Source: Politics<\/p>\n
MIAMI \u2014 The feds were closing in. And Rep. Matt Gaetz\u2019s friend, Joel Greenberg, was in a panic.<\/p>\n
The Florida county tax collector was five days away from a federal indictment for sex trafficking involving a 17-year-old \u2014 the same one Gaetz is now being investigated over \u2014 so Greenberg reached out to mutual friends on Aug. 14 last year and tried to enlist them in <\/b>his defense, according to a WhatsApp chat shared with federal investigators and obtained by POLITICO.<\/p>\n
He fumed that the prosecutor should be fired. He suspected that a political consultant \u201cwas the rat here.\u201d He fretted that investigators had combed through his Venmo cash app history, fearing it led them to the former teen at the center of the case. <\/p>\n
Greenberg also said he was paying the legal fees for the woman, who is now 20 years old.<\/p>\n
The WhatsApp messages shed light on key aspects of the scandal consuming the Florida Republican congressman and close ally of President Donald Trump \u2014 and on the state of mind of the man Gaetz once called his \u201cwingman\u201d as he sought to manage the fallout.<\/p>\n
Greenberg went so far as to push Gaetz to use his influence with Trump for a pardon, according to two sources familiar with the discussions, including one who heard Greenberg say it repeatedly.<\/p>\n
Asked about the request from Greenberg, Gaetz previously declined to confirm or deny that it occurred. But the congressman said he did not ask Trump to pardon Greenberg. Gaetz couldn\u2019t be reached this weekend to discuss the WhatsApp messages that are the subject of this story.<\/p>\n
Gaetz\u2019s allies now fear that Greenberg is preparing to strike a deal with prosecutors to deliver Gaetz, who has consistently denied any wrongdoing. The congressman has not been charged and so far no evidence has surfaced against him beyond anonymous allegations he had sex with a minor or paid for prostitutes. But the scandal has seriously hobbled Gaetz, who built a national reputation as one of the staunchest defenders of Trump and has relentlessly attacked the very Department of Justice that\u2019s now investigating him.<\/p>\n
Greenberg faces decades of prison time from a total of 33 different charges, including identity theft, a host of financial crimes and stalking a political opponent he falsely smeared as a pedophile. But the alleged sex-trafficking of the former 17-year-old is the most serious charge and carries a 10-year mandatory-minimum prison sentence.<\/p>\n
In the Aug. 14 WhatsApp chat with a politically influential Republican mutual friend of Gaetz and Greenberg, Greenberg initially referred to the young woman as \u201cVintage 99\u201d \u2014 a fine-wine reference to her birth year that she used as her online name on SeekingArrangement, a dating website that connects women with so-called sugar daddies. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m having to pay for vintage 99 to retain [a] lawyer,\u201d Greenberg wrote in the WhatsApp chat to the friend, who discussed the messages with POLITICO on condition of anonymity. \u201cThey [federal agents] contacted her and are wanting her to talk. She doesn\u2019t want to talk to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nor does she want to talk to the press. She blocked a POLITICO reporter on social media and her iPhone after she was called and texted to discuss the case Monday. Her attorney couldn\u2019t be reached. POLITICO is withholding her name because she is the alleged victim of a sex crime.<\/p>\n
Greenberg\u2019s defense attorney, Fritz Scheller, said his client is not paying anyone else\u2019s legal bills that he\u2019s aware of, and noted he couldn\u2019t speak to Greenberg\u2019s arrangements before Scheller began to represent the defendant in December. <\/p>\n