According to uncovered text messages, associates of Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz — who is currently embroiled in a God-awful, sickening mess of a sex trafficking and possible statutory rape scandal himself — found themselves freaking out, worried to their core over whether a teenage girl they’d been involved with would end up exposing their sex underage sex ring to the authorities.
The text messages obtained and released by The Daily Beast show correspondence between former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg, who fell under investigation and pleaded guilty to various crimes related to this scheme, and former Florida sports radio host, “Big Joe” Ellicott.
The text messages appear to show Ellicott reaching out to Greenberg, writing that a mutual friend who shows up in Gaetz’s wingman’s Venmo transactions “knew [the minor] was underage the whole time, had sex with her, and they both went [to] see other guys,” and he was deeply concerned that the underage girl would expose the sickening scheme to the authorities.
The former radio host is connected to Gaetz as well as some of the women involved in the alleged sex ring through Venmo transactions and admitted: “for other guys she brought ___ along to see, that could be trafficking.”
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The messages were sent through the encrypted Signal messaging service and were set to delete 30 seconds after they had been read. However, Greenberg captured screenshots of the texts with Ellicott before they disappeared, as he also did with messages between himself and Donald Trump’s longtime associate Roger Stone.
This isn’t the first time Ellicott’s name has been brought up in connection to this seemingly massive sex ring scandal, either. Back in December of 2020, Ellicott was named in a grand jury subpoena that was issued to another individual connected to the scheme and also featured Gaetz, Greenberg and former Florida state Rep. Halsey Beshears.
Congressman Gaetz has, of course, already denied knowing Ellicott, who has yet to respond to requests for comments regarding the investigation, very well at all. However, the encrypted messages seem to clearly show Ellicott expressing dire concern over Greenberg and others having sex with a 17-year-old girl and he was panicked that she may expose them all.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
