An ex-girlfriend of U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz has agreed to cooperate in a sex-trafficking investigation into the congressman, according to a CNN report, giving federal authorities a second key witness days after former Gaetz ally Joel Greenberg struck a plea deal.
The report described the woman as a former staffer on Capitol Hill seen as a “critical witness,” because her involvement with Gaetz stretches back to the summer of 2017. The report was sourced to unnamed ”people familiar with the matter.”
According to Greenberg’s plea deal, which requires him to cooperate with investigators, Greenberg spent more than $70,000 between December of 2016 and December of 2018 on more than 150 transactions, “all of which involved Greenberg paying women for commercial sex acts.”
One of the people Greenberg paid for sex was 17 at the time. The deal states that Greenberg learned the girl was 17 in September of 2017, by which time he’d had sex with her at least seven times. Greenberg was Seminole County tax collector from January 2017 until his arrest in June.
He said he also introduced her to adult men who had sex with her, too, though the men were not identified in the plea agreement. According to numerous reports, investigators seek to determine whether Gaetz was one of the men who had sex with the girl.
Gaetz has repeatedly and adamantly denied having paid for sex or had sex as an adult with anyone underage.