Gaetz gets got

Mid-Florida men: their gigantic egos and tiny brains

Mid-Florida Men unbound.

Reading the plea deal of Joel Greenberg, the former Seminole County, Florida, tax collector is like peering into the very, very tiny brain of a very, very small man with a microscope.  I mean, most of the crimes described in the document are so unimaginative, so breathtakingly stupid, they’re almost not worth recounting.  And yet slosh we must through the sleaze of mid-Florida middle-aged men unbound by decorum, good manners, or it would seem common sense…not to mention the statutory limits of federal laws.

Yes indeed, Mid-Florida Man Greenberg went before a federal magistrate in, where else, Florida today and pled guilty to five counts of a 33-count indictment.  Ordinarily, a guilty plea of a former county-level elected official wouldn’t attract much attention, certainly not the “Stop the Presses!” breaking news headlines the story got today in the pages of national newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post, and on cable news networks like MSNBC and CNN.

Greenberg is a rather ordinary former county-level public official, and most of his crimes are the kind of ordinary low-level grift and graft you’d expect of a county tax collector with tastes far more expensive than his county income.  Greenberg falsified and used Florida and Puerto Rico drivers licenses, stalked and falsely accused a person of sex crimes who was planning on running against him in the next election, stole money from the office of tax collector which he led, and conspired to steal money from the federal government intended to support small businesses through the COVID relief plan known as the CARES Act.

But it is Greenberg’s decidedly non-ordinary crime of soliciting and paying for sex with an underage girl, and his association with Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz that gets us to how Gaetz was got.

It could be argued that it is this association, criminal and otherwise, with the prominent Trump-defender that enabled Greenberg’s plea deal this morning, which includes his promise to cooperate with federal prosecutors in Florida in their investigation of crimes by others, including, it is perfectly evident, Matt Gaetz.  In fact, the words “other” and “others” appear repeatedly in the first count of the so-called “Factual Basis” section of the plea agreement, which lays out the details of the crimes Greenberg and others engaged in with the “Minor” female.  “Greenberg and the Minor met in hotels in the Middle District of Florida, often with others, at which Greenberg and the Minor engaged in commercial sex acts.  Greenberg also introduced the Minor to other adult men who engaged in commercial sex acts with the Minor in the Middle District of Florida.”

It is the “other adult men,” including Congressman Matt Gaetz, who will not be sleeping particularly well tonight.  This is because federal prosecutors don’t agree to plea agreements with criminals such as Joel Greenberg unless they have already debriefed the criminals about crimes which they can help the prosecutors pursue through further indictments of “others.”

There are numerous aspects of the crimes described in the “Factual Basis” portion of the plea agreement which could be described as disturbing, even disgusting.  It is in a long section relating to the number of opportunities Greenberg had to determine that the female “minor” was underage that one particular detail jumps out at you:   “…the fact that other men Greenberg introduced the Minor to engaged in commercial sex acts with the Minor in Greenberg’s presence when the Minor was under 18 years old…”

The words “in Greenberg’s presence” are in the plea agreement that was read aloud in court this morning in Florida.  Greenberg stood shackled at the defendant’s table and repeatedly said “I do” affirming his guilt and the “factual basis” of the charges to which he pled.  In other words, according to his oral admissions in open court, it is now a matter of public record that Joel Greenberg was present in a hotel room and witnessed “other men” having sex with a girl under the age of eighteen.

It is perhaps unsurprising that stories published over the last several months have described some of the “other men” involved with Greenberg and Gaetz as major Republican financial donors, including at least one individual who was appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis to the board of a major airport authority in Florida.  According to the Daily Beast, which has been way out ahead of other news outlets during the development of this story, Gaetz used his Venmo account to transfer money to Greenberg, who turned around and immediately transferred sums equal to Gaetz’s payments to women who were hired for the purposes of what the Greenberg plea agreement describes as “commercial sex.”

Congressman Matt Gaetz, long-time defender of repeated philanderer, sex-abuser, and rapist Donald Trump, has gotten himself in some real trouble due to his friendship with the former county tax collector Joel Greenberg.  The plea agreement revealed in court this morning shows that prosecutors will not be relying solely on travel records, hotel receipts, Venmo accounts, and other financial paraphernalia to prove any case they may be working on with respect to Gaetz.  They have a witness who has told them he was in the room when a United States congressman had sex with a minor he had paid money to, and it was done in front of “other men.”

They may as well say “other Republican men,” because that’s the way it’s going to go down when the feds start making new arrests in Washington D.C., and of course, mid-Florida.