4/2/21
The Justice Department is investigating whether Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican and close ally of former President Donald Trump, broke federal sex trafficking laws. The inquiry focuses on his relationships with young women who had been recruited online, and whether he had sex with a 17-year-old girl. Investigators believe that he paid for sex with a number of women he met through Joel Greenberg — a former Florida tax collector who was indicted last year on a federal sex trafficking charge, among other offenses — people close to the investigation told The New York Times. Gaetz has denied paying for sex or sleeping with anyone underage, but it’s clear that the story is far from over. And he’s increasingly isolated: Few Republicans have spoken up in support of him, and today his own communications director, Luke Ball, resigned. Gaetz, 38, was elected in 2016 to represent Florida’s First District, the westernmost and most heavily Republican patch of a state that became ground zero for Trump’s brand of Republicanism. He comes from a political family: His father, Don Gaetz, was the president of the Florida State Senate, and his grandfather had been a Republican politician in North Dakota.
During his four-plus years in the House, Gaetz has been one of Trump’s most virulent defenders — and an unabashed enabler of his most outlandish claims, appearing frequently on Fox News and other conservative outlets. Soon after he arrived in Congress, Gaetz became the only lawmaker in Washington to vote against a 2017 bill giving the federal government more power and resources to fight human trafficking. You might think that Republicans in Washington would be in an uproar over reports that a prominent young lawmaker was being accused of sex with an underage girl. But it’s being reported that he’s long had a reputation among colleagues for aberrant behavior, including a fondness for illicit drugs and younger women. Multiple people told CNN that Gaetz had a history of showing off nude photos and videos of women that he said he’d slept with to colleagues on the House floor. It’s possible, of course, that Gaetz will follow the example set by Trump, his political mentor, who rode out many scandals of his own involving accusations of sexual misconduct — including rape — by largely ignoring the allegations. On the Democratic side, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York has so far kept his own ship afloat even as numerous allegations of sexual impropriety have come out against him, including from his former employees.
