Gaetz' goofy grin is going...going...gone!

Looking like the second lead in Porky's II is not a good idea where you're headed, pal.

How would you like to wake up in the morning and flip on the TV and the first thing you see is the face of your buddy, Tax Collector Guy, and a “Breaking News!” chryon about his plans to plead guilty and cooperate with prosecutors who have been peering down the back of your shorts for the last six months?

Maybe that’s why we haven’t seen his goofy grin on the tube for the last week or so.  Or maybe the bookers from Tucker’s show lost his phone number, or maybe the powers-that-be at Newsmax have changed their minds about that pundit slot they were thinking about offering him.  Whatever the case, when you are as pure a creature of media exposure as Matt Gaetz is, it’s not a good sign.

And no wonder.  Lawyers for Tax Collector Guy Joel Greenberg, Gaetz’ running buddy in the Florida panhandle and everywhere else over the past few years, announced on Thursday in court in Orlando, Florida that their client is planning to plead guilty and cooperate with prosecutors.  Both prosecution and defense attorneys agreed to a May 15 deadline to reach a deal.  It’s well know, of course, that prosecutors don’t even broach the idea of letting you plead to lesser charges if you don’t have something juicy to trade in return.  Tax Collector Guy must be brimming over with stuff to trade, because if no agreement is signed by that date, he will go on trial on 33 counts of federal crimes, including having sex with a 17 year old girl, interstate sex trafficking, stalking a political rival and attempting to bribe a federal official.

Meanwhile, Gaetz’ senior legislative director headed out the door on the heels of his communications director who fled Gaetz’ employ several days earlier.  This, amid news that the FBI is looking into a trip Gaetz took to the Bahamas with a prominent surgeon and Republican fund-raiser from Orlando named Jason Pirozzollo and what was described as “a group of women.”  The FBI is in the process of questioning witnesses to the Bahamas trip about whether the women were paid for sex and used illegal drugs.  FBI agents were said to have seized the cell phone of at least one of the women and were examining it for evidence of texts or phone calls with either Gaetz or Pirozzollo. 

Federal investigators are also interested in why one of the private planes taken by Gaetz and his female companions was stopped by immigration authorities when it landed in Fort Lauderdale.  It’s being reported that among the travelers on the Gaetz plane was a man by the name of Halsey Beshears, who served in the administration of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, heading up the Department of Business and Professional Regulation.  Beshears resigned his post in the Florida government suddenly in January of this year, citing “health reasons.” 

Because of course serving as head of a department with as huge a budget and as important and heavily staffed as Business and Professional Regulation takes such a heavy toll on you that the stress is likely to kill you.  Yeah, sure, dude.

The FBI is also reported to be looking into a series of suspicious Venmo transactions between Gaetz and his pal Tax Collector Guy in 2018.  Gaetz is reported to have Venmoed his running buddy Greenberg $900 with a notation on the transfer that it was to “hit up­” a young woman with whom Greenberg was apparently arranging a tryst for Gaetz.  Upon receiving the $900 Venmo transfer from Gaetz, Greenberg immediately turned around and sent three sums of money amounting to exactly $900 to three young women, one of whom was the young woman named in the $900 transfer Gaetz had just sent to Greenberg.

Because of course Venmo is a top-secret method of transferring money between two people who do not want records kept of the transaction.  Not.

Pirozzollo, the surgeon from Orlando who took the private jet with Gaetz to the Bahamas with a bevy of female “escorts,” accompanied Florida Governor DeSantis when he met Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump at the Orlando airport in 2019 for the first rally of Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign. 

Because of course when you’re the governor of Florida, the guy you pick to greet the president of the United States when Air Force One lands in your state is your chief fund-raiser and Congressman Gaetz’ Bahamas sex-buddy.  Of course you do.

The question occurs, as it does so often when you peek under the rock covering Republican politics in this country, who are these people?  I mean, we’re only a week or so into Gaetzgate, and already he’s been traveling around the country paying for flights and hotel rooms (with his own credit card) for women he’s met on a “Sugar Daddy” internet site, and he’s jetting off to the Bahamas with major Republican fund raisers and bevies of “escorts,” and he’s Venmoing cash to his buddy who was so crooked he’s facing no less than 33 federal charges for the shit he did when he was Tax Collector Guy in his county in the Florida panhandle.  And meanwhile, Gaetz has the time to fly to Wyoming to bait Liz Cheney for condemning Trump’s “stop the steal” campaign and his incitement of the Capitol insurrection, all the while appearing on Fox about every 10 minutes to flash his goofy grin so he’ll be recognizable to all the babes he meets on Sugar Daddy dot com.

And that is not even to mention the rest of the Florida sleazeballs who have apparently been jetting around chasing skirt with him.  And they’re not even regular old run-of-the-mill sleazeballs.  They’re Trump-greeting- big-time-fund-raiser-DeSantis-buddy sleazeballs and head of major Florida government department sleazeballs and Florida Tax Collector Guy sleazeballs, for crying out loud.

The fact is, every single swinging-you-know-what on Tier Three at some federal penitentiary he ends up in will be able to recognize Gaetz by his goofy grin, too, and just between you and me, that little gem of a fact does not bode well for your well-being in the Big House, Matty my boy.