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‘This Detail Is Huge’: Matt Gaetz’s Venmo Receipts Are Just the Tip of the Iceberg

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On Thursday, following reports that the Florida tax official at the heart of the sex trafficking investigation of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is negotiating a plea, and the revelations that Gaetz used Venmo to send $900 to that official who passed it along to three teenage girls, Daily Beast reporter Jose Pagliery walked through the implications on MSNBC.

“So in all of this, what we’ve heard is that there’s a federal investigation that extends to the congressman, right?” said Pagliery. “Key to that would be any evidence of payments that would have been made from that congressman to his friend, this tax collector in Florida. Now, what we have gotten ahold of at the Daily Beast are proof of Venmo payments that Matt Gaetz did way back in 2018 — and it’s worth telling the story. Overnight, late at night, the congressman sends two separate payments via Venmo to his friend. The first one is titled ‘test.’ The second one says ‘hit up,’ and it names a person we’ve now determined is a teenage girl.”

“This is pivotal because hours later, as we reported, Joel Greenberg turned around and made three payments totalling $900 to three women,” continued Pagliery. “This detail is huge. What we were able to find is one of those young women is now a porn star. We have not revealed her name because she was so young at the time. But what my colleague and I have been able to do is get ahold of financial payments that directly tie Matt Gaetz to Joel Greenberg, and very quickly turn around and have girls’ names on them.”

“Okay. So there’s a bunch of stuff here,” said anchor Chris Hayes. “Let me just sort of take them in turn. Obviously under the law it is illegal to pay for sex. Matt Gaetz says he has never paid for sex, right? But it doesn’t get you out of legal jeopardy if your buddy pays for sex and then you pay your buddy the same amount.”

“That’s right,” said Pagliery. “That’s part of a conspiracy. Now, what we have here, and it is worth going through the detail. We got hold of Venmo payments. As anybody who uses Venmo knows, when you pay anyone anything, you have to explain what that thing is for. We have to ask, why would a sitting congressman be making two payments, one of which says to hit up, it says ‘hit up’ and it mentions a girl’s name, a name that hours later receives money from that same person who got that money. And so that’s what we got here. We got Venmo transactions that definitively tie him to them. We have more coming because we don’t just have these financial transactions.”

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CRIME

Giuliani Booking Photo Released

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1 month ago

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August 23, 2023

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Former Trump attorney and former Republican Mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani was booked in Fulton County, Georgia Wednesday afternoon on racketeering charges and charges related to attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

He was released on a $150,000 bond after being arraigned on 13 charges.

“Conditions include prohibitions against intimidating co-defendants or witnesses, and against communicating with co-defendants other than through their lawyers. Giuliani must check in with pretrial services every 30 days,” USA Today reports.

READ MORE: ‘Wrong on the Law, Wrong on the Facts’: Fani Willis Smacks Down Jeff Clark’s Legal Move in Scathing Response

Former Trump attorneys Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell were also booked and their photos have been made public as well.

See all three mug shots below or at this link.

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CRIME

‘Moral Turpitude’: Bill Barr Hammers Donald Trump

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August 17, 2023

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Former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr delivered one of his harshest criticisms to date of his former boss on Thursday, accusing Donald Trump of “moral turpitude.”

“You know, you don’t get immunity for two years in the run-up to an election just by saying, ‘Hey, I’m a candidate,'” Barr told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto.

“These investigations have been going on for a while, everyone knew about them even before he announced his candidacy,” Barr continued. “So if there’s a chance to get it resolved before the election, it should be because the American people should know these are crimes involved – or potential crimes – involving moral turpitude.”

Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute says moral turpitude is “wicked, deviant behavior constituting an immoral, unethical, or unjust departure from ordinary social standards such that it would shock a community.”

READ MORE: ‘Truly Scandalous: Jim Jordan Slammed by Former Top DOJ Official

Barr also talked about the two federal cases brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith, one for Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, and one for his refusal to return classified and other documents.

“I think the federal cases are legitimate,” Barr said. “At the end of the day, at the core of this thing he engaged in – in the case of the documents – in outrageous behavior where anyone would be prosecuted. I don’t know of any attorney general who could walk away from it.”

“He’s not being prosecuted for having the documents, he’s being prosecuted for obstruction, two egregious instances are alleged so I think that’s a very simple case.”

Barr also said for him, Trump “crossed the line” when “he used this device of impaneling imposter electors, swearing that they were the electors, but the key point there was, they were in tandem with a plan whereby the vice president would use that as a pretext for nullifying the legal and certified votes. So it was a calculated and deceitful plan to remain in office by nullifying and negating certified legal votes.”

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CRIME

Special Counsel Wanted Trump’s Twitter Direct Messages When He Obtained a Search Warrant: Report

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1 month ago

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August 15, 2023

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Special Counsel Jack Smith obtained a search warrant for access to Donald Trump’s Twitter account in January, but was looking for non-public information from the account.

That non-public information was Trump’s direct messages, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reports, noting there were “many.” DMs are private.

Smith, who has already obtained indictments against Donald Trump for the ex-president’s removal and refusal to return classified documents and for the ex-president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, appears to have accessed an important resource.

“The special counsel was seeking Trump’s direct messages on Twitter, of which there were many, federal prosecutors and lawyers for Twitter revealed in newly unsealed transcripts from hearings about the search warrant,” Collins reported Tuesday evening.

RELATED: Special Counsel Obtained Search Warrant for Trump’s Twitter Account Amid Court Concerns He Could ‘Flee’ Prosecution

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti said, “I’m surprised that Trump had “many” direct messages. Given that he doesn’t use text and email, they could more directly reveal his intent than other evidence Jack Smith has.”

Experts have wondered why Smith would have wanted access to Trump’s Twitter account, which was suspended after the 2021 insurrection. Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in late 2022, has since reinstated Trump’s account, but the ex-president has not made any public posts on the social media site, now renamed X.

Noted technologist John Gruber last week when news broke that Smith had obtained a search warrant for Trump’s Twitter account wrote, “I’m keenly interested in what the search warrant was after. It wasn’t Trump’s tweets, which are public.”

READ MORE: Democratic Senator Slams ‘Racist’ Videos That Will Be ‘Piped Straight Into the Bloodstream’ of Florida Schoolchildren

“So the obvious conclusion: his direct messages. Trump, famously, does not use email and, until this year, apparently didn’t use text messaging either. But did he send or receive DMs on Twitter? And was he stupid enough to put anything incriminating in them?”

“We also know,” Gruber continued, “that ‘deleted’ tweets were just hidden, not actually deleted — and a bug resulted in deleted tweets resurfacing. Was that (or is it still) true for ‘deleted’ direct messages as well? I think it’s quite likely that every single DM ever sent on Twitter is still around.”

A filing had said “the court ‘found probable cause to search the Twitter account for evidence of criminal offenses,’” according to an Associated Press report last week.

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license

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