Florida donors with state business fueled end of DeSantis presidential run washingtonpost.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from washingtonpost.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) â It all started with a hunch by a central Florida prep school teacher about who had launched a politically motivated smear campaign against him, falsely alleging he was racist and in a sexual relationship with a high school student.
Investigators say fingerprints on an envelope used in the smear campaign against Brian Beute led them to a local tax collector, Joel Greenberg. That investigation subsequently led to Greenberg s friend, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, who is now the subject of a probe into whether the congressman and tax collector paid women or offered them gifts in exchange for sex and whether one of them was underage.
Gaetz friend was lightning rod for controversy in Florida winknews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from winknews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
As federal agents investigate Rep. Matt Gaetz in a sex-trafficking inquiry, the scandal is fast becoming an inflection moment for the post-Trump Republican Party.
With no previous political experience, Greenberg was elected Seminole County’s tax collector in 2016, promising to be a breath of fresh air while running against an incumbent who had been in office for almost three decades.
Months after taking office in 2017, Greenberg started allowing employees to carry guns openly, even though then-state Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi’s office would say later in an informal, nonbinding opinion that they shouldn’t openly carry firearms in their jobs since they aren’t law enforcement officers.
Greenberg has only one way to escape the full weight of the 33 charges against him: providing information to federal prosecutors.
It all started with a hunch by a central Florida prep school teacher about who had launched a politically motivated smear campaign against him, falsely alleging he was racist and in a sexual relationship with a high school student.
Investigators say fingerprints on an envelope used in the smear campaign against
Brian Beute led them to a local tax collector,
Joel Greenberg. That investigation subsequently led to Greenbergâs friend, U.S. Rep.
Matt Gaetz, who is now the subject of a probe into whether the congressman and tax collector paid women or offered them gifts in exchange for sex and whether one of them was underage.