put additional legal pressure on Gaetz as investigators work to determine whether he broke sex-trafficking or prostitution laws himself. Last week, Greenberg's attorney and a federal prosecutor told a judge that Greenberg would likely enter into a plea agreement in the coming weeks, possibly giving the Justice Department even more access to a witness with intimate knowledge of any potential wrongdoing by Gaetz. Speaking to reporters after the Thursday hearing last week, Fritz Scheller, Greenberg's attorney, declined to say if his client would be willing to cooperate as part of the potential plea deal and would not divulge if Greenberg had already met with prosecutors to describe what he knows about Gaetz. He added, however, that his client is "uniquely situated." "I'm sure Matt Gaetz is not feeling very comfortable today," Scheller said Scheller declined to comment to CNN for this story. The investigation of Gaetz began in the closing months of the Trump-era Justice Department under then-Attorney General William Barr and was initially part of a broader probe into trafficking allegations against Greenberg. As part of the ongoing probe, investigators are scrutinizing Gaetz's connections to several associates in Florida who may have benefited politically in return for providing the congressman favors including escorts, travel, and campaign donations, according to the sources familiar with the investigation. One event in focus is a trip that Gaetz took to the Bahamas with friends and young women, CNN has reported. Investigators are seeking to determine whether Gaetz was provided travel and women in exchange for political favors as part of their broader probe, the sources said. A former member of the Florida House of Representatives and the son of a powerful figure in Republican state politics, Gaetz cultivated a tight-knit circle of politically-connected friends who stayed in his orbit after he went to Washington in 2017. In recent days, a number of those allies have been drawn into the scandal. Chris Dorworth, a former state legislator who Gaetz has described as a friend and "legislative mentor," stepped down from his post at a high-powered lobbying firm on Friday, one day after The New York Times reported that he had spoken with Gaetz about running a third-party candidate in a local election -- in potential violation of campaign finance laws. "The current political environment is nasty, and I told Brian I don't think it's fair for the recent media storm to take away from their missions," Dorworth wrote on Twitter, referencing Brian Ballard, the founder of the Florida-based lobbying group with close ties to the administration of former president Donald Trump. Dorworth told the Times that he did not recall talking with Gaetz about running a third candidate. He did not respond to CNN's request for comment on his resignation. So far, Greenberg appears to be the only person in Gaetz' orbit who is currently facing charges related to the scandal. First indicted in 2020 over the alleged stalking of a political rival, Greenberg has since been accused by federal prosecutors of unlawfully accessing a motor vehicle database to obtain and use the personal information of people including some who he "was engaged in 'sugar daddy' relationships" with. (Much more at above url)
New details shed light on Gaetz’s Bahamas trip Federal agents executed a search warrant and seized the Florida congressman’s iPhone last winter. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/13/gaetz-bahamas-investigation-481273 The group took off for their Bahamas weekend getaway on three separate flights. Most of the passengers, which included at least five young women, flew out of Orlando on two separate private planes. Matt Gaetz flew commercial. The details of that September 2018 trip are sparse, but they are critical to the allegations against Gaetz, the Florida congressman currently the subject of a federal sex-crimes investigation that is threatening his career. Gaetz, who has not been charged, has consistently denied the two anonymous claims against him: that he had sex with a 17-year-old girl and paid for sex. Gaetz’s predicament as the subject of a serious investigation became clearer this winter when federal agents executed a search warrant and seized his iPhone, according to interviews with three people who were told of the matter by Gaetz, who changed his phone number in late December. Around that time, the sources said, federal agents also seized his former girlfriend’s phone before she went into work in the morning. She declined comment. At the time of the 2018 trip, Gaetz was a top adviser to Republican Ron DeSantis, who was running for governor, and went on to manage his transition team months later. DeSantis has long been a top Gaetz ally but declined to comment on his legal woes Monday when asked by reporters. In the Bahamas, Gaetz was joined by two GOP allies: Halsey Beshears, then a state legislator, and Jason Pirozzolo, a hand surgeon and Republican fundraiser for DeSantis, according to three sources, including one who was part of the group. Also among those on the trip: the former minor who is key to the investigation, whose presence on the trip was previously unreported. According to one of the women in the group who spoke on condition of anonymity, everyone on the trip was over the age of 18 — including the woman in question, who had turned 18 years old months before the trip, she said. The woman was born in December 1999, according to a personal website, but POLITICO has been unable to confirm the woman’s official date of birth. No one on the trip engaged in prostitution, the source said. But questions surrounding the ages of some of the women surfaced immediately upon their return — three of them looked so young when they returned on Beshears’ private plane that U.S. Customs briefly stopped and questioned him, according to sources familiar with the trip, including a woman on the flight. As the investigation intensified this winter, Beshears abruptly resigned as Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation Secretary, a post that made him the state’s top business regulator, noting he had contracted Covid-19. But he confided to two friends recently that he believes he’s the subject of the investigation, the friends told POLITICO. Beshears refused comment and his lawyer did not return calls. Both the lawmaker and his former girlfriend declined to comment. Conspicuously absent from the 2018 Bahamas trip was another official in their circle, former Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg, whose alleged criminal conduct sparked the wide-ranging investigation. Indicted last August for sex trafficking the underage girl in question — conduct federal authorities say occurred between May and November 2017 — Greenberg is currently in jail and reportedly contemplating a deal with federal prosecutors as he faces 33 charges including federal stalking and a host of financial crimes. In July 2020, as the full scope of his legal troubles were coming into view, Greenberg made a failed attempt to get politically connected friends to ask Gaetz to get President Donald Trump to pardon him, two of the friends told POLITICO. Greenberg was not invited to the Bahamas, the three sources said, because of a conflict with Pirozzolo’s girlfriend. Pirozzolo, who recently told patients that his office was closed “due to a family emergency,” could not be reached for comment, nor could his lawyer or girlfriend. The woman whose age is in question has also declined to comment on the case, in which investigators are also examining whether sex was explicitly exchanged for money or drugs. POLITICO is withholding her name because she is the alleged victim of a sex crime. Before his indictment for sex-trafficking the underage girl, Greenberg told a mutual friend in an Aug. 14 WhatsApp chat last year that federal agents sought to speak to her, but she was unwilling. “They contacted her and are wanting her to talk. She doesn’t want to talk to them,” he wrote to the friend. The woman’s testimony would be crucial in a case against Gaetz — among other details, she can clarify her age when they allegedly had sexual relations. Three Gaetz friends told POLITICO that the lawmaker, who was single at the time, had told them he had sexual relations with the woman after she turned 18. And as one of at least five women who went on the Bahamas trip with Gaetz, she could shed light on details that would be key to a prosecution under the Mann Act, which forbids transporting people of any age across state lines for purposes of prostitution. An attorney representing another target in the Greenberg indictment said investigators are examining the Bahamas trip in light of the Mann Act. Such cases can be complicated, which is one reason prosecutors in Florida gave up more than a decade ago on filing federal charges against notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Federal prosecutors in New York did indict Epstein in 2019, but he died in jail weeks later, apparently by suicide. Former federal judge Paul Cassell, a University of Utah law professor, cautioned that the statute “is largely in disuse but it still remains a theoretical option” for prosecutors. Some of the women on the Bahamas trip entered the orbit of Gaetz and Greenbergthrough the SeekingArrangement website — a dating website that connects women with so-called sugar daddies — according to interviews with friends and associates who know the two men, and Greenberg introduced him to young women he met on the site. Gaetz said he’s never been on the site. Lawrence Walters, a First Amendment lawyer in Orlando who has represented sugar daddy websites and clients accused of prostitution, said prosecutions in such cases can be difficult. “Every type of dating relationship has an exchange of value. It’s largely why law enforcement hasn’t wanted to weigh into these sugar daddy-type relationships area because of that tremendous grey area,” Walters said, noting the distinction between “dating and exchange of value in a relationship vs. all-out commercial prostitution. We don’t have a lot of court rulings on that. Prosecutors tend to focus on very clear cases so they don’t get into these issues. But if they wanted to pursue a sugar daddy-type relationship, dating relationship, there are very thorny personal, societal and constitutional issues they have to deal with.”