Congressman Matt Gaetz has a knack for making headlines—most recently regarding a House investigation into alleged sexual misconduct, drug use, improper gifts and other ethics violations, which he denies. His father, on the other hand, has a knack for making money. Forbes money in politics reporter, Kyle Mullins joins Brittany Lewis on "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss.
Read the full story on Forbes:
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Read the full story on Forbes:
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis with Forbes Reagan News. Joining me now is my Forbes colleague,
00:07money and politics reporter Kyle Mullins. Kyle, thanks for coming back on.
00:12Always great to be here, Brittany. Thanks for having me.
00:15You have some reporting about Congressman Matt Gaetz and his family's expansive real
00:19estate portfolio. And you write this for Forbes, that Congressman Matt Gaetz has a knack for
00:23making headlines and his father has a knack for making money. And if we all remember Congressman
00:29Matt Gaetz really gained national prominence after he led the charge to oust Kevin McCarthy
00:35from House Speaker. And so first tell us about the recent controversies Matt Gaetz has found
00:40himself embroiled in post Kevin McCarthy ouster. Absolutely. So Matt Gaetz has developed a
00:48reputation. He's a young, very pro MAGA, pro Trump member of the GOP caucus in the House
00:54of Representatives. And he's he's really developed reputation as as a sort of a firebrand,
00:59you know, hard right conservative member of the House. Like you mentioned, he did lead
01:05the overthrow of Kevin McCarthy. Excuse me, Kevin McCarthy, the former House Speaker.
01:10And he's also been under investigation both by Department of Justice and most recently
01:14by the House Ethics Committee for a number of different issues. And the House Ethics
01:19Committee just this week actually released a statement confirming that he is still under
01:23investigation for alleged sexual misconduct, drug use, other ethical violations. And I should
01:28note here that he categorically denies all of the accusations that are being made against him.
01:32So now let's move on to the patriarch of the family. Who is Don Gaetz?
01:37Don Gaetz, much more of an establishment Republican type, I would say. Not not the
01:43same sort of firebrand that Matt Gaetz, his son, is sort of cutting. He started out as a
01:48businessman. He built a hospice company that he sold in 2004 for over four hundred million
01:52dollars. He got a pretty nice payout from his share of that. Then he ran for office.
01:57Don Gaetz served for a decade in the Florida Senate, including two years as the Senate
02:02president. He was term limited out, but now he's able to run again and he's actually running
02:06for his old seat this year. And he's also, you know, at that same time, he's plowed his
02:11cash into a pretty decent sized real estate empire over several decades. There's some
02:15interesting properties in there. That was kind of what piqued my interest in this story.
02:21And yeah, I think we're going to let's dive into that.
02:24We will dive into that. But first, I mean, he's pretty rich. Forbes is estimating he's
02:27worth thirty three million dollars. So how did he make that fortune?
02:33The vast majority of that money came from, like I said, selling that hospice company
02:36that that he in 2004. Interestingly enough, it actually sold to the parent company of
02:42Rotorooter, the company that makes the like drain cleaner thing. And they own two large
02:46brands, Rotorooter and you've got this hospice company, kind of an odd kind of an odd parent
02:51company that owns both. So now the Gaetz family has a pretty, as we said earlier, expansive
02:58real estate portfolio. And when you were reporting on it for Forbes, you divided it into three
03:03camps, Don Gaetz, properties of Don Gaetz through companies and Matt Gaetz. So where
03:09are these properties located? Basically, all of these properties, no matter
03:14who exactly owns them and which category I put them into, basically all of them are in
03:18northwest Florida, well to the west of Tallahassee. This is an area, you know, I'm from Florida
03:23originally. You know, it's on the Alabama border. Some people call it Floribama. They
03:28share a lot of economic and cultural ties with the rest of the Deep South. Most of these
03:33properties are in coastal communities or near the water in one form or another. But I should
03:38note that Don Gaetz, in addition to all of these northwest Florida properties, he's got
03:42two additional properties, one in New York and one in Wisconsin.
03:46So now let's first talk about Don Gaetz's properties. Where are they? What type of properties
03:51are they and how much are they worth?
03:55So most of the more valuable properties are owned outright by Don Gaetz. These are the
03:59ones that we're talking about in this category. And among his 10 properties that he declares
04:04that he owns outright on his financial disclosures, the most interesting, I think, is the Truman
04:09Show house, which is the house that Jim Carrey lived in in the 1998 movie, The Truman Show,
04:16in Seaside, Florida. That one's worth almost $4 million. And then we also have an 8,500-square
04:21foot mansion in Panama City, Florida. That one's currently for sale for about $3.3 million.
04:27And then he's got several other homes and properties, some plots of undeveloped land.
04:32And then he's got a condo in Manhattan and some undeveloped land in Wisconsin that kind
04:36of helped round out that portfolio.
04:38So now let's move on to the second bucket, properties that Don Gaetz owns through companies.
04:44What companies are these? And talk to us about the properties a little bit.
04:49So there's two companies we're talking about here. One is called Treviron and the other
04:52is called Matterin. And as far as we can tell, they're both just real estate holding companies.
04:57They don't seem to actually have much of a footprint beyond that.
05:01These two companies that Don Gaetz declares he owns,
05:05he owns both of the properties. We're not 100% sure that he owns 100% of these two companies,
05:10but we're fairly sure. And you've got kind of an eclectic collection of real estate here.
05:14You've got a $2 million home in Seaside, same place where that Truman Show house was located.
05:18You've got a pair of homes in Niceville. You've got some undeveloped plots.
05:22And I think the most interesting thing here is that one of the companies,
05:25Treviron, several of its assets were actually bought off of Matt Gaetz, Don Gaetz's son.
05:33And they specifically, Treviron, bought these properties. These are all kind of undeveloped
05:37lots, or at least most of them are, from Matt when Matt was first running for Congress and he was
05:42kind of needing some cash. A spokesperson for Matt Gaetz pointed out that he was paid the publicly
05:47appraised value of the properties at the time. So there's no evidence of foul play here.
05:51But it's interesting that that's kind of how these empires have intersected through these
05:55companies. I'm interested about the strategy behind here. What's the reasoning behind
06:01buying a real estate property through a company instead of buying it just outright yourself?
06:07Because Don Gaetz has done both. Yeah, there's a couple of reasons someone
06:12might do that. And they're fairly legitimate reasons. You might want to disguise the owner
06:16of the property or of the company or otherwise distance yourself from it in some way.
06:21You might want to route any income through the company instead of into your own pocket for tax
06:25reasons, because sometimes business income is taxed differently than personal income.
06:30You might want to split ownership with somebody else. And maybe that's easier by starting a
06:34company that owns the property instead of just splitting the property directly. We don't actually
06:39know his exact ownership share in these companies, like I said. So there's a chance that maybe
06:43someone else has a stake in some of these properties. So now, finally, let's move on
06:49down to Matt Gaetz. What properties does he own? Where are they and how much are they worth?
06:56So Matt Gaetz used to have a larger real estate portfolio. In 2010, when he was a member of the
07:01Florida House, he declared owning upwards of a dozen or so different pieces of real estate.
07:07He sold most of them off at this point. What is left is six undeveloped plots of land.
07:12I think the most interesting among them is there's a lot in Okaloosa County
07:16that he bought for a little over $35,000 when he was just 15 years old, according to the deed
07:22at the time. And the Gaetz spokesperson did not respond to my question about how a middle or high
07:27schooler could afford a $35,000 plot of land. Well, Kyle Mullins, per usual, thanks for your
07:32reporting. You're welcome back anytime. Thanks, Brittany. Always great to be here.
07:46you