strong enough to ignore an insurrection. overthrow your memory. >> a lot of people talking about this new medication as the daily show plays us off the air. that is our broadcast for this friday night and for this week. with our thanks >> thanks for joining us, happy friday as well. here is how it works, here's the scheme. the guy who was taking the bribes he liked to be paid in cash, literal cash, green paper money. i think he thought that it would be hard to get caught that way because it seemed like there would be less of a paper trail. but it did not work out that way. the problem he had with wanting to be bribed in cash is that the companies that were bribing

him, honestly, the companies from which he was extorting these bribes -- these warned the kinds of companies that would normally tend to have a lot of cash laying around. it would be one thing if this guy, this government official was taking bribes from retail stores or even gambling operations. something where lost of paper cash is trading handle there was a legit explanation as to why that would be a lot of cash in the books, and at the sight of these businesses. for this corrupt official who is demanding and collecting bribes from his company, he wanted them in cash and the problem was that these firms that he was getting the bribes from were like, engineering firms and architecture firms. in companies like that there's not a lot of call for cash money in those types of businesses. in fact it would be weird if there was a lot of cash in a

business like that. what they did was that they developed a scheme. the boss at the company who knew he needed to pay this guy the bribe, he would tap some hapless simply on the shoulder and say, hey bob, hey bob really sorry but i'm going to give you a bonus, a big bonus. and if you worked at one of those companies, that was mixed up in this scheme you knew that that was very bad news to hear from your boss. because you weren't actually getting a bonus, you were being enlisted to play a part in the bribe scheme. what's happened is this, your boss would write you a bonus check for ex thousand dollars, you were expected as the employee to take that so-called boat is check, right over to your bank, deposit that bonus check from the company in your personal bank out. then you are expected to make a cash withdrawal from your own

account in the same amount. so you walk into the bank with a check for $2, 000, you deposit that, you then walk out of the bank with $2,000 in cash. in hundreds, please. crisp, new 100 dollar bills. that cash, you're supposed bonus money, you knew what you had to do with it, got to bring it back to the office and give it back to your boss. presumably your boss would say sorry or at least give you a guilty feeling clap on the back. but you're part in the scheme was then discharged and your boss would take those bills that you just got at the bank, and your boss would give those, crisp hundred dollar bills, to the corrupt government official who was eagerly awaiting his bribe in cash. that is how it worked. and again, if these had been cash rich businesses maybe they

would've been caught. but because they had to come up with this scheme, ultimately it was too many things that had to go right. on the surface, you can see how it might look okay. as long as nobody looks to deeply, it doesn't scream this is a crime. on the company's book, they just looked like they were paying bonuses to employees. as far as the official books were concerned, that was the end of the money trail. company out puts money in the form of potus checks to employees and that is it, we lose track of it at that point. looking at the employees bank accounts, will there be a paper trail too but that would look like the employee was getting a bonus, job well done. and then ticking that same amount of cash because who knows, the employee was so excited that he just wanted to go blow the money around town. it's cash, you can't track it. on the very surface level, none of it looked all that suspicious. as long as you didn't look too

hard, and as long as nobody knew where the cash was ending. cash was not ending up being spent out of the town, the cash was ending up, in this scheme, in the pockets of the then vice president of the united states, spirit and new. in the big bribery and extortion scheme that took down vice president add new, this is what we ultimately learned about how he liked his bribes he liked his bribes in cash from firms that didn't tend to have a lot of cash fling around. the poor employees of these architecture firms and the engineering firms that he demanded those cash bribes from, those employees were forced by their bosses to use their own personal bank accounts at its money laundering instruments for the companies they worked for that were caught up in this overall bribery and extortion scheme where the vice president agnew was the beneficiary. he first cooked up this game when he was a county executive in maryland, just a regular

elected official, but he continued it all the time in his white house serving as richard nixon's vice president. agnew was undone by plucky, brave smart prosecutors in maryland to start the investigation, it with interesting leana, subpoenas to all the engineering acts architecture firms to look closely at their books, to look closely at what was a weird pattern of inexplicable bone bonuses, and they were able to start following once they started digging below the surface. the investigation included questions of, why the wife of the local county started paying the mortgage of the family home in stacks of new hundred dollar bills? that is a weird way to pay your mortgage month after month. where did you get all of those crisp new hundred all or bills?

the investigation started with those kinds of investigatory techniques that went to the top of the government until all in one day, richard nixon's vice president agnew became a convicted felon, he resigned and left office that same day. it was all at the height of watergate. we lost the vice president, now let's get back to work. it was an amazing time in u.s. history, i think it's an amazing story, there's so many incredible subplots and characters within the whole thing, i did a podcast about it in a book also called batman about the store, i'm hoping that it might be a movie. i am obsessed with this story, till this day. but all that is say, it is not like a secret that this kind of scheme exists, this is the

scheme that brought down the vice president agnew, this whole idea of laundering the money through fake bonuses, that might have been clever at one point, that might have seen clever, he did get away with it for years. but then he got caught doing it and it has since become something that you can put in the category of notorious illegal schemes. it's the sort of thing that you might think you'd be able to get away with if no one had ever heard of it, no one had ever tried it before and if no one was looking all that hard, but now that it is history now that it is famous, now that it is at least notorious -- it makes it all the more amazing that we got another one of those schemes, just like that last year during the last presidential administration. in september of last year, there was a lot going on, but the washington post reported, the big blockbuster story that a very controversial high-ranking's trump ministration official appeared

to have aligned himself up to that job, he wanted to get that high-ranking appointment he used a carefully devised scheme. familiar to fans of bag man, he paid his employees on the books appear to be bonuses but they weren't really bonuses. they were payments that dejoy was stealing from politicians to his own benefit. most of his prolific campaign helped place and as a top republican and as top of the postal service. it was bolstered -- that left many employees of his company feeling pressured to make political contributions to republican candidates. money dejoy later reimbursed to bonuses, former employees say. five people who worked for dejoy's former business say that they were urged to write checks and attend fund-raisers at his 15,000 square foot gated mansion in north carolina.

there, events for republicans running for the white house and congress routinely fetched $100,000 or more a piece. two others employees familiar with the payroll system said louis dejoy would instruct that bonus pigments to staffers be boosted to defray the cost of their political contributions, and arrangement, the post notes, that would be unlawful. louis dejoy's who had access to bureau hopes company who is now retired said quote, lewis was a fund-raiser for the republican party asked employees for money, we gave him the money and then he reciprocated by giving us bonuses. another former employee with knowledge of the process described a similar series of events saying that he orchestrated additional compensation for employees who had made political contributions, instructing managers to award bonuses to those specific individuals.

the post notes, quote, all that can be permissible to encourage employees to make donations, reimbursing them for those contributions is a violation of north carolina and federal laws. even -- let's say scandal rich trump administration, this is when that stop, at least for a few days, in the late summer early fall last year, the washington post did a follow-up store where they spoke to a former lawyer who told him this quote, with the facts presented, this looks like a run-of-the-mill but very illegal corporate straw donor scheme. the post also spoke with a former general counsel who said that would stood out to him in the paperwork documenting the scheme is how synchronize the donations to bonuses cycle was alleged to have been. former fact told the paper that it is rare to see it that

blatant. rare to see that blatant, but that is how things have been going. it is a blessing in the careers that we have been through history, you don't even have to go -- it's all caps out loud, everything with an exclamation points. most of the things misspelled, nothing is subtle. but of all the scandal upon scandal, upon scandal and the people close to the president going to prison and the horrifying irresponsibility of the way that it was handled, and the failure and the mismanagement, all of that that we've just been through over the past few years, it does still boggles the mind that one of the things we had to rally to as a nation, one of the things that we have to rally as a nation to defend from what they were trying to do to it was the post office. who on earth house it out for the post office? really? as government agencies go, it

is kittens. seriously, your after the mail? your after letter carriers. the friendly jeans, how are you doing mrs. davis, they came for the post office. heading into the 2020 elections as president trump starting to see the idea that the election would be illegitimate unless he won. he attacked states that were voting by mail because of the pandemic, because presumably that would mean to many people voting. he said that democrats would never win another election because of the voting by mail. he started a public crusade of attacking the post office like it was some kind of inherently scandalous thing, rather than something that we've had in our country since literally the constitution. post office founding -- the founding language is in the u.s. constitution. he railed against the post office like it was something that was invented by obama. he proposed massive cuts to the

post offices budget just ahead of the election. he put in charge of the post office, a man who had tens of millions of dollars invested in a postal service contractor. and then who had spent his career before his appointment building his fortune by running companies that contracted with the post office. immediately after taking control of the post office, trump's new postmaster general institute in new policies that instantly led to huge backlogs in the mail. cutting the number of troops that mail carriers were able to do, forbidding them for taking extra trips, communities around the country started freaking out when they started on bolting traditional blue male bosses from sidewalks, putting them on flatbed trucks, the lord knows where? what do you do with the mailboxes? louis dejoy's ordered big expensive and sometimes

irreplaceable sorting machines that handle millions of pieces of males very quickly. he ordered them to be stripped outside friday. they listed i ordered backlogs in the mail were so bad, the news wasn't just about the decline you see in the numbers in terms of on-time delivery of regular male or first class mail. where houses of mail became hazmat sites. food that had been shipped was riding in these huge piles of undelivered boxes as the mail stacked up and up. even livestock, animals shipped overnight dead in transit, everything stacked up and postal service facilities around the country with louis dejoy forbidding the postal service. what is the most amazing thing about this story? even be of and upon the fact

that americans rallied to defend the post office in the middle of everything else we are facing as a country last year. really? the most amazing thing about this whole story, looking back at it today, it is that the dude is still there. he's still there, running. it even after the country lost its mind. including businesses who were really hurt by their shipping and mailing getting screwed up, even after the country lost its mind over dejoy's deliberate subatomic of the postal service, the bottlenecking of mail and packages. even after the conflicts of interest he had four exposed with him maintaining tens of millions of dollars of investment money doing business he was then running. he held on for months after running the agency. even after the washington post exposed him as the new spiro egg new! literally using that same dumb trick where you make the

employees handle the cash. through their own bank accounts, and you covered up with bonus payments to them and nobody will notice. even after we learn that's how he laundered the gazillionth dollars he used to pay politicians and how those donations were in fact have a god appointed by trump to run the post office and run it into the ground, even after all of that right now as we sit here tonight, the dude is still there! the dude is still running the post office! he is still a postmaster general after all that. because of the way that part of the government is structured, president biden can't necessarily just fire louis dejoy and be done with it. now if mr. dejoy were ever indicted for the fake buddhist scheme, would that change? would he then become fireable under the rules that cover these things? it's never come up before. that hasn't happened at this point and we don't know. the guy is still there and even

since president biden has been an office he still proposing and enacting even more cuts to the post office and what he did last year. it's just astonishing. but now, happy friday night! after all this time, it would appear that the biden administration has finally figured out how they might solve this problem and how to save the post office in the process. finally. that story is next. story is next we're good. the remarkable gx and lx. get 0.9% apr financing on the 2021 gx 460. experience amazing, at your lexus dealer. wealth is your first big investment. get 0.9% apr financing on the 2021 gx 460. worth is a partner to help share the load. wealth is saving a little extra. worth is knowing it's never too late to start - or too early. ♪ ♪ wealth helps you retire.

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or the day there's appointments nonstop. with comcast business, you get the network that can deliver gig speeds to the most businesses, and you can get the advanced cybersecurity solutions you need with comcast business securityedge. every day in business is a big day. we'll keep you ready for what's next. get started with a powerful internet and voice solution for just $64.90 a month. and ask how to add comcast business securityedge. >> her name is amber call today.

mcdonald's. she used to be a local government for years. director of elections for the great city of denver colorado. it was in that job amber mcdonald's help pilot the vote by mail program which was rolled out statewide in colorado. every voter in the state gets

sent a mail-in ballot delivered to their home. still allowed to vote in person if you want, but most people have liked the convenience of voting by mail. thanks to that program in colorado, everybody got a chance to do it. the idea here pioneered by this local official was to make boating simple, easy, accessible. to make it available to everyone, to strip away the barriers to voting that inherently come along with having to do it in person. amber in 2018 left that job running it and dumber to head the national vote at home institute a small but very influential non profit. needs to disband parties, and respected on both sides of the aisle. amber mcreynolds herself is an independent. the mission of the entity is to help every state do it colorado did, improve the numbers in terms of voter participation by doing so! make voting by mail or voting at home, as they like to call,

it available to every registered voter in all 50 states. not to be the leading expert by voting by mail. seem to be the most prominent evangelist in the country by using vote by mail in the country. at the start of the pandemic, she, on surprisingly, fielded phone calls from election officials all over the country, asking for her advice and her help on how to set up a vote by mail and all sorts of states so people wouldn't have to risk getting sick to vote in person. she is the right expert at the right time. the pandemic made it unsafe to turn out of the same place at the same day to do something together. in the wake of the 2020 historic election, and that rapid expansion of vote by mail and the american people looking at a lot, now mcreynolds as a new job.

she has just been confirmed by the united states senate in that job. aboard how the post office spends its money, how much to charge for stamps, how long for mail to arrive. it helps oversee the delivery of election mail, stuff like applications for ballots and mail-in ballots themselves. very important. perhaps most importantly, right now, it is the job of the board of governors that didn't used to get that much attention. right now it feels very important. the board of governors alone that has power over who serves as postmaster general of the united states. we are currently in an era where the postmaster general of the united states is the -- we've never had someone in that position who's more controversial. from the perspective, the current postmaster general has been a bit of a human wrecking ball.

president biden in process of feeling all the big governor seats on the service board. this one more open seat awaiting final confirmation. when that seat is filled, the majority of the seats in the postal service board will be held by or appointed by democrats, including independent amber mcreynolds. which means miss mcreynolds and her new colleagues will have some very consequential decisions to make in a very short order. joining us now is the newest member of the u.s. postal service board of governors, amber mcreynolds. miss mcreynolds thank you for being here, i appreciate you being here at the time. >> thanks for having me, rachel! >> let me ask you about going through the confirmation process. everything is political and no confirmation process is easy anymore, even for non controversial nominees such as yourself. how did it feel to get confirmed, to be on the board of governors? >> quite the process for sure and i'm grateful to all the senators that supported my

nomination and voted for me. it was a bipartisan vote. and also what's been great is i've been able to talk with senators from many states about the challenges they've experienced with regards to postal services and their businesses and constituents. and all that i've expressed different challenges with regard to service. getting and understanding and deeper understanding of how senators see this issue has been an important part of the process that i've sincerely enjoyed as i've gone through this confirmation. >> you mentioned, or consider to be, one of the nation's foremost experts on voting from home, voting by mail, and so many states decided they were going to do that, even though they hadn't been planning on doing before when the covid epidemic made that a necessity for so many states.

you are one of the experts a lot of those states turn to to set up those processes, sometimes in short order. as an expert, how do you feel those systems, especially the newly set up systems performed in 2020? >> first and foremost, election officials are heroes. i can't say that enough with regards to the 2020 cycle. even in an election cycle before that, and once occurring today. they've been attacked unfairly, their operations and processes have been lied about, and conspiracies have been flying rampant around the country for many months now. even almost a year on these various prostheses. election officials despite all of, that despite a pandemic, despite policies in many states, despite investment in the infrastructure, and despite the many attacks they have faced in the lies and conspiracies and threats that are even coming

into day performed exceedingly well. we have one of the most secure and efficient turnouts we've had on record. all because election officials are the guardians of our democracy and are the heroes that we should be celebrating and they work on the frontlines during this pandemic and did so with grace and dignity, and we should be thanking them every day we have an opportunity to do so. >> one of the things that i think was just a shocking turn in the public sphere last year was when americans across the spectrum and country felt they needed to come to the defense of the postal service. the postal service denouncing it as some sort of scheme or something that was stacked against them or something done away with. we saw draconian changes to

postal service policies that had real impact on the ground in terms of slowing down the mail, and hurting a lot of businesses. freaking out a lot of people in the country in terms of what would happen with ballot applications when it came to voting by mail and everything else. i think a lot of people in the country are surprised to know the postmaster general from that area is still in place, and i think people are worried that his policies might permanently kneecap the postal service. it's not going to be ball anytime soon to get back to the levels of service we were used to do it due to it being a non supportive part of american life. given your role in the postal service board of governors, if you feel that, if you are aware that conservation in the country, and if you can give anyone assurance it might get better? >> i am certainly aware of it. i think there is a culmination of issues that occurred.

the pandemic certainly being one of them. the postal service as a frontline critical infrastructure workforce that continue to deliver mail and packages, packages by the way in record numbers. and because a lot of that equipment has been under invested in, especially on the package front, there were backlogs and businesses experienced that. people experienced that their medications. those are things that, know that the ten year plan has been put out there, once i joined the board and have more access to the information board members, have those are things i'm focusing on in service. service has to be effective, it has to be universal. the postal service is one of our most and admired institutions. it connects businesses and commerce to people and customers and government to people and services and vice versa.

it ensures people could access the medication and in some parts of the country like alaska, and i spoke to senator murkowski about this, people rely on the postal service as their grocery store, the hardware store, their bank, and everything else. their vote by mail ballots in election information. that post office is a lifeline to many communities around the country. it has to be effective. it's the constitution that needs to deliver a universal service. service is one of my key priorities, it's been my priority in the election administration world. the parallels between the postal service and election administration are very obvious. there's been a lack of investment in technology innovation overtime and there's funding issues which is the same in election administration. seasonal workforce issues. expansion and retraction, both of those things are parallel in those worlds.

there's also policy issues that have tied the postal service do not being able to keep up financially. and you have to address those things. i look forward to joining the board, do you think about these things in a creative and strategic way and bring my expertise from the election administration world because i truly believe there is a whole host of opportunities for the postal service. there is opportunities to do that going forward. >> this is a part of the government that until now was an incredibly low profile part of the government he. the admiration the american people have for the post office and the amount of how much we depend on it that means we as a people got a backup to see the postal service attacked over this past year. you and your new colleagues on

the postal service board of governors, the country is really going to be looking to you with a lot more attention than we're used to in terms of turning things around. appeared luck to you, amber, and as you settle in, keep us surprised. we will have eyes on you the tenure there. >> thanks for having me, rachel. >> we have much more to get to tonight, including a very dramatic plea deal that could be very bad news for republican congressman today. lots ahead. stay with us. stay with us in a safe place and your child safer. to close, twist until it clicks. tide pods child-guard packaging. ♪ (ac/dc: back in black) ♪ ♪ ♪ the bowls are back. applebee's irresist-a-bowls all just $8.99. my psoriatic arthritis pain?

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this academic year has been, um, challenging. but i think there's so much success to celebrate. woman: it's been a year like no other. man: yet, for educators across california, the care, compassion, and teaching has never stopped. woman: addressing their unique needs... man: ...and providing a safe learning environment students could count on. woman: join us in honoring the work of educators. together, we will build a better california for all of us. 2nd, police and florida showed up to arrest a local republican elected official. the local county tax collector. dearest was not an easy one. it didn't end up in gunfire or any kind of tragedy, but it did appear towards the dangerous for a while. it definitely veered into territory you would call messy.

here is how the arresting officer described what happened in the official arrest record that day when they turned up to arrest the local tax collector. upon my arrival, contact was made with joel by phone. joel initially advised to texas the residents after a short period of time and surrender himself. after that time came and passed, joel continue to negotiate on the phone. during the negotiations, joel made suicidal comment stating a very -- he would take bills, utilize firearms, and that he had improvised explosive devices. joel also stated he had hidden several items and is a no cavity. joel open the front door to the residents and threw a bag full of medication out into the driveway before retreating back into the residence and closing the door. that's kind of the flavor of the arrest here. that was march 2nd. they did take him into custody that day. we already under indictment, but after that arrest, federal prosecutors would go on to file additional charges in

superseding indictments against him. this tax collector addenda facing 33 different federal felony charges. now, that local official is the subject of that very messy arrest when authorities finally tried to take him into custody in march. right now, that local republican official in florida presents a sort of good news bad news situation for florida republican congressman matt gates. for fthe bad news, of course, l greenberg close friend apparently of florida republican congressman matt gates, joel greenberg according to news reports as reportedly been telling prosecutors for months about he and congressman gaetz have paid young women for sex and what he alleges to have been considerable drug use in conjunction with those encounters. most worryingly, he reportedly told prosecutors about congressman gaetz own alleged

sexual involvement with an underage girl, the same underage girl who is cited in the felony child sex trafficking charges that mr. greenberg himself is facing. matt gaetz has denied all of those accusations, but that's the bad news about him in his long-standing friendship with joel greenberg and what joel greenberg has reportedly been telling prosecutors-y. that's the bad news. the only good news for congressman gaetz is joel greenberg has all the markings of a not super fantastic witness in any courtroom, right? in terms of his believability, his credibility, his overall gravitas, as i mentioned he's been charged with felonies including multiple accounts of fraud, making false allegations we guessed a political rival we. it also seems he's a little unhinged, doesn't help. all of that doesn't make for a good witness in terms of his testimony or against anybody.

now, today, prosecutors today submitted to federal court in florida a proposed plea agreement they've drawn up with joel greenberg. and, that they explain the safeguards they want to put on him to make sure he's a truthful witness and that's interesting. the plea agreement they filed for today also includes all the stuff he's pleading guilty to as part of his plea agreement and the description and detailed very [inaudible] hear some of it. quote, joel greenberg was elected as seminole county tax collector in 2016. started in office on about january 3rd, 2017. during his tenure as tax collector and after his arrest in 2020, mr. greenberg committed multiple federal criminal offenses. mr. greenberg paid for commercial sex acts, in particular greenberg was involved in water sometimes referred to as sugar daddy relationships, where he paid women for sex, but attempted to disguise the payments as school

related expenses or other living expenses. greenberg had an online account and a website that advertised himself as a place where sugar daddies could find sugar babies -- you. he used unaccounted that website voted by women who he later paid to engage in illegal sex acts with others. he used four different accounts to pay for commercial sex acts. his personal venmo account, is american express account, is american express account of the tax collectors office. that's nights! his personal back to count from december 2016 to 2018. he used those accounts to conduct more than 150 transactions totaling $70,000. all of which involved greenberg paying for women with, paying women for commercial sex acts using those accounts. one of the individuals who he paid for commercial sex acts was a minor under the age of 18, for part of the time when greenberg paid her to engage in commercial sex acts. greenberg engaged in sex acts with the minor in florida at least seven times while she was

a minor. during these commercial sex acts, greenberg would also -- often would offer and supply the minor and others with ecstasy, the drug. which greenberg would take himself as well. oftentimes, greenberg would offer to pay the monitor and others an additional amount of money if they took the ecstasy. greenberg also introduced the minor to other adult men who engaged in commercial sex acts with the minor. in the middle district of florida. other adult men, floral. these are all statements by the prosecutors office that don't really countess allegations anymore. these are things joel greenberg is explicitly admitting to. he's initialed every page in this agreement. at this point in the agreement, prosecutors go on to describe corroborating evidence they say they have to support greenberg 's claims, including records of his communications with this underage girl.

we've also nailed to the wall in terms of what his time is going to be like now-y. listen to this. in terms of matt gates thinking about whether joel greenberg is going to truthfully and authoritatively testify against him, listen to this. to cooperate fully with the united states in the investigation and prosecution of other persons and to testify for perjury or make a false statement before any court proceeding [inaudible] and other matters. such cooperation to include a complete disclosure of all relevant formation including production of any and all books papers documents and other objects to defend this possession are controlled and to be available for interviews which the united states may require. it may be prosecuted for any perjury or false declarations, if any committed while testifying pursuant to this agreement. or for obstruction of justice. the u.s. may prosecute the defendant for the charges

majority be dismissed, pursuant to this agreement, if any. and may either seek reinstatement or file such charges and prosecute the defendant there on. so, this is not good for matt gaetz. this part is not good. because this is matt gaetz's friend, he's been telling investigators about him and matt gaetz both paying for sex including with an underage girl. he's been facing 33 felony charges, but today, he pled guilty to six of the 33 felonies. he signed this binding document agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors and testify against other people. if he lies to the prosecutors, he affirms here in this agreement that he will face perjury charges or obstruction of justice charges. he affirms if eli's aren't leaves anything out in cooperating with prosecutors, the other 27 felony charges against him, those are coming back. there have been 33 phillies penny against him. he's pleaded guilty to six, so they will drop the other 27.

if he is not a good cooperator, they are going to hit him with those other 27 as well as the sixties now pled guilty to. one of the charges he is pleading to in this agreement, the child sex trafficking charge carries a mandatory minimum prison sentence of ten years. even with this cooperation agreement, it's not like the guy is skating. the question is, that we can see in this plea deal is whether that same kind of charge, it's tenure animal printed prison sentence is now looming over republican congressman matt gaetz. one of the lead reporters covering the story is joining us next. stay with us. stay with us hopeless struggle. the lows of bipolar depression can disrupt your life and be hard to manage. latuda could make a real difference in your symptoms. latuda was proven to significantly reduce bipolar depression symptoms, and in clinical studies, had no substantial impact on weight. now i'm feeling connected. empowered.

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disturbing side shows and the ongoing story of the republican party staying under the sway of former president donald trump is the high it factor ongoing federal criminal investigation into the republican congressman of the mall, florida republican congressman matt gaetz.

his longtime associate joel greenberg, a former local republican elected official in florida, entered a plea deal of federal prosecutors for a whole host of crimes including sex trafficking of a child. mr. greenberg offering to cooperate with prosecutors and testify in other cases in order to reduce his own sentence for the six felonies he's pleading guilty to. but are those other cases in which he might end up testifying ones that include potentially congressman matt gates? here's mike schmidt on that today. quote, greenberg initially wanted to fight the charges, but around the end of last, year as he confronted the possibility that he could face decades in prison if he were convicted, he began to cooperate with federal investigators. in meetings with the investigators, he divulged details on the array of crimes he had committed and explained how he, congressman gates, and others frequently paid women for sex. joining us now is michael schmidt, washington correspondent for the new york times. mr. schmidt, it's nice to see

you. thank you for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> i'm trying to sum up the sort of state of play here. have i missed anything important in terms of the consequences, the implications of this plea agreement today? >> i think the thing that stood out to me the most was the amount of additional documentation and information in the agreement that was sort of backed up greenberg which was not reliant on him. it was the venmo payments, it was the amount of text messages, the amount of meetings they had, the specific date. but i saw there is i don't know if the government is thinking and we are not omnipotent, but you could see the government sending a signal that says, look, it's not just greenberg. we've been working on this investigation for a long time.

here are all the details of every single interaction joel greenberg had with a 17 year old girl. i know others are under investigation, and we know gates is, and here is the government saying here is as additional evidence. this was an 86-page plea agreement. the longest plea agreement i've ever seen. >> mike, do you know, from your reporting, whether there are other potential witnesses, or other potential alleged coconspirators? people who are potentially charged here who could be in the same boat as joel greenberg? do we know about anybody else who might be implicated as a potential witness here? -- as we've reported, there are others in the florida republican political circle whose conduct is being examined in connection with this investigation. you raise an interesting question and point, which is

joel greenberg is the only person we know who has been publicly charged in this investigation. we do know others are under investigation, and we do know that the government has talked to some of the women and the government looks like they're casting their nets fired here and really want to move forward and bring other types of prosecutions. they've signed this guy up to essentially do that. the thing i'm wondering about, is will they move up the ladder as if they were moving towards gaetz? there's a feeling, well, maybe they will indict gaetz sometime soon. maybe they will go to the next person in the group that was doing this to see if they could build a number of witnesses. as you are laying out, there are questions, huge questions about greenberg's credibility because of his behavior and because of his criminal exposure. but, if you have other

cooperators and other witnesses, that bolsters his credibility. he gives the government a stronger hand as they move towards a high-profile target. and someone who trump supporters would look at very favourably. >> michael schmidt, i both thank you and apologize to you for you having to cover this because it's so gross. we've learned a lot from what you've been able to dig up. thank you for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> we will be right back. stay with us. t back stay with us

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hope you have a fantastic weekend i'll see you again monday night. now it is time for the last word. good evening allie. >> i hope you have a great weekend as well, we'll see you monday and thank you for that great show. on january 6th the united states capitol was attacked by an angry mob of donald trump supporter who for months had been fed lies about the results of the 2020 presidential election. this week during a house hearing some republicans it everything they could to downplay the attack with one describing the invaders as a group of well behaved tourists. despite those efforts today democratic benny thompson, john katko announced a bipartisan