On Monday, Florida attorney Joel Leppard, who represents the two women who testified before the House Ethics Committee that Gaetz paid them for sex, spoke to the Washington Post and revealed that America’s potential future attorney general used his “adopted” son’s PayPal to pay them.
Now, Leppard’s on a media tour to try and encourage the committee to release it. Leppard’s two clients both testified that Gaetz paid them for sex with him as well as other people at these “sex parties,” and that the payments continued through 2019.
“There were events at Airbnbs. There were events at individuals’ houses. There were events that took place at political events,” Leppard told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “There was a trip to New York. There’s a trip to Bahamas. So events like this did happen from time to time, perhaps over 10 times over the course of July 2017 to early January 2019.”
One of the women said she saw Gaetz have sex with the minor. “She testified to the House that as she was walking out to the pool area, she turned to her right and she witnessed … her friend having sex with Representative Gaetz,” Leppard said. “And her friend at that time was 17.”
As for Gaetz’s “adopted” son, Nestor Galban,? There’s no evidence that he actually adopted him, but Gaetz tweeted about him after freaking out at Rep. Cedric Richmond for saying he doesn’t know what it’s like to have a Black son. The Daily Beast recently summarized the ordeal:
Gaetz was unmarried and—as far as the public knew—childless at the time, so many were left scratching their heads after his exchange with Richmond. That same day, however, the Florida congressman took to Twitter to post a photo of someone he described as “my son Nestor,” a 19-year-old from Cuba who’d apparently lived with him for six years. “We share no blood but he is my life,” Gaetz said. He also emphasized in his post that Nestor came to Florida “legally.”
Gaetz and Nestor’s relationship has since been scrutinized, however. Nestor is the son of Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend and spent time living with both Gaetz and his blood family in Florida. Gaetz was also discovered to have described Nestor in social media posts as a “local student” in 2016 and as “my helper” in 2017.
That incident took place in 2020, when Galban was 19, meaning Gaetz would have been using a 16-year-old’s PayPal to pay for sex with a 17-year-old in 2017.
The 17-year-old, who’s now in her 20s, also testified to the committee that Gaetz had sex with her when she was a minor. On Thursday, her attorney wrote
on Twitter that he wants the committee to “immediately” release the report, adding, “She was a high school student and there were witnesses.”
Leppard further stressed that he wants the committee to release it since his clients don’t want to have to testify again during the confirmation hearings. “They’ve already been through so much — and each time it happens, it kind of rips apart an old wound,” he told the Post. “They really don’t want to be called in to testify. There’s a lot of facts out there, they’ve given a lot of testimony, provided countless hours and documents to the House, and they don’t want to see it go to waste.” Gaetz, for what it’s worth, has continued to deny all accusations.
Meanwhile, future First Lady Elon Musk weighed in on Tuesday, tweeting that “Gaetz will be our Hammer of Justice,” and that he
considers the accusations “worth less than nothing.” OK. “Under our laws a man is considered innocent until proven guilty,” he wrote. Well, yeah. Apart from the very obvious fact that Gaetz is clearly not behind bars, nor is he even facing an actual criminal, there’s really nothing like watching a guy with sexual assault allegations stick up for a guy with sex trafficking allegations. I wish the Sun would just swallow us all.
