by Mex @Villgecrazylady at Threadreader
Alright frens, now that Matt Gaetz is out of the running you’re going to hear a lot of takes on what happened and plenty of “keep your d*ck in your pants” lines too.
And while that’s always good advice, the story I’m about to share goes way beyond anything you could possibly imagine. So if you’re interested in the whole story, consolidated in one place, of what really happened with and to Gaetz, take a seat and let me tell you a story
Part I: The Tax Collector
This story begins in Fall 2019 in Florida, with this man: Joel Greenberg.
At the time Joel Greenberg was 2.5 years into his first term as the Tax Collector for Seminole County. 
Greenberg is your classic rich kid who dinks through life lighting fires everyone else is forced to put out. Never landing hard bc daddy’s money always catches his fall. You know the type. We all do. And Joel approached his role as tax collector no different than any other.
By Fall 2019 Seminole County was awash with rumors about the federal investigation into Greenberg’s crypto scam with tax collector dollars.
These rumors inspired a local music teacher, Brian Beute, to throw his hat in the ring and challenge Greenberg in the Republican primary slated for the following year.
Despite the many advantages Greenberg held over Beute in the race (incumbency, wealth, name recognition, etc) Greenberg’s significant criminal activity as tax collector likely contributed to him becoming obsessed with destroying Beute, both publicly and privately.
So throughout late 2019 and into 2020 Greenberg rolled out a series of ever escalating smear tactics targeting Beute. They started rather typical, labeling Beute, who is from Michigan, as a carpetbagger.
But they grew increasingly viscous. He created fake Facebook profiles pretending to be Beute’s students, leaving comments on public posts trashing Beute as an awful teacher and a pervert. 
Greenberg’s antics finally reached an apex when he mailed handwritten letters to the administrators at the school where Beute taught, accusing him of sexually assaulting his students.
Greenberg probably didn’t expect those letters to be taken so seriously or else he likely would’ve been a little more careful.
But alas he was not, and when the letters were turned over to the local sheriff’s office both his fingerprints and DNA were lifted from them and he was arrested on June 23, 2020 and charged by the DOJ with stalking.
At the time of his arrest, Greenberg’s phone was confiscated and searched. And… believe it or not, this is where his REAL legal troubles began.
On his cellphone (and later home computers) police found evidence of Greenberg committing damn near every crime in the book: embezzlement, drugs, prostitution, identify theft, wire fraud, crypto market manipulation…
but the silver tuna was a series of messages that occurred in the late Spring through early Fall of 2017 between Greenberg and a then 17 year old girl discussing, among other things, their many sexcapades around Florida and beyond.
Further investigation revealed that from December 2016 through 2018 Joel Greenberg was a customer on a “Sugar Daddy” website where he solicited various women for sex and escort services. This is where he met the aforementioned 17 year old.
All told, Mr. Greenberg spent over $70,000 on hookers he met on the Sugar Daddy website, much of which he paid for with his government issued AMEX card.
In August 2020 the DOJ charged Joel Greenberg with sex trafficking of a minor, identify theft and production of false identification documents, among other things.
Turns out, in Florida, the office of county tax collector doesn’t just collect taxes, they also issue driver’s licenses and state IDs.
And Mr. Greenberg had taken full advantage of this privilege during his time in office. Greenberg had not only created multiple false Florida ID cards for himself, he also created a fake ID for his underage lover after finding out that she had been lying to him about her age.
And this is where Matt Gaetz comes into the story.
From what I can gather, Gaetz and Greenberg became acquainted at some point in the first half of 2017. The first public record of them associating on a private level comes from a picture posted to X (then Twitter) on July 8, 2017 with none other than Roger Stone.
I think it’s safe to say that the two did become friends. How good a friends? That’s up for debate. But there was a relationship.
After getting arrested in June 2020, at some point Mr. Greenberg (lawyer’s?) approaches Bill Barr’s DOJ with a proposition: he claims he can provide evidence that a sitting Congressman (Gaetz) had engaged in sex acts with a minor.
Bill Barr’s DOJ then proceeds to open a secret investigation into these allegations, that remains a secret until it is leaked the next spring, on March 30, 2021 by The NY Times.
PART II: The Man In Iran…