SaintsInDome2006

Say, remember when Trump tried to appoint Matt Gaetz as AG? Gosh such an odd choice.

How Matt Gaetz became enmeshed with a 17 year old girl A 17-year-old with a homeless parent wanted money for braces and ended up having sex for money with powerful men. She wants the public to have a fuller understanding of how she was victimized. She was 17 and a high school junior in Florida. She was working at McDonald’s. And she was living in and out of a homeless shelter. Hoping to save up to buy braces to fix her teeth, she falsely advertised herself in 2017 as 18 years old on a website that matches men looking for “companionship” with young women looking to make money. What followed would set off a chain of events that would have a dramatic impact on her life and help upend the political career of one of the men she would encounter, Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican. Mr. Gaetz was investigated by the Justice Department for child sex trafficking but never charged. Following the election last year, he was President Trump’s first choice to serve as attorney general. He subsequently resigned from Congress, and then withdrew from consideration as attorney general under a storm of scrutiny.…. Last month, in response to a request from the McClatchy newspaper chain, a federal judge in Florida unsealed court documents from a related civil case that shed some light on her background. The documents included a description of the girl that said that at the time she met Mr. Gaetz she was “a then-homeless 17-year-old high schooler.” … According to her lawyer, the girl’s path to meeting Mr. Gaetz began during her junior year in high school. In December 2016, she turned 17. Her parents were divorced. One of them was so poor that the parent was living in and out of a homeless shelter. When the girl and her siblings were staying with that parent, they lived with the parent in the shelter. To make extra money, the girl worked at McDonald’s. But she began looking for other ways to make money and turned to a website that “advertised itself as a ‘sugar dating’ website that primarily connected older men and younger women seeking ‘mutually beneficial relationships,’” according to the report by the House Ethics Committee. Through the website, in April of her junior year in high school, she met Joel Greenberg, a local Florida tax collector who was becoming a friend and ally of Mr. Gaetz, according to court documents. Much of what followed has been documented in other inquiries and legal proceedings, including the Ethics Committee investigation. Mr. Greenberg first invited the 17-year-old to a meeting on his boat, according to court documents. At that meeting, they did not have sex, but Mr. Greenberg paid her $400, the documents said. Around that time, Mr. Greenberg gave her ecstasy and told her to try it at home. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Greenberg contacted the girl again, and they ultimately met up at a hotel where they had sex, according to court documents. For that, she was paid another $400, the court documents said. In the months that followed, Mr. Greenberg, using his personal credit card and one for the local tax collecting office he was in charge of, would have sex with her seven times for money before she turned 18, the documents said. Often during those encounters he would give her ecstasy, and he would often pay the girl and other women additional money for taking the drug during sex. On July 15, 2017, Mr. Greenberg asked the girl and others to attend a party at the home of Chris Dorworth, a former Republican member of the Florida state House of Representatives who at the time worked as a lobbyist for Ballard Partners, which is run by a major Trump fund-raiser. Court documents described the party as involving “alcohol; cocaine; middle-aged men; and young attractive females.” Mr. Gaetz, then 35, attended the party along with a girlfriend. At the party, the girl who was 17 later testified, both cocaine and ecstasy were offered to her. She took the ecstasy and drank, according to court papers. She testified that she danced naked in front of Mr. Dorworth and swam naked in his pool. The ethics committee heard testimony that the girl twice had sex with Mr. Gaetz that evening, and a court document quotes her as having testified that she had sex with him once on a “pool table or … air hockey table.” She testified that Mr. Dorworth saw Mr. Gaetz have sex with her on the game table and “then laughed about it with other partygoers.” (Mr. Dorworth has claimed that he was not home at the time, an assertion undercut by phone records that became part of litigation in the case.) The girl later told congressional investigators that she saw Mr. Gaetz use cocaine that night. For having sex with him twice, the girl was paid $400, according to testimony she gave to the Ethics Committee. That fall, the girl moved to live with a family member in Texas, according to Ms. Wolf. She did not complete her senior year in high school. She continued to work for minimum wage in the food services industry. Ultimately, between the money she made from her interactions with men and in the food services industry she was able to save up enough money to get braces.<<

Bondi again having trouble finding lawyers to represent DOJ.

Megyn Kelly has some interesting ideas on what a pedophile is.

It is interesting that some Republicans said they would vote for release but wouldn’t sign the discharge petition (including Burchett). Maybe they thought they could do that through unanimous consent. If they vote on the record they can either invite Trump’s wrath or their constituents’.

Rep. Tim Burchett claimed it in a social media post.

Bondi & Co. not indicting her shows she & Patel are now part of the Deep State.

The discharge petition has been awaiting final signatures for some time. The House could have been conducting business in a myriad of ways including that but Johnson closed it down altogether. When Grijalva was elected she was the final vote, that could’ve happened weeks ago.

The Speaker Pro Tempore (R) did it on his own ruling. I take it Mike Johnson didn’t want to do it himself. There was nothing wrong with the ruling, apparently it’s a real thing. Bad rule (leadership of both parties must agree to a unanimous consent vote apparently) but it exists.

Roughly 50. But it’s not about the age difference. And you already know I said that.

Yeah not objecting to the age there.

I realize. He’s Biden’s age in his first year in office.

In one of the emails Epstein says he “gave” his 22 year old girlfriend to Trump. That’s way past buddies.

I know. It’s trolling. The whole movement Trump included is a troll.

It’s actually impossible to “get” Trump at this stage.

Aren’t there like 60 photos of them together, a video, and now emails including those showing they were still meeting through late 2017?

Let’s say you were, me, or any of us. There’s a normal conversation to be had about totally innocent people being unfairly exposed to attacks, threats, permanent public ridicule, because their names were released unredacted. The Trump administration & maga never raise this. Trump created a special office for Ed Martin (Director of “Weaponization Working Group”) dedicated just to releasing allegations about political enemies. The Kennedy files were released completely unredacted. The DNC & Hunter Biden emails too. So be it.

Thank you.

Our system is designed so that if a bill doesn’t pass it’s negotiated until it will. This is purely a recent phenomenon. Something has to change in Congress, leadership, end safe districts, add more seats, campaign finance laws. The elected representatives don’t adhere to duty.

But you do agree Trump might be on “the list”?

I don’t think Patel & Bondi, Martin & Blanche, who are committed to overriding long held DOJ procedures, would flinch if for even a gossamer of a chance to link the likes of those names with Epstein.

This is a better question than the trite & oft-answered ‘why didn’t Biden release’. Short answer is maga, to their credit, wanted it. Long answer: At first Trump refused to address the questions about Epstein. But then he had pushed out the promise to release the Kennedy files. And he did indeed release them - to the very bottom, to the last scrap was released, UNREDACTED. Highly sensitive, top classified documentation about intelligence operations, surveillance, coup plotting, seeding of media, stuff that had absolutely nothing to do with Oswald or the assassination but include private names, locations, everything, was RELEASED. - Naturally even right wing media asked why not do the same with the Epstein files? Eventually he agreed, because even his mush brain could see he was just being obvious in refusing to release in the same way, & indeed like this thread shows his followers truly wanted it. And the minions in his administration ran with it to please him & his base.

Tough, but fair.

12/30/21, JD Vance: “What possible interest would the US government have in keeping Epstein’s clients secret? Oh…”

I posted the video of the block further up. The Speaker Pro Tempore blocked the vote based on a rule, which he cited. I think the ruling was legitimate.