Daily Beast: “In late January 2020, U.S. Secret Service agents received information that Rep. Matt Gaetz had accompanied a Florida county tax official they were already investigating on an unusual nighttime visit to a government office – where the local official was allegedly making fake IDs, a source close to the investigation told The Daily Beast. That tip to the feds came in a text message conversation that Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg had with an employee explaining why they were both in the office one weekend two years earlier, according to this person. A timestamp visible in the text message thread indicated the conversation took place on Monday, April 16, 2018. According to three people with direct knowledge of the incident: Greenberg visited the Lake Mary, Florida branch of his tax collection agency that weekend.”

“Grainy surveillance footage captured Greenberg standing near a manager’s desk with another man. Greenberg forgot to set the alarm on the way out, which concerned the assistant branch manager when she walked into the office Monday morning. That employee was surprised to find that driver licenses – which are normally turned in when expired at the tax office for shredding – were scattered all over the desk instead of in the appropriate disposal basket. She reviewed the camera footage and alerted her boss, who in turn contacted Greenberg via text. ‘Did you happen to visit the Lake Mary Office on the weekend?’ the text message read. The image obtained by The Daily Beast shows that Greenberg allegedly responded: ‘Yes I was showing congressman Gaetz what our operation looked like. Did I leave something on?'”

“When Greenberg later came under investigation by the Secret Service for identity theft and stalking, agents approached former employees at the tax office to obtain proof of the public official’s activities. That’s when they were suddenly directed to Gaetz. According to the source who provided the text message conversation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to guarantee their safety, Secret Service agents directed them in the final days of January 2020 to print out the full text message conversation with Greenberg from online AT&T records. That source said those text messages were delivered to the Secret Service, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and most recently, another federal agency.”