The Daily Beast has a doozy of a new story on Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-FL) running buddy.
The explosive new details focus not on Gaetz but on Joel Greenberg, the indicted Gaetz friend and associate who used to be a county tax collector in Florida.
The report lays out interviews with 12 women who were paid by Greenberg, all of whom said they understood the payments to be in exchange for sex.
Ten women said they felt pressured to take drugs, such as MDMA and ecstasy, and drink as an “entree to sex,” in the Daily Beast’s words.
And four women told the Daily Beast that Greenberg pressured them to have sex with him.
One of them reportedly said she was plied with “an endless supply of drugs” before having sex with Greenberg and another woman. The interviewee told the Daily Beast that she “would not have agreed to” the sexual encounter if she hadn’t been under the influence of “so many drugs.”
“I would not have agreed to the other woman being there. I wasn’t really in a position to say I didn’t want to do this,” the woman said. “I wasn’t in my right mind.”
The Daily Beast noted that none of the women used the phrase “sexual assault” while recalling their encounters with Greenberg, and that not all of them claimed to have had sex with the former official despite the payments.
Harlan Hill, a spokesperson for the GOP lawmaker, told the Daily Beast that “the only allegations of impropriety seem to be about Mr. Greenberg, not Gaetz.”
Four women told the Daily Beast that Greenberg had offered to introduce them to a friend who was “a congressman.” The women reportedly said it was their understanding that the congressman was Gaetz, though they never ended up meeting him.
Gaetz is currently under federal investigation for sex trafficking, which allegedly included a 17-year-old minor, who is also at the center of Greenberg’s criminal case. The feds have been scrutinizing Gaetz and Greenberg’s payments and gifts to women allegedly in exchange for sex in the investigation.
A little over a week ago, reporters uncovered Greenberg’s communications to Trump associate Roger Stone seemingly discussing a pay-for-play scheme for a presidential pardon for the ex-Florida official. Part of those communications included a letter penned by Greenberg confessing to paying women for sex on Gaetz’s behalf. The letter stated that the payments for sex were extended to a 17-year-old girl.
