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The Walls are Closing in Around Matt Gaetz After He Made Some Serious Rookie Mistakes

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If you have ever wondered why we still use this disgusting, dirty, paper stuff in our wallets (well, not in writers’ wallets, but in most wallets) to act as “money” and have not gone to an all-digital economy, the answer is very simple. Some of the smartest people on earth have yet to find a way to make “E-Money” completely untraceable. Cash, you will note, is completely anonymous, and thus the payment of choice for criminals around the world. Every attempt to find a completely anonymous “e-banking” system has failed, for fairly obvious reasons, electrons leave traces.

Venmo leaves more than traces. For reasons passing understanding, Venmo sees itself as a sort of social media company in which your requests and payments often appear publicly among your friends. This, you will note, is the opposite of cash. It would take a particularly stupid criminal to pay for his crimes using Venmo.

Enter Matt Gaetz. Via The Daily Beast:

“In two late-night Venmo transactions in May 2018, Rep. Matt Gaetz sent his friend, the accused sex trafficker Joel Greenberg, $900. The next morning, over the course of eight minutes, Greenberg used the same app to send three young women varying sums of money. In total, the transactions amounted to $900,” The Daily Beast reported Thursday. “The memo field for the first of Gaetz’s transactions to Greenberg was titled “Test.” In the second, the Florida GOP congressman wrote “hit up ___.” But instead of a blank, Gaetz wrote a nickname for one of the recipients. (The Daily Beast is not sharing that nickname because the teenager had only turned 18 less than six months before.)”

“Hit up?” Seriously? This guy wasn’t so much stupid as proud, or – to put it more accurately, proudly stupid.

The Beast went on to write:

“Gaetz and Greenberg are both connected through Venmo to this then-18-year-old woman—who now works in the porn industry, according to a friend of the girl. And on Thursday, Greenberg’s attorney and prosecutors indicated during a court hearing that they expect Greenberg to strike a plea deal, likely meaning he plans to cooperate with investigators.”

Cash. There is no such thing as “e-cash.” Of course, regular cash doesn’t do a lot of good if Matt were to write a note on it, “Thanks for spending the night, I wanted to pay you for your time, S/ Rep. Matt Gaetz (R, Fl-1).”

And yet by using Venmo, Matt may as well have done just that, signing every bill handed over.

Criminal stupidity.

Timeout: Gaetz is either Gen X or Millenial and he appears to know “no shit” either.

It looks bad for Matt Gaetz. Unless Gaetz has a big big fish to deliver… and Trump is far too smart (criminality-wise) to have ever let Gaetz near evidence. So it appears that Gaetz is in real trouble.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak

Jason Miciak
meet the author

Jason Miciak is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is originally from Canada but grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He now enjoys life as a single dad raising a ridiculously-loved young girl on the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He is very much the dreamy mystic, a day without learning is a day not lived. He is passionate about his flower pots and studies philosophical science, religion, and non-mathematical principles of theoretical physics. Dogs, pizza, and love are proof that God exists. "Above all else, love one another."

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