Key witness against Gaetz cooperates in investigation into home ethics
A lawyer for the key witness against Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, said Friday that the witness was cooperating with a House Ethics Committee investigation into whether Mr. Gaetz had sex with an underage girl while serving in Congress.
Fritz Scheller, a lawyer for Mr. Gaetz's former friend and political ally, Joel Greenberg, said he provided documents to the committee that he said supported his client's claims that he had witnessed Mr. Gaetz having sex had with a 17 year old girl.
“Mr. Greenberg has and will cooperate with any congressional request,” Mr. Scheller said in an email Friday.
Mr. Greenberg, who pleaded guilty to sex trafficking, among other charges, in May 2021, is serving an eleven-year prison sentence. He had previously cooperated with a Justice Department investigation into whether Mr. Gaetz was guilty of sex trafficking of a minor, a federal crime punishable by a minimum of 10 years in prison.
Last year, the Justice Department quietly closed its investigation into Mr. Gaetz after investigators concluded they could not make a strong enough case against him in court, people familiar with the matter said.
Mr. Scheller said the documents he turned over to Congress were in response to a request from the House Ethics Committee.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Gaetz, Jillian L. Wyant, said Friday that the Justice Department had received the same material sent to the Ethics Commission and “deemed it unreliable and declined to press charges.” The news media, she added, “should not be allowed to launder slander of people in prison.”
It is unclear how useful the documents will be to the committee, which began its investigation into Mr. Gaetz several months ago after completing an investigation into George Santos, the former New York representative who fabricated large parts of his background when he ran for Congress. . The House of Representatives expelled Santos late last year after the committee released its report.
The investigation into Mr. Gaetz has been slow as investigators have received a series of tips. Mr. Gaetz has claimed that the investigation is retaliation against him for taking the lead in removing Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House of Representatives.
The Justice Department's decision not to prosecute Mr. Gaetz came two months after Mr. Greenberg was sentenced to prison. Mr. Scheller said at the time that the Justice Department's decision proved that the country had “two systems”: one that favors politicians like Gaetz and punishes those less powerful, like Greenberg.
“Why should we prosecute the privileged when defendants with limited culpability provide sufficient cannon fodder?” Mr. Scheller said at the time.