Politics Random, Random

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Re: Politics Random, Random

#826

Post by dmforever »

JazzNU wrote: Thu Apr 08, 2021 8:51 pm
ti-amie wrote: Thu Apr 08, 2021 7:44 pm
On December 4, 2017, a woman called 911 to say she’d been followed and “pulled over” by someone — who eventually turned out to be Greenberg — driving a black SUV bearing a white flashing light on its dashboard. Greenberg wore a badge around his neck and was dressed in a tactical-style vest. He eventually approached the woman and berated her for “cutting him off” and driving “like a bat out of hell.” The woman responded that Greenberg “scared the hell” out of her and that she’d “never seen a police vehicle with white lights.”

“Oh, well, this is my personal vehicle,” Greenberg reportedly responded.

Authorities later caught up with him at home after using neighborhood cameras to find his license plate number. Greenberg said his wife and infant were “repeatedly disturbed” by speeding vehicles on a neighboring street and that he had decided to deal with the matter on his own. Police set up a traffic patrol to deal with the matter.

In a subsequent letter, a chief prosecutor said Greenberg hadn’t violated the state’s criminal law by impersonating an officer but that his actions were “inappropriate” and could have been used to “exert undue power and influence.”

“I will give Mr. Greenberg the benefit of the doubt and assume that his intentions were pure,” wrote Chief Assistant State Attorney Stacey Straub Salmons. But she also warned that “[a]nother person encountering Mr. Greenberg under these same circumstances may not be so gracious, and could feel it necessary to take a defensive posture. Such as situation could lead to harmful, if not potentially disastrous, results.”

Now I realize there's more serious stuff here, but this part is tripping me up. In what way isn't this intentionally impersonating a police officer? And in what way are the intentions "pure"?



Yes, this really bothered me too. So either the police and/or district attorney are completely corrupt, or somehow in his position as tax collector he has a badge and some authority that somehow makes what he did not illegal. I find that second possibility hard to believe. And obviously the dude is white. No way a person of color does that and nothing happens.

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Re: Politics Random, Random

#827

Post by ti-amie »





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Re: Politics Random, Random

#828

Post by ti-amie »

I know this is the politics thread but I'm posting this because good grief what he's wearing! His grandfather's pants and Nestor's jacket? A man who would dress like this has issues that require deep psychological help. JMHO.

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Re: Politics Random, Random

#829

Post by JazzNU »

ti-amie wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 12:16 am This man was a one person crime wave for years and it seems nothing was done about anything he did. Impersonating an officer usually means serious trouble but for him, well speeding cars were bothering his family so they set up a patrol.

WHAT?!

This is what I'm saying. I must have read it 3 or 4 times, positive I missed a detail thinking that couldn't possibly be the response of the police and the DA.
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Re: Politics Random, Random

#830

Post by ti-amie »

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Re: Politics Random, Random

#831

Post by ti-amie »

“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
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Re: Politics Random, Random

#832

Post by patrick »

Wonder why protestor was at event involving DeSantis?
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Re: Politics Random, Random

#833

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Re: Politics Random, Random

#834

Post by ti-amie »

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Re: Politics Random, Random

#835

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‘Felt like a setup’: WhatsApp chat shows Gaetz ally scrambling to contain fallout
The Florida congressman’s "wingman" said he was paying legal fees for the former teen at the center of the case.

By MARC CAPUTO, JOSH GERSTEIN and MATT DIXON

04/12/2021 01:00 PM EDT

MIAMI — The feds were closing in. And Rep. Matt Gaetz’s friend, Joel Greenberg, was in a panic.

The Florida county tax collector was five days away from a federal indictment for sex trafficking involving a 17-year-old — the same one Gaetz is now being investigated over — so Greenberg reached out to mutual friends on Aug. 14 last year and tried to enlist them in his defense, according to a WhatsApp chat shared with federal investigators and obtained by POLITICO.

He fumed that the prosecutor should be fired. He suspected that a political consultant “was the rat here.” He fretted that investigators had combed through his Venmo cash app history, fearing it led them to the former teen at the center of the case.

Greenberg also said he was paying the legal fees for the woman, who is now 20 years old.

The WhatsApp messages shed light on key aspects of the scandal consuming the Florida Republican congressman and close ally of ...Donald Trump — and on the state of mind of the man Gaetz once called his “wingman” as he sought to manage the fallout.

Greenberg went so far as to push Gaetz to use his influence with Trump for a pardon, according to two sources familiar with the discussions, including one who heard Greenberg say it repeatedly.

Asked about the request from Greenberg, Gaetz previously declined to confirm or deny that it occurred. But the congressman said he did not ask Trump to pardon Greenberg. Gaetz couldn’t be reached this weekend to discuss the WhatsApp messages that are the subject of this story.

Gaetz’s allies now fear that Greenberg is preparing to strike a deal with prosecutors to deliver Gaetz, who has consistently denied any wrongdoing. The congressman has not been charged and so far no evidence has surfaced against him beyond anonymous allegations he had sex with a minor or paid for prostitutes. But the scandal has seriously hobbled Gaetz, who built a national reputation as one of the staunchest defenders of Trump and has relentlessly attacked the very Department of Justice that’s now investigating him.

Greenberg faces decades of prison time from a total of 33 different charges, including identity theft, a host of financial crimes and stalking a political opponent he falsely smeared as a pedophile. But the alleged sex-trafficking of the former 17-year-old is the most serious charge and carries a 10-year mandatory-minimum prison sentence.

In the Aug. 14 WhatsApp chat with a politically influential Republican mutual friend of Gaetz and Greenberg, Greenberg initially referred to the young woman as “Vintage 99” — a fine-wine reference to her birth year that she used as her online name on SeekingArrangement, a dating website that connects women with so-called sugar daddies.

“I’m having to pay for vintage 99 to retain [a] lawyer,” Greenberg wrote in the WhatsApp chat to the friend, who discussed the messages with POLITICO on condition of anonymity. “They [federal agents] contacted her and are wanting her to talk. She doesn’t want to talk to them.”

Nor does she want to talk to the press. She blocked a POLITICO reporter on social media and her iPhone after she was called and texted to discuss the case Monday. Her attorney couldn’t be reached. POLITICO is withholding her name because she is the alleged victim of a sex crime.

Greenberg’s defense attorney, Fritz Scheller, said his client is not paying anyone else’s legal bills that he’s aware of, and noted he couldn’t speak to Greenberg’s arrangements before Scheller began to represent the defendant in December.

Scheller suggested his client might cut a deal.

“I am sure Matt Gaetz is not feeling very comfortable today,” Scheller said after a hearing last Thursday.

It’s not illegal for a suspect to pay the legal bills of a potential witness against him, but attorneys say the arrangement could raise questions about the case against him.

“Imagine if this was a drug case and the drug lord was paying the lawyer of a prosecution witness. What would people say?” said an attorney representing an individual who spoke to prosecutors in the case, and who was not authorized to speak on the record.

“Any time you get something of value, it’s a potential problem and you’re subject to impeachment. It can make a witness less credible,” the attorney said. “At the same time, to make this case [against Gaetz] work, the evidence just needs to be piled on ... They’re interviewing everyone.”

In the WhatsApp chat obtained by POLITICO, Greenberg told the friend that his attorney at the time informed him that “everyone is going to need a lawyer.” But the friend then called Greenberg’s attorney — and determined that Greenberg wasn’t telling him the truth.

“I have nothing to do with any of this and think it is incredibly uncool you are trying to lawyer me up to be a part of it, Joel,” he wrote back via WhatsApp. “Not. F---ing. Cool.”

The friend told POLITICO that Greenberg’s message “felt like a setup.”

“It’s the same playbook he used against the teacher he falsely smeared as a pedophile,” the friend said, referring to a separate charge against Greenberg. “And he’ll do the same thing to Gaetz if he can get less prison time.”

Greenberg and Gaetz shared girlfriends, according to interviews with friends and associates who know the two men, and Greenberg introduced him to young women he met on SeekingArrangement. One friend who spent time in the company of both men said he was of the impression that the two engaged with women in more of a “sugar daddy relationship” where money changed hands, though it wasn’t explicitly prostitution.

“I know Joel and Matt paid some of their bills, rent, tuition, things like that,” the friend said. “This is a thing that happens when you’re successful and you have these relationships: ‘Are we not supposed to help these women who mean something to us and that we care about?’ Is that prostitution? Maybe if you’re a Puritan.”

Since many of the transactions in question took place on Venmo, Greenberg speculated in his WhatsApp messages that those mobile payment records were the likely evidentiary link to the woman who was allegedly sex-trafficked as a minor.

“I’m trying to let everyone know who came into contact with any of these girls that the feds are going through my Venmo history and don’t want anyone to be caught off guard,” Greenberg wrote to his friend, who promptly replied that he wasn’t on Venmo, had no such history with any of these women and begged him to “absolutely positively leave my name the f--- out of any of this. I’m serious about this Joel.”

“Understood,” Greenberg replied. “My only concern is I don't know what could possibly come out of their mouths, and if any of them mentioned places where we met etc. I would think you would want to at least have a heads up if some chick says she partied at your house or something. That's all. I'm trying to cover every possible angle I can think of. I wouldn't want anyone to be blindsided.”

The friend insisted that he had nothing to do with what Greenberg was describing and was not involved in his schemes.

“I know you aren’t. I didn’t mean to alarm you. You’ve done nothing wrong,” Greenberg replied.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/1 ... erg-480962
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Re: Politics Random, Random

#836

Post by ti-amie »

“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
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Re: Politics Random, Random

#837

Post by ponchi101 »

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
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Re: Politics Random, Random

#838

Post by ti-amie »

“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
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Re: Politics Random, Random

#839

Post by mmmm8 »

This should be paid for by user fees but providing rural police with military-grade equipment is to be paid for directly from the budget. Cool story.
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Re: Politics Random, Random

#840

Post by ti-amie »

Smart TV
A smart TV, also known as a connected TV, is a traditional television set with integrated Internet and interactive Web 2.0 features, which allows users to stream music and videos, browse the internet, and view photos. Smart TVs are a technological convergence of computers, televisions, and digital media players. Wikipedia
“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
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