Jump to content

Matt Gaetz: ethics report to be released (soon?)

Gil Bang

By Gil Bang
in Cloak Room

 Share

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 3.6k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Popular Posts

DigglerontheHoof
DigglerontheHoof
NorthLoop
NorthLoop
Beau Vine
Beau Vine

Posted Images

  • 2 weeks later...
Ojo Rojo

Ojo Rojo 2041

Posted
Posted

One of my relatives just posted a video clip of Gaetz in a congressional military hearing where he said that military operations were suspended because someone found 51 whales (species previously unknown until 2021) in the area and that China purchased an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico that is also being used for intelligence gathering. In the video he's sarcastically trying to skewer DOD and military officials testifying at the hearing over these issues. I had to come here to vent. Anything that comes out of his mouth is verbal diarrhea. If you can't decipher propagandist, out-of-context lies coming from this shitbag and his ilk, then you are an idiot and you should not be allowed to vote.

  • Hook 'Em 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
Beau Vine

Beau Vine 55844

Posted
Posted
Quote

Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz both have a knack for ginning up outrage and stealing headlines. All this sound and fury is assumed to hoover up dollars from the riled up grassroots, but that’s not true, according to the most recent campaign finance filings. 

Despite the two spending the summer barnstorming the country on a grand fundraising swing they dubbed the America First tour, (the moniker adopted after scraping the “Angl0-Saxon” caucus), neither Greene nor Gaetz lived up to expectations on the fundraising end. And, just six months after founding it, the joint fundraising committee they launched to drive their tour is nearly broke.

The joint fundraising committee launched to drive the two firebrand’s tour is nearly broke. The PAC has $13,000 in cash.
In its first few months, the Put America First PAC seemed like it was off to a hot start, raising $360,000 in its first two months—but according to new campaign finance filings made by the PAC it now has just $13,000 in cash. Multiple tour stops were canceled this summer. Gaetz and Greene did hold at least one major event in Iowa in August. Despite attracting big headlines, the rally was, apparently, a financial bust. The group spent $159,000 from July 1 to September 30, and raised just $57,000. 

MOTHER JONES TOP STORIES

Advertise with Mother Jones
On their own, the two firebrands have their own fundraising problems as well.

While Greene is definitely more successful—in her short congressional career she’s raised more than $8.8 million—the most recent numbers filed by her own campaign show her fundraising totals are increasingly eaten up by the costs of chasing donors and paying off the operatives and professional fundraising consultants and vendors that she hires.

In February, just weeks into her new job as a member of Congress, Greene was stripped of her committee duties for her history of outrageous statements. She spouted QAnon conspiracy theories and encouraged violence against Democrats. Let’s not even get into the “Jewish space laser.” But instead of being cowed, Greene bragged about how much money she was raising. In the first three months of this year, she did raise $3.2 million. But the next three months she raised just $1.5 million. And from July 1 through the end of September, Greene again raised $1.5 million. 

That’s not too shabby of a number, but fundraising costs are taking up an increasing percentage of her campaign’s fundraising totals. In the first three months of the year, when she was riding high on the publicity of being scorned by her new colleagues in Congress, her campaign spent about 43 percent of what it fundraised. In the next three months, that number increased to 59 percent. And for the past three months, the figure jumped again to 70 percent. She spent more than $1 million to haul in $1.5 million.

Greene spent more than $1 million to raise $1.5 million.
Greene continues to appeal to small donors—those who give less than $200—who still provided 76.6 percent of her money in the third quarter. But more than a quarter million of that money raised from the grassroots went into the pocket of a political consultancy registered to a man named Isaiah Wartman, who was named as Greene’s campaign manager during her run last year. Greene also spent hundreds of thousands on direct mail, printing, postage, and the cost of renting lists of donor names to solicit. 


Advertise with Mother Jones
Greene’s partner Gaetz has, of course, had a string of his own personal problems—including being the target of a Department of Justice investigation over his role in an alleged sex trafficking operation. All that has apparently affected his fundraising ability. If fundraising costs are slowly eating up more and more of Greene’s take, they have completely sunk Gaetz’s.

Like Greene, Gaetz had a strong start to the year, raising $1.8 million in the first quarter. After word of the investigation hit in April, his fundraising slowed. It dropped to just $1.4 million. Unlike the first quarter—when he was able to make more money than he spent on fundraising—the second quarter saw his campaign spend about half a million dollars more than it raised.

The Gaetz campaign’s latest filing shows that his fundraising has all but dried up. He raised just $527,000 from July 1 to September 30. He spent far more—$627,000—trying to raise that money. In another parallel to Greene, Gaetz’s biggest expenses are direct mail and paying fundraising consulting costs to his vendors. In fact, those two things ate up more than 60 percent of his donations. 

Oddly, for a campaign that seems to be burning through its cash, Gaetz’s campaign spent lavishly on stays at hotels and resorts across the country.
Oddly, for a campaign that seems to be burning through its cash, Gaetz’s campaign spent lavishly on stays at hotels and resorts across the country. In total, the campaign spent $29,867 on lodging over July, August and September, including $2,300 in early July at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Naples, Florida; $2,100 on an ultra-luxury hotel in downtown Portland, Oregon, in early September; and almost $1,500 on a Kimpton hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts in August. 

Gaetz’s campaign barely spent at all in recent months at Gaetz’s previous favorite chain of hotels and resorts: those belonging to former president Donald Trump. In April, CNN reported that Gaetz was denied a meeting with Trump at the Mar-a-Lago resort following news of the DOJ investigation. Gaetz dismissed that report but despite Gaetz’s continued appreciation for staying at fancy resorts on his campaign’s dime, he has not been the Trump customer he once was. After spending more than $8,600 staying and dining at Trump properties during the last election—and seemingly doing everything he could to advertise his loyalty as a customer and political ally—Gaetz’s campaign spent just $600 at Trump properties over the summer, listing a lone meal expense on July 8

 

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 1 month later...
Red Five

Red Five 41621

Posted
Posted
27 minutes ago, elfenix said:

last night i gulped down several swallows of milk before realizing it had turned (heb organic expiration june 20!), so this hits close to home

Man that was three years ago. You should go to a doctor. 

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Haha 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Blotto

Blotto 23978

Posted
Posted

This has to be with McCarthy's blessing right? Watching the GQP eat each other alive is really going to be a treat. I'd prefer that these pyscopaths had never made it beyond the confines of their father's encrusted jizz rags, but since we're stuck with them we might as well get a laugh out of it. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 46998

Posted
Posted

I don't believe anything will come of it, but damn this is a rather broad swath of potential crimes:

The committee will investigate whether Gaetz “engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift, in violation of House Rules, laws, or other standards of conduct."

Link to comment
Share on other sites
atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 90572

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Blotto said:

This has to be with McCarthy's blessing right? Watching the GQP eat each other alive is really going to be a treat. I'd prefer that these pyscopaths had never made it beyond the confines of their father's encrusted jizz rags, but since we're stuck with them we might as well get a laugh out of it. 

Eye Roll GIF by American Bridge 21st Century

  • Haha 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Beau Vine

Beau Vine 55844

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

I don't believe anything will come of it, but damn this is a rather broad swath of potential crimes:

The committee will investigate whether Gaetz “engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift, in violation of House Rules, laws, or other standards of conduct."

Can anyone show me an actual news source that's reporting an open ethics investigation on Rapey McForehead?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
YGIFS

YGIFS 19457

Posted
Posted
8 hours ago, safe sex said:

I'm still waiting for any of his called suicides to follow through

Look, this shit isn’t easy. It takes a lotta work to wind somebody up to take their own life.  I think we can do one Texas official and one GOP national figure before the year is our.  Best I can do /pawnshop meme

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
 Share
Go to topic listing


Football ... Basketball ... Baseball ... Other Sports ... Futbol ... 🤫995🤫 ... Gambling ... Movies & TV ... Music ... Hobbies ... Lulz ... Food & Travel ... Daily Texan ... Business and Markets ... Cloak Room ... Help ... For Sale ... Board Discussion ... Subscribe!... Donate!... Advertise... COOKIE MONSTER!

×
×
  • Create New...