It's Not a Great Time to Be Matt Gaetz (Next Week's Not Looking Too Good Either)

By Bess Levin, Vanity Fair

08 June 21

The Congressman is reportedly under investigation for obstruction of justice, on top of the alleged sex crimes.

hen we last checked in with the legal comings and goings of Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican was under investigation by the Justice Department for allegedly paying women for sex and, separately, sleeping with a minor and transporting her across state lines. Did things improve for the lawmaker in the proceeding few weeks? Not exactly! Instead, he’s now reportedly under additional DOJ investigation for obstructing justice, which the decomposing corpse of Richard Nixon can tell you means you’re screwed six ways ’til Sunday and should probably get on a helicopter headed for California (or Florida, as it were), circa now.

Politico reports that federal prosecutors are probing a call Gaetz had with a witness in his sex-crimes investigation, one of “a handful of women who entered Gaetz’s orbit via his one-time ‘wingman‘,” i.e. former tax collector Joel Greenberg, who pleaded guilty last month to an array of charges, including the sex trafficking of a minor. According to reporter Marc Caputo, an ex-girlfriend of Gaetz was speaking to a witness in his sex-crimes investigation and then, at some point during the conversation, patched the lawmaker into the call. If that sounds pretty stupid and amateur hour and something you’d think a lawyer and congressman currently under investigation would know not to do, you’re right—it was!

Per Politico:

While it’s unknown exactly what was said, the discussion on that call is central to whether prosecutors can charge Gaetz with obstructing justice, which makes it illegal to suggest that a witness in a criminal case lie or give misleading testimony. The witness later spoke with prosecutors, the sources said…. The obstruction probe is the latest development in the ongoing federal investigation into Gaetz, a top ally of former President Donald Trump who has come under increasing scrutiny due to his relationship with Greenberg—now a cooperating witness. The obstruction inquiry signals how wide a net federal prosecutors are casting to possibly ensnare the congressman.

Brian Tannebaum, a veteran federal defense attorney briefed by Politico on the investigation, said that obstruction of justice is “widely used by prosecutors in various forms” and can even ensnare witnesses who lie on the stand at trial. He said that, if authorities recorded the call involving Gaetz, prosecutors will listen for signs that he’s trying to get the woman to “get her story straight” by shading the truth. “If there’s any indication he was trying to influence her testimony, that can be obstruction,” Tannebaum said. “If it’s determined that what he said obstructed the investigation—‘did what he tell you have any influence on your testimony before the grand jury?’—it can be real problem.”

Neither the ex-girlfriend nor the witness could be reached for Politico’s request for comment. The former girlfriend is reportedly in the midst of seeking an immunity deal in exchange for cooperation, which would obviously be further bad news for Gaetz. She has apparently told friends that she believes the alleged trafficking victim may have recorded her during a separate phone call in which she may have provided incriminating evidence re: the Florida congressman.

Gaetz dated his ex-girlfriend in 2017 and 2018, but they had an open relationship that involved other women, including the one involved in the three-way call under examination from prosecutors, according to two sources familiar with the relationship. Those two women joined Gaetz and others—including Greenberg’s sex-trafficking victim after she turned 18—on a jaunt to the Bahamas in late 2018. Prosecutors are also examining that trip to see if Gaetz or others violated a federal law, the Mann Act, which prohibits transporting people across state lines to engage in prostitution.

Gaetz has consistently denied paying for sex or prostitutes but has acknowledged engaging in so-called “sugar daddy” relationships with the women he met through Greenberg, who in turn found many of them on the SeekingArrangement website for men looking for relationships with younger women. But while SeekingArrangement relationships might not meet the legal definition of prostitution for a Mann Act case, experts say that the federal sex-trafficking of a minor statute has a broader definition of financial transactions. If a suspect had sex with someone under the age of 18, and if something of value changes hands, then a suspect can be charged.

In April, shortly before he pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, the Daily Beast reported that Greenberg had written a “confession” letter, in the hopes of obtaining a pardon, in which he admitted facilitating Gaetz’s interactions with a variety of women and paying them on the congressman’s behalf. Gaetz has denied any and all allegations of wrongdoing, including obstructing justice. A spokesperson for the congressman told Politico in a statement, “Congressman Gaetz pursues justice, he doesn’t obstruct it. The anonymous allegations have thus far amounted to lies, wrapped in leaks, rooted in an extortion plot by a former DOJ official. After two months, there is still not a single on-record accusation of misconduct, and now the ‘story’ is changing yet again.”

Meanwhile, as the investigation continues, Gaetz has kept busy spreading election-fraud lies and, on at least one occasion, encouraging supporters to shoot Silicon Valley executives for allegedly suppressing conservative voices. Which law enforcement should probably look into as well!

Capitol Insurrection in Jerusalem? Netanyahu Calls New Government a "Fraud," Calls for Massive Squatter Protests

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment

07 June 21

ilal Daher reports at the Israeli newspaper Arab 48 that outgoing prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the Likud Party bloc in the parliament or Knesset on Sunday, alleging that the multiparty coalition that was formed to unseat him is the “greatest election fraud” . . . “in the history of democracy.”

In his continued attempt to claim the title of the Trump of the Middle East, Netanyahu instigated the Right wing and the hundreds of thousands of squatters on Palestinian land against the “Change” coalition of eight parties seeking to unseat him, which run the gamut from the extreme right to the left-liberal. He rejected the warning of Nadav Argaman, the head of the Shin Bet intelligence agency, that heated rhetoric could incite violence among Israelis during the transition and could even lead to an assassination. Argaman appears to have been criticizing Netanyahu.

The Jerusalem Post reports that Avigdor Lieberman of the “Israel Our Home Party,” who is part of the “Change” coalition, asserted last week that he anticipates that what “everyone saw happen in the Capitol in Washington to happen” in Jerusalem.

The same source says that Netanyahu is refusing to have his staff prepare a transition to Bennett should he win the Knesset vote of confidence this coming Wednesday. (This is another petty gesture he seems to have borrowed from Trump).

Netanyahu riposted, “It is not possible to shut us up and to prevent criticisms from being launched,” adding, “the freedom of expression is not incitement, and they are attempting to portray the Right as violent and a danger to democracy.”

Netanyahu had called on squatters on Palestinian land in the West Bank to surround and besiege the homes of some Change coalition members of parliament on the Right, to pressure them into defecting to Netanyahu. He is using the squatters, who are armed and often terrorize indigenous Palestinians and steal their property, as a sort of Mussolini-style Black Shirt paramilitary. Netanyahu’s Likud Party was influenced by the far right nationalist tendencies of European politics in the first half of the twentieth century.

Netanyahu has criticized Change leaders Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid for accepting into their coalition Mansour Abbas of the United Arab List, an Israeli of Palestinian Muslim heritage who provided the essential 61st seat to Change in the 120-member parliament. He said he had never intended to ally with Abbas. Daher points out that this assertion is a lie, and that Netanyahu wooed Abbas but the possibility of having him join the Likud-led coalition was nixed by Shas, the Orthodox religious party, which said it would refuse to sit in Netanyahu’s government if it included a Palestinian-Israeli.

Netanyahu warned that the small leftist parties, Meretz and Labor, and the centrist There is a Future Party (Yesh Atid) of Lapid would never take bold action against Israel’s enemies or inside Iran.

Netanyahu boasted that his government had doubled the number of Israeli squatters on the Palestinian West Bank (he didn’t put it that way of course).

Israel militarily occupies the Palestinian West Bank, and for the occupying power to flood its own citizens into occupied territory is a war crime in international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids it in hopes of forestalling the sort of thing Nazi Germany did in occupied Poland, where it expelled Poles and brought in ethnic Germans to replace them, in hopes of Germanizing Poland.

Netanyahu charged that “their government will not stand steadfast before pressures to freeze the building of settlements or even to uproot the settlers, or against pressures [to allow] the opening of an American consulate for the Palestinians in Jerusalem and the reopening of the issue of dividing Jerusalem. This government will not stand against the return of the United States to the nuclear deal [with Iran] that threatens our existence.”

Israel unilaterally annexed part of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which is illegal in international law, and which is not recognized by most of the world’s countries.

Netanyahu is trying to stay in office in part by running against Joe Biden’s foreign policy, which seeks a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine and a return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which had limited Iranian enrichment of uranium to 3.6% for reactor fuel. Since Netanyahu conspired with Trump to cancel the deal, Iran has begun enriching as high as 60%. Enrichment to 95% is needed for an atomic bomb.

Netanyahu called on two right wing members of incoming prime minister Naftali Bennett’s own Yamina Party to “do the right thing” and defect to him.

For his part, Bennett, who is to Netanyahu’s Right on most issues, called on his rival to do the right thing and not engage in a “scorched earth” policy that would harm Israel.