Former Congressman Matt Gaetz, who is President-elect Donald Trump's controversial nominee for Attorney General and currently is under scrutiny following investigations by the Department of Justice and the House Ethics Committee, comes from a wealthy lineage. Forbes money in politics reporter Kyle Khan-Mullins joins "Forbes Talks" to discuss.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylemullins/2024/11/14/inside-matt-gaetzs-family-fortune/
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0:00 Introduction
1:37 Matt Gaetz Troubled Past And Lawsuits
5:15 Matt Gaetz Family Money: Where Does It Come From?
7:38 The Gaetz Family Real Estate Portfolio
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Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylemullins/2024/11/14/inside-matt-gaetzs-family-fortune/
Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1
0:00 Introduction
1:37 Matt Gaetz Troubled Past And Lawsuits
5:15 Matt Gaetz Family Money: Where Does It Come From?
7:38 The Gaetz Family Real Estate Portfolio
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:
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More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now
00:07is my Forbes colleague, Money in Politics reporter Kyle Kahn Mullins. Kyle, thanks so
00:11much for coming back on.
00:14Always great to be here, Brittany. Thanks for having me.
00:17Since Donald Trump won the election two weeks ago, he has wasted absolutely no time nominating
00:22members for his cabinet. And perhaps his most contentious pick to date has been his nomination
00:27for attorney general, former congressman Matt Gaetz, who resigned just hours after
00:32Trump made the announcement. So Gaetz is currently embroiled in a controversy. To start off
00:37the conversation, what is that controversy? Walk us through it.
00:41Oh, boy. Matt Gaetz has been under investigation for years. He's been in the legal spotlight.
00:46First the DOJ, which began investigating him in 2020 for alleged sex trafficking. That
00:51investigation closed in 2023 with no charges filed, as far as we can tell. The DOJ didn't
00:56say why they closed that investigation. But the House Ethics Committee, which is a committee
01:00that oversees the conduct of House members, they picked up that investigation shortly
01:03after the DOJ opened it. And after the DOJ closed their investigation, the House Ethics
01:08Committee investigation ramped up considerably. They have said that they were investigating
01:14him for a whole range of things, ranging from financial impropriety to showing other members
01:20of the House sexually explicit videos to the aforementioned sex trafficking and other sexual
01:25misconduct offenses. And as far as we know, that committee has
01:32mostly finished its work. It was apparently scheduled to release a report on its findings
01:37last Friday. That report has been reported to be very highly damaging to Gaetz. We don't
01:41know what it says. However, Gaetz resigned from the House, like you said, just hours
01:47after Trump appointed him as an attorney general nominee. And so it looked for a minute like
01:52that might squash the report. However, now we're hearing that the Ethics Committee may
01:56vote to release the report anyway. We're not 100% sure what's going to proceed there.
02:00Other than just in the past couple of days and hours, we have reports coming out that
02:06this House Committee received testimony that Gaetz had had sex with a minor and had paid
02:10for sex with prostitutes. So again, a lot of things to unpack here, a lot of really
02:14disturbing allegations. And we will just have to see where things go from here.
02:20I imagine that the senators on the committee that will be handling this, I believe it's
02:24a Judiciary Committee, will want to know everything they can before they cast their votes.
02:30A lot of really serious allegations dripping out. Gaetz has denied them, but now he's nominated
02:36to be head of the DOJ. So I want the backstory on Matt Gaetz. Talk to us about his career.
02:41Before he was introduced on the national stage, he practiced law and was in state politics.
02:47Tell us about that. Yeah, absolutely. So Matt Gaetz,
02:51he went to the University of Florida for college, then William & Mary Law School for law school.
02:56He entered private practice and was there for a couple of years working at a law firm in North
03:00Florida. But he followed his dad into politics. And we'll talk a little bit more about his dad
03:04later. But Gaetz ran for a state house seat. He won a seat in 2010. He was there for a couple
03:11of years. Then he ran for Congress in 2016. He won a seat in Congress that same year,
03:16came in along with Donald Trump in 2017, and immediately cast himself as one of Donald Trump's
03:22fiercest defenders in Congress. And so that has really been his career up to this point. And like
03:27you mentioned, he resigned just recently from his current seat and was nominated to be attorney
03:34general. Notably, not a ton of actual legal experience there. I think he would be, of recent
03:41attorneys general, he would be one of the least experienced in terms of actual practicing law.
03:49Kyle, whenever you and I talk, we always talk about the numbers. We always talk about the
03:53money in politics. So how much was Matt Gaetz making in his role in Congress before he resigned
03:58just last week? And let's say he is confirmed as attorney general. How big of a pay bump will
04:03that be? So as a member of the House of Representatives, he was making $174,000 a
04:10year. That's the same for everyone except for a couple members of leadership in both the House
04:14and Senate. But if he is confirmed as attorney general, or if he's appointed in a recess
04:20appointment, as Donald Trump has said he would do if the Senate moves to reject some of his nominees,
04:26he would be making over $200,000. That's the salary of a cabinet secretary. So he would get a
04:30raise. And so what else did he find on his federal financial disclosure?
04:35Yeah, so we dug through some of his recent financial disclosures. He has a couple hundred
04:41thousand dollars of various assets. We got a little bit of real estate, a little bit of
04:46just regular investments. His wife also has a couple hundred thousand dollars of those assets.
04:53If you put them together, they might be worth over a million dollars, but we're not 100% sure.
04:58All these things are declared in ranges. And so he could be well under a million as well.
05:01He could be well under a million as well. His wife also declares a salary of $157,000,
05:06not that far behind. She works at KPMG, the global accounting firm.
05:11So that is what we see based on his financial disclosures that we have.
05:15You and I have talked about millionaire politicians, billionaire politicians,
05:19but you're reporting that Matt Gaetz probably doesn't have an issue with money because his
05:24father has a fortune, Don Gaetz. Talk about the patriarch of the Gaetz family. Who is Don Gaetz?
05:31Don Gaetz is a businessman who is best known for, after he made his money, he went into state
05:38politics. He was a state senator for 10 years, including two years as the state Senate president.
05:43That was from 2006, 2016. He was in the state Senate. And he actually, after he was term limited
05:48out, he's now back and he just won another term in the state Senate back to his old seat.
05:53And Forbes is estimating that his net worth is around $35 million. So how did he make that
05:58fortune before entering politics? He made his money. He founded a
06:03hospice company in 1978 and sold it in the early 2000s for a little over $400 million.
06:12Now, he wasn't the only owner of that company. There were plenty of other shareholders.
06:15But like you said, he's worth about $35 million today. And that's because he took his proceeds
06:20from that sale. And he did two things. He put a bunch of it into the market. He's got plenty
06:24of investments, lots of different stocks and bonds and other investments. And then he also
06:30has built a pretty substantial portfolio. Most of it is concentrated in North Florida, but you've
06:36got a couple of properties scattered in Wisconsin and New York as well. To your point, he does have
06:41an expansive real estate portfolio. So talk to us about these properties. How much are they worth?
06:46Where are they? What does that look like? So the vast majority of these properties are in
06:52the panhandle of Florida, North Florida. And I think the one that is best known, perhaps,
06:58is the house from The Truman Show. This is the house that Jim Carrey's character lived in in
07:06the movie. That is in Seaside, Florida. And Matt Gaetz actually grew up in that house, which is
07:10kind of an odd, kind of an interesting piece of his background, of his lore. But beyond that,
07:18he owns, like I said, several other big houses in North Florida. He owns properties that he rents
07:24out as well. He has lots of just empty plots of land in Florida that presumably he's hoping to
07:29develop at some point. This is all Don Gaetz. The vast majority of this stuff is held either
07:34directly by Don or by companies that he owns. And then Matt Gaetz followed his father into
07:40real estate. So how successful were his ventures? He did. Matt Gaetz also started buying up some
07:47properties when he was a lawyer and when he was in the State House. However, it doesn't seem like
07:54he made an enormous amount. He was worth about $400,000. Most of that was real estate in his
07:58final disclosure as a member of the State House. That was in 2015. But he sold a lot of that land
08:04off in 2016 when he won his seat for Congress and actually to fund his race to run for Congress.
08:13So he didn't make an enormous amount of money from that. And his spokesperson last time we
08:18reported on this told us that he sold those properties for their assessed value to his
08:24father. They confirmed that it was sold to a company that is owned by his dad.
08:30Matt Gaetz, during his time in Congress, was best known as a right-wing firebrand.
08:35Talk to us a little more about what type of congressman he was. And do we have any indication
08:41of if he is confirmed, what type of attorney general he will be?
08:47Yeah, he has really pitched himself here as the biggest, brashest Trump defender out there.
08:53I would say Matt Gaetz is one of the most pro-Trump members of the House,
08:56if not the most pro-Trump member of the House. Or he was until he resigned very recently.
09:03And Gaetz, he's cut a very, very conservative figure. And he's not afraid in recent years to
09:09have gone after Republican leadership that he views as insufficiently loyal to Trump,
09:12insufficiently conservative. So in addition to defending Trump against the two, both of his
09:19impeachment, both the impeachment efforts against him, against the Mueller investigation, Gaetz in
09:26recent years has really stuck it to Republican leadership. Most famously, he helped oust Kevin
09:32McCarthy. That was the former Speaker of the House in 2023. He led that effort and is still
09:40well known for it. And there is still very bad blood between him and Republican leadership.
09:45Well, Kyle, I appreciate your reporting per usual. Thank you so much for joining me.
09:50Always great. Thanks for having me.