Watch Rachel Maddow Highlights: March 30 | MSNBC

let me ask you first about congressman gates's pushback um i know that the story published initially you and michael schmidt published initial version of the story and then there was fairly quickly an update to account for congressman gates uh really angrily denying all of this and making counter allegations that this is all the product of some sort of improper extortion plot can you help us understand what his what his pushback is here sure i think that to understand the congressman's statements the most important thing to do is to look at the timeline in this investigation what we found is that this investigation began at the end of last summer and it's been going on for more than six months so this is a serious investigation that was serious enough that even the highest levels of the justice department including the office of the attorney general bill barr said that you know it should continue so that's the context and this investigation after going on for several months what congressman gates is saying is that somebody then found out about it and used that information to try to get money out of his family so i'm not saying that the extortion claims that he's making are untrue i'm just saying that it came on the heels of months and months of an investigation in a part of the country where the offices are very small and there should be some expectation that information does sometimes leak out of these offices so the idea that the extortion exists or that it happened i i think that it should be seen in the context of that timeline of an investigation that sirius brewing for a long time bubbling out into the local community now mr gates congressman gates has made this extortion allegation he's named somebody who he says is the guilty party who's trying to extort he and his family for money to try to make this go away and again i have no no idea about that the veracity of those allegations and as you say with the timeline it's important to understand that these may be two very separate stories but the person that he's named is that a person who was involved with the justice department investigation gates is essentially pla claiming that these are false charges trumped up against him and somebody involved in trumping up these charges against him then tried to extort money from him is the person that he's named somebody involved in this investigation now that person is not involved in the investigation that person is currently in private practice and does not work at the justice department but again keep in mind this is an investigation that when you look at the timeline was very serious and it was something that was taken seriously by trump administration officials in the justice department so i think that one of the reasons why he has talked publicly about this extortion plot one of the reasons why he's publicly said that the fbi has asked his own father to wear a wire is in order to try to get people to not pay attention to the fact that was in fact the trump administration who felt it was worthy to investigate him in publicly talking about this investigation through the story in publicly talking about the extortion plot that he has described and publicly saying his father wore a wire he is basically destroying and blowing up an fbi investigation which is in itself something you would think would be against his own interest you would think that he would be wanting to work with the fbi and you would think he would want to keep this quiet so you have to you have to put this all into context and say that in doing this and basically blowing up an fbi investigation into people trying to extort his family you know he he has both complicated that investigation and also cast aspersions on something that was serious enough that attorney general barr proved it and attorney general bart personally approved it yeah so remember last february attorney general bar put out a memo to all federal prosecutors saying that if anybody involved in the 2020 election was going to be investigated if any members of congress were going to be investigated that those investigations needed to be briefed to supervisors including the u.s attorney in that district and whoever the aag at the justice department would be so the head of the criminal division or the head of the national security division those people would need to sign off on it and then those people would brief it up to the deputy attorney general and to the attorney general so he would have known about this yes katie let me also ask you in terms of congressman gates and whether he is as you say by his public remarks about this supposed extortion claim whether he is blowing up a potential fbi investigation to whether there was an extortion claim subsequent to this investigation in terms of thinking about his his motivation there can you tell us from your reporting whether the investigation into congressman gates um is something that was resolving and not likely to head toward charges or is this something that either was heading toward charges or could potentially still be heading toward charges and therefore very serious criminal liability potentially for the congressman you know i cannot be in congressman gates's head so i'm not sure why he would choose to do that why he would choose to publicly disclose information that would impair an investigation that he has publicly said should be helping he and his family but i will say that the investigation the allegations are that he not only had a sexual relationship with a 17 year old girl but that he took her across state lines which would be a federal crime and that he gave her something of value in return um that could be money but that also could just be travel expense or something else that is extremely serious and again we don't know whether or not this will be charged is one reason um why the justice department really wants to keep these things quiet because you don't know what's going to happen but we do know that investigators have been working very hard on the case and that they do believe that it is worth looking into let's start where i think the story starts i will stand corrected if it starts somewhere deeper and weirder than this but for now as far as we understand it the story starts in seminole county florida so seminole county central florida orlando metro area northeast from there out towards the space coast for reasons unknown to man in seminole county in the 2016 election seminole county voters in their infinite wisdom decided that they would replace their county tax collector with this young man 31 years old at the time he was elected no prior record of public service and we now know from audits and investigations that he really hit the ground running as soon as he won that office in 2016 and was sworn in in 2017. one little glimpse of how this is going this guy as i said young man first time in public service who's 31 years old and he was elected he had just been married a couple of months before he was elected he was married in mid-2016 after he won the election in november 2016 and got sworn in in early 2017 he apparently hired and started to pay with public funds six different people who had been part of his wedding party the previous year i'm not sure that's how you're supposed to staff up the tax collector's office an orlando sentinel investigation found that he issued 1.9 million dollars in contracts from his office to people who were his own close friends and business partners again this is the tax collector's office a county audit later found that for some reason within months of taking office he also started spending public money for that office on guns and ammunition and body armor and drones the tax collector's office in seminole county florida needs drones okay also by june 2017. so he's still only in office a few months he proclaimed that he and his employees in the county tax collector's office would henceforth all be carrying guns he wanted them to wear their guns at work to go along with their tax collector's office badges this is like the office that collects license fees and stuff this is not like some swat team agency with frontline wyatt earps out there defending the streets but the new guy elected that office after hiring all his groomsmen to come in and run the place buys all these all these guns and body armor and ammo and drones tells everybody in the office they all need to wear guns at work to go along with their badges why did he want that i don't know for sure but within a few short months he personally had pulled over a woman driving who he decided might have been speeding but it gets better there's also the part where while working full-time as the elected tax collector for that county he set up a for-profit business inside the tax collector's office to do blockchain something something what was the company actually going to do it does not matter he set up his own private for-profit company running it from inside the county tax collector's office and in setting up that private for-profit company he decided he needed 65 000 in brand new computer servers to run his new private company and then he build the county for those computer servers and just to put some icing on this particular part of the cake that the audit in the county later found that he was such a genius at this stuff that when he installed those servers that he billed to the taxpayers when he installed those servers for the private company he was going to run out of the tax collector's office he installed them wrong and thereby set the office on fire so seminole county florida congratulations on your excellent choice for a new public official in the 2016 elections along the way uh the orlando sentinel reported on his frequent anti-muslim social media posts and his posts posing with far-right white nationalist types uh he ended up posting things online about his friendship with president trump's longtime political advisor and convicted felon roger stone who you see on the left side of your screen there as well as the trumpiest of all trumpy republican congressmen you see in the center there florida congressman matt gates but but where things get that rough for the seminole county tax collector is is june of last year federal agents come to his house to arrest him for among other things allegedly stalking a local man who was going to run against him for county tax collector yeah how dare anyone run against him for tax collector when our hero was doing such a great job in that office have you seen the way they wear their guns now to try to derail his potential opponent's campaign the tax collector guy according to prosecutors arranged for a false rape accusation to be made against the man which was then sent to the school at which the guy worked the same allegation was then hyped and circulated by a network of fake identity social media bots and accounts apparently controlled by a local guy from the proud boys and associated with roger stone prosecutors say the tax collector guy also created a fake twitter account in the name of the guy who was running against him and then he falsely posted things on that twitter to a twitter account in which he was claiming to be the guy running against him and also claiming to be a proud segregationist and a white supremacist but it was all fake it was the tax collector guy who set up this twitter account it was a hit job all set up by our hero the arm to the teeth fire setting wedding party hiring tax collector of seminole county so federal agents show up at his house last summer to arrest him on these stalking charges and things get worse from there because what do they find when they come to arrest him at his house i will read it to you directly from the orlando sentinel at the time the day he was indicted for stalking a political rival joel greenberg had several stolen ids in his work vehicle a pair of fake ids in his wallet and materials for making more in his office evidence he was regularly abusing his position to steal unwitting constituents identities according to federal authorities inside the tax collector's work vehicle agents found his backpack which held three licenses from canada virginia and florida belonging to seminole county residents who had recently obtained new florida licenses employees of the tax collector's office told agents they'd seen greenberg taking surrendered licenses from the agency's shred basket prior to their destruction do you have any idea how many things could go wrong all at once if you just elected the wrong guy tax collector of all things who knew what mischief could be made out of a single job like that but that orlando sentinel headline about him stealing people's ids allegedly through his last day in office that ran in the orlando sentinel in july by the following month by august federal officials had gone through the computers and electronic devices that they had seized from him during that arrest and what they found according to prosecutors on those electronic devices and computers would yield even darker headlines by the following month plus a superseding federal indictment for him by august of last year this was the headline in the orlando sentinel former seminole tax collector joel greenberg facing sex trafficking charges quote joel greenberg is facing sex trafficking charges related to a girl between the ages of 14 and 17 and is also accused of illegally using a state database to look up information about the girl and other people with whom he was engaged in quote sugar daddy relationships according to an indictment filed friday by the u.s attorney's office quote the former seminole county tax collector used his access as an elected official to a state database to look up information about the minor victim the database in question is the florida driver and vehicle information database he allegedly looked up information about the girl in that database including her photo and her driver id number he also according to the indictment used the database to look up other people with whom he was quote engaged in sugar daddy relationships that's the phrase that's used in the indictment the orlando sentinel helpfully points out quote a sugar daddy is a term that refers to a wealthy man who dates a younger woman and gives her gifts in exchange for companionship or sex again the alleged victim here is a teenage girl for the orlando sentinel quote greenberg used the state database for prohibited purposes including to produce a false identification document and to facilitate his efforts to engage in commercial sex acts now the tax collector guy did quit his job after he was arrested he has pled not guilty to all of the 14 federal charges he's now facing including the sex trafficking of a child charges uh he was out on bail after he was charged last summer but last month the judge overseeing his case jailed him for violating the terms of his bail so he is now in jail and he is scheduled to go on trial in florida uh in june so i know you know happy tuesday this exists i'm sorry but now tonight on the front page of the new york times we get the national kick in the teeth that comes with this story this is the headline tonight on the front page of the times quote florida congressman matt gates is said to be investigated over possible sexual relationship with girl age 17. quote representative matt gates republican of florida and a close ally of former president donald j trump is being investigated by the u.s justice department over whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17 year old and paid for her to travel with him according to three people briefed on the matter investigators are examining whether congressman gates violated federal sex trafficking laws a variety of federal statutes make it illegal to induce someone under the age of 18 to travel over state lines to engage in sex for exchange in exchange for money or something of value the u.s justice department regularly prosecutes such cases and offenders often receive severe sentences it was not clear how congressman gates met the girl believed to be 17 at the time of encounters about two years ago that investigators are scrutinizing the investigation was opened in the final months of the trump administration under attorney general william barr given congressman gates's national profile this is interesting senior justice department officials in d.c including some appointed by president trump were notified of the gates investigation three people familiar with the probe said the examination of congressman gates is part of a broader investigation into a political ally of his a local official in florida named joel greenberg the seminole county tax collector it was indicted last summer on an array of charges including sex trafficking of a child and financially supporting people in exchange for sex at least one of whom was an underage girl mr greenberg who has since resigned his post as tax collector in seminole county visited the white house with congressman gates in 2019 according to a photograph that mr greenberg posted on twitter

Channel: MSNBC

Views: 485,324

Keywords: MSNBC, news, politics, msnbc news, breaking news

Id: raBPPXYIokI

Length: 17min 11sec (1031 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 31 2021