Former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz strikes me as a bad guy. A real no-goodnik as my late mother would no doubt have described him. Some Trump supporters regard him as so repulsive even they can’t stomach the thought of Gaetz’s appointment as attorney general, putting him in charge of federal law enforcement.
Ben Domenech, a co-founder of The Federalist, a conservative website the legacy media accused of being staffed with “election deniers”, derided Gaetz as “a vile sex pest.” Liberty Counsel, a Christian legal group, issued a news release saying that Gaetz “is neither morally nor professionally qualified to become the United States Attorney General.” New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin, my go to guy for astute political analysis and media criticism, also declared Gaetz unfit for a Trump cabinet position.
I don’t have a scintilla of doubt about the damning allegations that have plagued Gaetz for several years. What concerns me, and should alarm all Americans, is how we know about them. Americans should also be aware the DOJ under Biden appointee Merrick Garland engaged in politically motivated prosecutions and turned a blind eye to the wrongdoings of the rich and powerful. I posted this critical assessment of the DOJ last June.
Origins of Gaetz’s Wrongdoing
As New York Times‘ Michael Schmidt unashamedly reported late last week, federal authorities in Florida years ago opened a public corruption investigation into one of Gaetz’s close associates, an Orlando-area local tax collector named Joel Greenberg. The authorities obtained Greenberg’s electronics, which revealed that Greenberg had repeatedly paid young women — whom he met on a website — to attend parties with him and his friends where they used drugs and had sex.
Investigators would ultimately determine that one of the girls who was paid for sex was under 18 at the time.
To avoid a prison sentence, Greenberg sang like a canary, telling prosecutors that Gaetz, who had been elected to the House in 2016, had sex with the same girl, who was 17 at the time, and that Gaetz knew she was being paid.
Schmidt reported that the Justice Department spent two years investigating Gaetz, interviewing the women and examining a range of documents. If investigators proved that Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old, it would have exposed him to federal sex trafficking laws that come with a mandatory 10-year prison sentence.
Problematic case
Despite all the time and resources it dedicated to investigating Gaetz, the Justice Department last year ended its investigation without charging him, indicating the agency didn’t believe it had sufficient evidence to prevail in court. Schmidt understandably chose not to mention this, but Comcast’s NBC broadcast service reported that the agency chose not to file charges against Gaetz because of concerns about the credibility of two key witnesses or a lack of direct evidence implicating Gaetz, who denied all wrongdoing.
Notably, NBC said its report wasn’t based on DOJ sources but rather attorneys who represented witnesses and people who had been subpoenaed or had spoken to investigators.
Lacking a case the agency believed it could prove in court, the Justice Department instead leaked details of its investigation to the New York Times, knowing full well the publication’s burden of proof would be nonexistent. Corporate media publications argue its legitimate news to report someone is under investigation, regardless of the merits of the accusations.
The House Ethics Committee began investigating Gaetz in 2021 after the Times published the DOJ’s leaked information. No doubt expecting the Justice Department would charge Gaetz and put him away for quite some time, the committee delayed its inquiry. The ethics committee subsequently resumed its investigation when it was reported the Justice Department wouldn’t pursue criminal charges and reportedly worked up a report chock full of damning findings about Gaetz.
More media leaks
The committee had planned on releasing its explosive report about Gaetz, but last week he resigned his House seat, so it no longer has any jurisdictional authority over him. No matter, because Schmidt detailed some, if not all, of the findings in his November 14 story.
Call me an odd duck, but I believe that people who are entrusted with the power to investigate and jail citizens have a moral, ethical, and possibly legal obligation to keep their findings confidential unless they file them in court. If the evidence was conclusive that Gaetz slept with an underage girl, the DOJ should have charged him. Instead, Gaetz was tried and convicted in the court of public opinion based on evidence supplied by the New York Times.
Reporters who lie down with loose lips government prosecutors sometimes wake up with fleas. That’s what happened to Catherine Herridge, when she was working for FOX News.
Trump’s Justice Department launched with great fanfare its China Initiative, which it billed as a concerted effort to root out and criminally prosecute those who were abetting China’s espionage activities in the U.S. and helping steal intellectual property, sensitive technology, and information that could aid China’s military or economy.
Among the DOJ’s targets was Yanping Chen, a China-born naturalized U.S. citizen who was cardiologist and medical researcher with China’s astronaut program. Chen founded the University of Management and Technology in Arlington, VA, where she lives to provide secondary and graduate education to working adults.
Herridge co-authored this “EXCLUSIVE” story in February 2017 reporting that Chen’s school “has been at the center of multiple federal probes about its leadership’s alleged ties to the Chinese military and whether thousands of records from U.S. service members were compromised.” Herridge reported that Chen’s school “drew the attention of the FBI, the Justice Department, the Pentagon, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) since at least 2012 — and perhaps as early as 2009.”
None of the agencies mentioned in the FOX News story ever filed charges against Chen, let alone proved any wrongdoing. Chen in 2018 sued the Justice Department, as well as the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security for violating the Privacy Act by leaking information about their investigations to FOX News. I’m uncertain of the status of Chen’s case.
DOJ’s political agenda
The DOJ under Merrick Garland has pursued a political agenda, such as pursuing litigation against those who oppose sex changes for minors.
“Our efforts span the entire Department and include our pursuit of litigation to protect access to gender-affirming healthcare for transgender adults and minors, and our grants to organizations as well as state and local agencies working to prevent hate crimes and provide trauma-informed support to survivors,” Acting Associate Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer, said in a news release. “While progress is not always easy, we will not let up in our fight to ensure equal justice for everyone, regardless of what they look like, how they worship, or who they love.”
Mizer previously worked at the white shoe law firm Jones Day, where among his more illustrious cases was serving as lead attorney for Walmart in its defense of charges of facilitating the opioid epidemic among members of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. As part of Walmart’s defense, the company demanded the tribe release detailed private data for every one of its citizens.
Among the DOJ’s targets was Dr. Eithan Haim, the surgeon who sounded the alarm about Children’s Hospital in Houston doing a lucrative business performing sex change operations on minors. The DOJ alleged that Haim violated patient confidentiality when he leaked information about the procedures to an activist journalist. Haim’s whistleblowing resulted in Texas passing a law prohibiting sex change operations and procedures on children, deeming them child abuse.
This story by Emily Yoffe in The Free Press provides an education about the politicization of the Justice Department under Merrick Garland.
In another alleged example of Garland’s politicization of the DOJ, two IRS whistleblowers told Herridge, now an independent reporter, that they were instructed not to investigate allegations relating to Hunter Biden, the president’s son. Herridge impressively got the whistleblowers to make their allegations on camera with their names included. Herridge posted her bombshell interview on the eve of the presidential election, but the corporate media ignored it.
DOJ’s record under Biden
Here’s some alarming DOJ prosecution stats since Joe Biden assumed office in 2021, as reported by American Prospect.,
According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, in 2023 DOJ prosecuted 113 corporations, up from 99 in 2022 and just 90 in 2021, which was the lowest number in a quarter-century. The 2023 figures are sharply lower than any year of George W. Bush’s business smooching administration, and lower than two of the four years of the Trump administration. The 113 prosecutions last year equal about 37 percent of the 304 prosecutions waged in 2000.
Tellingly, 76 percent of the corporations DOJ prosecuted in 2023 had 50 or fewer employees. Smaller companies can’t offer DOJ staffers seven figure corporate counsel jobs, and often can’t afford the white shoe law firms heavily staffed with DOJ alumni.
The DOJ’s failure to pursue cases against powerful corporations like Boeing and their CEOs is easy to understand. Lisa Monaco, Garland’s deputy attorney general and the second most powerful person in the executive branch, represented Boeing when she worked at WestExec Advisors, a consulting firm co-founded by Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
In January 2021, Monaco reported owning between $1,001 and $15,000 worth of Boeing stock. She reported the same in 2022, but no longer held Boeing stock in 2023.
Sterling credentials
On paper, Monaco has more sterling credentials than Matt Gaetz, having graduated from Harvard and the University of Chicago Law School. By comparison, Gaetz graduated from Florida State, and earned his law degree at William and Mary Law School. Although William and Mary ranks among the 30 top law schools in the country, it still isn’t in the very top tier. Gaetz only practiced law for two years, pursuing civil cases such as a debt collection suit against an elderly woman who couldn’t pay the home care firm owned by Gaetz’s multimillionaire dad.
It’s a safe bet that no major corporation would ever consider naming Goetz general counsel.
Gaetz no doubt will continue to politicize the DOJ, pursuing a different set of targets than the agency did under Garland. But in terms of pursuing cases against powerful businesses and their leaders, the DOJ will continue functioning as usual if Gaetz is confirmed as attorney general.
Practically speaking, the DOJ’s new boss will be the same as the old boss as far as the U.S. public is concerned.