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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Andrew Prokop, Politics, Vox. Lots of talk right now about Florida Representative Matt Gaetz. Why? What is going on with Matt Gaetz?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Investigators looking into the alleged relationship from two years ago and whether Gates possibly violated sex trafficking laws when he allegedly paid for travel and other expenses for the teen. All things the Republican strongly denies.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And now it turns out that the Justice Department has some questions for Representative Gates as well.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Before we get into this sordid saga, we should just flag that Matt Gaetz has not been charged with anything by anyone relating to this sex scandal, correct?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And a series 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: OK, so let's just talk about where all of this trouble begins for Matt Gaetz and his buddy Joel Greenberg.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, so Joel Greenberg was the tax collector of Seminole County, Florida.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. And this seems to have piqued the interest of prosecutors.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he resigned his office and later was jailed for violating his release conditions.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he hasn't been convicted of any of this stuff yet either.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He has not been convicted. He has not faced trial yet, but he is seeking to strike a plea deal with prosecutors.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So expect him to plead guilty if an agreement can be reached to at least some of this stuff in the near future.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And a plea deal makes me wonder about how this might involve Congressman Gates.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And a lot of this appears to have been consensual. Greenberg is said to have used the website Seeking Arrangement.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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...
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Hi, I'm happiness. Who said money can't buy happiness?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, the site claims that this isn't prostitution or sex work, but in practice, it can often look a lot like that.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And this is why Matt Gaetz has been drawn into this whole mess?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Gates denies this. He said he never had sexual relations with a 17-year-old.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But prosecutors know this girl's age, and they apparently have reason to believe that she had sex with Gates while she was underage.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: When this initial story leaks out via the New York Times, how does Matt Gaetz respond?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So Gaetz 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But he has aggressively disputed that he paid anyone specifically for sex.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And he's also insisted he didn't sleep with anyone who was underage.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, providing for flights and hotel rooms for people that you're dating who are of legal age is not a crime.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So he's saying that there was no quid pro quo, in a sense.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Classic defense.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Exactly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that is what is at the heart of some of these laws that are at play, whether prosecutors can prove that payments were made from Gates to these women directly for sex.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And we should note that a follow-up report from the Daily Beast showed that Gates had used the payment app Venmo to send several hundred dollars to Greenberg.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And one of the payments was marked with one of the women's names that it should be for this woman.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Your wife was there and I brought a friend of mine. You'll remember her.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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, I would like to.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wait, is is Daddy Gates also potentially tied up in this sex scandal?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: No, no. Gates's father is only part of this story because he is a very rich guy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What seems to have happened is that some operators in Florida politics learned of this investigation into Gates.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And they want $25 million to do that. And they told Gates's father, hey, we know that the FBI is investigating your son.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They claim that they had photos showing Gates in a, quote, sexual orgy with underage prostitutes.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then Gates will look really good.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Our family was so troubled by that, we went to the local FBI.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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...
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And again, the question here comes down to whether this was a quid pro quo.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The fellows involved have basically confirmed that they did this.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, again, was there a direct quid pro quo?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: It doesn't seem like they actually threatened to leak the news of the investigation if they weren't paid.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it definitely seems to have been some shady business happening.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Okay so to basically sum this all up Matt Gaetz has a friend who definitely into some shady stuff some of it involving underage girls.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He saying he 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Is that all right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I think you covered it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why this sordid affair is getting so much dang attention in a minute on Today Explained.
--:-- [Theme music starts]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Built Rewards. These days, it seems like everybody has a rewards program. You swipe your card and you get one cent on the hundred dollars. But with your rent, frequently, you just pay month after month. You never get anything from it other than that roof over your head. Not anymore, says Built Rewards.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Built Rewards says it lets you earn points on your rent. By paying rent through Built, they say you can earn flexible points that can be redeemed toward hundreds of hotels and airlines, perhaps a future rent payment, your next Lyft ride, and so much more.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Your home isn't just where you sleep. It's your community. And Built wants you to go out and do things in the community. You can eat at your favorite local restaurants, then earn more points. You can get VIP treatment at certain fitness studios. You can enjoy exclusive experiences just for Bilt members every month.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: When you're ready to travel, they say Bilt points can be converted to miles or hotel points all around the world. You can earn points on rent and around your neighborhood wherever you call home by joining Bilt.com slash Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We all have moments where we could have done better, like cutting your own hair. Oh, yikes. Or forgetting sunscreen, so now you look like a tomato. Ouch. Could have done better. Same goes for where you invest. Level up and invest smarter with Schwab. Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it. Learn more at schwab.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Before we do, tell me, who again is Matt Gaetz for people who weren't familiar with him up until, you know, a couple weeks ago?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this is the reason why it's getting so much attention, basically, is that Matt Gaetz is a relatively new member of Congress from Florida who has had a very big profile in the media, especially during the Trump administration.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: His legislative record has not been particularly distinguished, but, you know, there are a lot of new members of Congress and Gates very quickly distinguished himself as the guy who is willing to cause controversy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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 and a crack pipe in the car.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And really try to pander to the conservative and the pro-Trump base and get a lot of media attention as a result.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. So Gates is 38 years old. But before he joined Congress in 2017, he joined the Florida State Legislature.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And so Matt Gaetz joined the Florida state legislature, was first elected in 2010.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Classy. You know, there have been various reports that have claimed that Gates was involved with this.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I don't know if it has ever actually been proven, but it's certainly a revealing anecdote about the culture that existed in the Florida State House at the time that he was there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And how does he get to Congress?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So in 2016, of course, the year of Trump, Gates ran in the primary for a congressional seat in Florida, and he won.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's the same year as his soon-to-be pal Joel Greenberg won the primary for the Seminole County Tax Collector's Office.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And so both of them essentially saw their stars begin to rise in the party of Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They embraced Trump's style of politics, his rhetorical style, his willingness to use unusual forms of media, his willingness to court outrage.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: These weren't, you know, the buttoned up Republicans of the previous generation. These were, they were the children of Trump, basically.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How could Matt Gaetz set himself apart from his fellow freshman Republican legislators who nobody actually cares about?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Gates would be there to explain and to insist why Trump was really being railroaded.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Gates has pushed the boundaries in his defense of Trump in the past, notably when And you remember a fellow named Michael Cohen when he was about to testify in Congress about his experiences working as Trump's lawyer.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he got a lot of criticism for that and eventually pulled down the tweet.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But, you know, just it's just this constant, aggressive willingness to go further than anyone else.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And Gates was still out there defending Trump and defending this big lie that he rightfully won the election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So it's likely that he's not the most popular member of the GOP in Congress?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes, I don't think he's ever been particularly well-liked.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I should also mention that one of the reports about how he would behave in Congress is that he would show fellow Republicans photos and videos of naked women and brag about his sex life, basically, including on the floor of the House of Representatives.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Quote, it must be remembered that he has totally denied the accusations against him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So he doesn't want to get too close to him, even if he's willing to say innocent until proven guilty.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So what does this ultimately mean for Matt Gates? 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Does any of this matter, Andrew?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so for the time being, he's insisting on his innocence. He's not yet resigning.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we don't really have a good timeline for how long that might take.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But if it does materialize, then he would be in a heap of trouble.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, the charge for sex trafficking of a child, it contains a minimum sentence if convicted of 10 years.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So this is some very serious time, some very serious charges.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And whether prosecutors can manage to put together a solid case, of course, remains to be seen.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But they certainly appear to be trying to do so, and that is not good news for Representative Gates.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Andrew Prokop, senior correspondent. Read his work at Vox.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Ramos from 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. Thank you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Nacy's Fall Fashion Guide and find the perfect look for you. Shop in-store or online at nacy's.com.
