Matt Gaetz’s Wingman Is an Even Bigger Scumbag Than Previously Thought

One of the central figures in the Matt Gaetz Justice Department investigation is Joel Greenberg, the former tax collector for Florida’s Seminole County who was indicted last summer on a vast array of charges including sex trafficking a minor, bribery, stalking, and defrauding the Paycheck Protection Program. As The New York Times reported back in March, the DOJ only began to look into allegations that Gaetz had paid women for sex and slept with a minor, who he also allegedly transported across state lines, as it was investigating Greenberg, whom Gaetz met in 2017 and became “close friends” with. Except whereas most people’s relationships with their close friends involve activities like dinner parties, Bravo binge-watching, and weekend getaways here and there, Gaetz and Greenberg’s seemingly centered around various alleged sex crimes the men appear to have left digital paper trails for on Venmo and other online payment platforms.

Gaetz has denied any and all wrongdoing. But Greenberg, who previously pleaded not guilty to 33 charges, is said to be negotiating a plea deal that would see him cooperating with the Feds, an outcome Greenberg’s lawyer has suggested should be very worrisome to the Florida congressman. And while it seems pretty obvious what kind of person Gaetz’s wingman is—the kind who, by his own admission, slept with a 17-year-old and, according to reports, made fake IDs to “facilitate commercial sex acts”—the Daily Beast spoke to 12 women about their experiences with the guy, who made it very clear:

All of them said it was their understanding that Greenberg—who until his indictment last June served as the elected tax collector for Seminole County, Florida—was paying them at least in part for sex, going as far back as 2013. Ten women told the Daily Beast they felt pressure at one time or another to drink or take drugs as an entree to sex. And all 12 said Greenberg encouraged them to invite friends, either for himself or men he knew. None of the women the Daily Beast talked to used the phrase “sexual assault” in their interviews, and the encounters seemed to cover a spectrum of experiences. Some women described platonic encounters where they still got paid. Others relayed that they had consensual sex for money. But some characterized their experiences as a trauma, and four women said Greenberg pressured them to have sex—with one recounting that she had sex with Greenberg and another woman after being plied with “an endless supply of drugs.”

“I was under the influence of so many drugs,” this one woman told reporter Roger Sollenberger. “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. I wasn’t in my right mind. I was in over my head and it was kind of scary.”

Another woman recalled that when Greenberg found out she had faked taking ecstasy, he aggressively insisted she take it. “I immediately left right after and was sick on the way home,” she said. While she didn’t have sex with Greenberg on this night, she acknowledged that she had an on-again, off-again sexual relationship with him for years before. “I absolutely felt pressured to have sex with him,” she said, noting that she cut off contact after the ecstasy incident. That experience of Greenberg pressuring women to take ecstasy tracked with the accounts of other women. According to one, when she and a friend faked taking MDMA, Greenberg became angry and told them that they were “taking advantage” of him. They fled the hotel, she said, because they thought Greenberg, who had taken two doses himself, was “dangerous.”

On just Venmo and the Cash App, Greenberg paid more than 40 young women nearly $100,000 over the course of two years…. All of the stories from the women the Daily Beast interviewed shared similar contours. They connected with Greenberg online. They had encounters in hotel rooms or at the house of one of Greenberg’s friends. They were paid through Venmo or Cash App in exchange for sex. Many were pressed to drink alcohol and take drugs, usually MDMA. They were often invited to have group sex, and some did, either with multiple men or multiple women. And Greenberg offered to connect them with influential people.

Several of the women told the Daily Beast that they have been contacted by federal investigators who seem to be focusing on the underage girl Greenberg and Gaetz both allegedly slept with. One of them said she told a federal agent that the former tax collector “had brought them four discarded IDs as an inducement to have sex,” and that when they declined, threatened that they could “face legal exposure” for accepting the IDs. “He told us in detail he would go into the DMV, take old IDs people turn in, and just take them and give them to people like us, his victims, as a way to have sex with him,” the woman told the Daily Beast. “He made that very clear, and he made that clear when we didn’t want to have sex with him. He tried to play like he was the victim, and if we didn’t have sex with him and took the IDs, that we would get in trouble for the IDs. He basically said the payment was the fake IDs plus $1,500.”

Last week, the Daily Beast reported that Greenberg had written a “confession” letter, in the hopes of obtaining a pardon from Donald Trump via Roger Stone, in which he admitted facilitating Gaetz’s interactions with the women and paying them on the congressman’s behalf. Greenberg’s attorney, Fritz Scheller, declined the Daily Beast’s request for comment. A Gaetz spokesperson said in a statement: “Despite the Daily Beast’s extensive review of Congressman Gaetz’s life, the only allegations of impropriety seem to be about Mr. Greenberg, not Gaetz.”

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