More from the party of Rapist'sRus, part 3
KEEPS GETTING WEIRDER
Matt Gaetz Used his ‘Adopted’ Son Nestor’s PayPal to Buy Sex'.
The lawyer for two women who testified to the House Ethics Committee that former Rep. Matt Gaetz paid them for “sexual favors” said Monday that one of the forms in which they were paid was the PayPal of Nestor Galban, whom Gaetz calls his “adopted son.”
Florida attorney Joel Leppard embarked on a media tour Monday, just days after Gaetz was named as President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general pick. Leppard spoke with The Washington Post about his clients' testimony, as well as to CNN and other outlets.
On CNN, he said one of his clients—who was a friend of the minor Gaetz is accused of having sex with—attended a July 2017 party with the attorney general nominee.
“She testified to the House that as she was walking out to the pool area, she turned to her right and she witnessed … her friend having sex with Representative Gaetz. And her friend at that time was 17.”
Gaetz has denied all of the accusations. A federal probe into the matter was ultimately shelved with no charges filed against him.
Leppard added that his clients testified that payments for sex from Gaetz lasted from that summer through early 2019.
“There were events at Airbnbs. There were events at individuals’ houses. There were events that took place at political events,” Leppard told OutFront anchor Erin Burnett. “There was a trip to New York. There’s a trip to Bahamas. So events like this did happen from time to time, perhaps over 10 times over the course of July 2017 to early January 2019.”
A House Ethics Committee’s report on the allegations has not yet been made public. A lawyer for the minor with whom Gaetz allegedly had sex has called for it to be released. Several top Republicans have as well.
Gaetz had turned himself into a national firebrand by 2019, acting as a staunch defender of Donald Trump who frequently appeared on Fox News. It was this year that Gaetz—one day before Michael Cohen was slated to speak before the House Oversight Committee—accused Trump’s former fixer-turned-foe of being unfaithful to his wife, in what came off as a veiled threat.
Gaetz, tagging Cohen’s account on Twitter, wrote: “Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot…”
The post was deleted after Gaetz was admonished for ever making the post. Gaetz insisted it wasn’t “witness intimidation” but was instead just “witness testing.” The Florida Bar opened a probe into Gaetz but ultimately cleared him.
Nestor, the hidden Cuban ‘son,’ emerges
In the summer of 2020, Gaetz got into a fiery altercation with the former Rep. Cedric Richmond during a congressional hearing on police reform. During a heated back-and-forth, Gaetz exploded at Richmond for suggesting he didn’t know what it was like to fear for a Black son.
Gaetz was unmarried and—as far as the public knew—childless at the time, so many were left scratching their heads after his exchange with Richmond. That same day, however, the Florida congressman took to Twitter to post a photo of someone he described as “my son Nestor,” a 19-year-old from Cuba who’d apparently lived with him for six years. “We share no blood but he is my life,” Gaetz said. He also emphasized in his post that Nestor came to Florida “legally.”
Gaetz and Nestor’s relationship has since been scrutinized, however. Nestor is the son of Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend and spent time living with both Gaetz and his blood family in Florida. Gaetz was also discovered to have described Nestor in social media posts as a “local student” in 2016 and as “my helper” in 2017.
It remains unclear whether Gaetz formally adopted him.
Naked pics on the House floor
A CNN report alleged in 2021 that Gaetz had proudly showed images and clips of naked women he’d been sleeping with to aides and lawmakers while in the U.S. Capitol and on the House floor. Among the alleged videos shown on Gaetz’ phone was a nude woman with a hula hoop. A source told CNN the seedy clips were a “point of pride” for the congressman.
CNN’s report suggested that the allegedly sordid conduct from Gaetz was part of a trend from the congressman. The network reported that staff who worked for former House Speaker Paul Ryan once had to meet with Gaetz during his first term to lecture him about behaving professionally on the House floor.
Gaetz denied CNN’s report “in the strongest possible terms.” Just before the story broke, Gaetz claimed that he and his family had been “victims of an organized criminal extortion involving a former DOJ official seeking $25 million while threatening to smear my name.”
Lone ‘no’ vote on anti-human trafficking bill
Back in 2017, the freshman congressman Gaetz wasn’t a national name yet. Still, he turned heads across the country after he was the lone “no” vote on an anti-human trafficking bill that easily passed both the House and Senate.
Gaetz explained—from a Facebook Live in his living room—that he voted no because he felt the bill, the Combating Human Trafficking in Commercial Vehicles Act, would represent “mission creep” at the federal level. In layman’s terms, he felt the bill would lead to more government bureaucracy than was needed, though he agreed with the bill’s goal. Gaetz was still slammed for being the lone opposing vote, however, and his “no” vote resurfaced years later during the fallout of his alleged sex trafficking probe.
Can you spare a pardon?
While perhaps his least controversial scandal, Gaetz was thoroughly grilled in 2022 when testimony from a Trump attorney—emerging as part of a Jan. 6 Committee hearing—revealed that the lawmaker had allegedly asked for a sweeping pardon from Trump during his final days in office.
That attorney, Eri Herschmann, said in a deposition that Gaetz had requested a presidential pardon “from the beginning of time up until today, for any and all things.” Cassidy Hutchinson, an ex-White House adviser, also testified that Gaetz had been seeking a pardon since “early December” in 2020, but she said she was unsure why.
After the deposition clip emerged, Gaetz dismissed the committee as a “political sideshow” while other lawmakers, like the former Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger, remarked that the request was proof Gaetz was up to no good. “The only reason you ask for a pardon is if you think you’ve committed a crime,” Kinzinger said.
