The Gaetz And Hegseth Controversies Look Like They're Fading Away

What I'm beginning to notice about the dual Gaetz-Hegseth not-quite scandals so far is that, unlike the sort of allegations that go metastatic, these both seem to have stalled. It's beern roughly a week since news leaked of a memo written by an unnamed woman who claims to be a friend of another unnamed accuser that was sent to Trump's transition team.

That memo claimed Hegseth raped a 30-year-old conservative group staffer in a hotel room in Monterey in 2017, the [Washington] Post reported. Police investigated the incident but Hegseth never faced charges, the memo said.

And so far, we've basically had clarifying information regarding a non-disclosure agreement and Hegseth's version of events, which seems to have been confirmed by a subsequent police investigation. Let's contrast this with, say, the timeline of the Monica Lewinsky scandal:

Jan. 7: Lewinsky signed an affidavit stating that she never had a sexual relationship with Clinton, at the request of attorneys representing Paula Jones, who had accused Clinton of sexual harassment in 1994. . . . A conservative legal group that had volunteered to fund her lawsuit had gotten an anonymous tip about Lewinsky, so Jones’ lawyers subpoenaed Lewinsky in hopes of arguing that Clinton displayed a pattern of workplace harassment.

Jan. 12: Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr — who had been investigating Whitewater, a scandal-plagued Arkansas real-estate venture with which the Clintons had been involved — receives more than 20 hours of tapes of phone conversations that seem to contradict the affidavit. The tapes come from Linda Tripp. . . to whom Lewinsky had confided about President Clinton.

. . . Jan. 13: At the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pentagon City, Va., Lewinsky dishes more about the relationship to Tripp, who’s been secretly wired by FBI agents, per Starr’s orders.

Jan. 17: Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report reports that Newsweek had been tipped off about President Clinton’s affair with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky, but had yet to run a story about it. On the same day, Clinton denies the affair in a deposition in the Jones suit[.]

. . . Jan. 21: Drudge publishes allegations that Lewinsky had kept a “garment with Clinton’s dried semen.” Mainstream news outlets pick up his report over the course of the week.

What clearly made the scandal juicy at the time was the idea that something was actively being covered up by both the Clinton administration and the media, and independent journalists and the FBI were concurrently leaking details that contradicted the official version of events. The whole basic story emerged over a 14-day period, with a steady drumbeat of emerging figures like Linda Tripp and Matt Drudge that gave credibility to the initial allegations.

So far with the Hegseth controversy, we're halfway through the 14-day period of the Lewinsky blowup, but the big key ingredient is missing, that is, credible evidence that something has been covered up, at least, not by the Trump transition or the media. No Linda Tripp has emerged with dynamite confirmation, either. All we have is an anonymous memo by a friend of an anonymous woman who so far doesn't seem willing to become the latest metonymy for a cheating wife a la a Lewinsky.

The big problem we also have is that through the Stormy Daniels "hush money" trial, we've already learned what a non-disclosure agreement is, that media figures routinely obtain them to make troublesome litigants go away, that Trump himself did this, and attempts to put him on trial for it simply boosted has standing in the polls. And at this point, unlike with Stormy Daniels, whose reputation can't be damaged more than it's already been, the anonymous accuser here has a great deal to lose if she violates the NDA.

A similar thing seems to be happening with Matt Gaetz. The allegatioins against him

began during the first Trump Administration in late 2020 under Attorney General Bill Barr, and concerned allegations that Gaetz had engaged in a sex-trafficking scheme involving a 17-year-old girl.

The probe intensified following revelations about Gaetz’s ties to Joel Greenberg, a former Seminole County tax collector, who pleaded guilty to sex trafficking and other charges in 2021 and admitted to paying women for sex, including the minor in question, and introducing her to other men.

. . . Gaetz vehemently denies the allegations, calling them part of a politically motivated extortion attempt. His attorney insisted that no evidence connected him to the crimes, and in February 2023, the DOJ closed its investigation into him without filing charges. Prosecutors reportedly struggled with witness credibility, including Greenberg’s testimony.

The problem continues to be that there's nothing new. As of yesterday,

An unauthorized person gained access to a file containing confidential testimony from women who have made allegations about former Rep. Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump’s pick to become the next attorney general, a lawyer said Tuesday.

Attorneys involved in a civil case brought by a Gaetz associate were notified this week that an unauthorized person accessed a file shared between lawyers that included unredacted depositions from a woman who has said Gaetz had sex with her when she was 17, and a second woman who says she saw the encounter, according to attorney Joel Leppard.

Gaetz has denied all the allegations, and the Justice Department ended its sex trafficking investigation without any criminal charges against him.

. . . The files the person was able to access were part of a defamation case filed by a Gaetz associate against Gaetz’s onetime political ally Joel Greenberg, who pleaded guilty in 2021 to sex trafficking of a minor, and admitted that he had paid at least one underage girl to have sex with him and other men.

As with Hegseth, these allegations are old, they've been made by people with serious credibility issues, and they've already been thoroughly investigated by law enforcement with no charges issued. There are no new assertions by a new Linda Tripp-type figure of stains on blue dresses that would contradict the existing narrative. And it sounds like Gaetz's attorneys, possibly augmented by the Trump transition legal team, are frightening media away from the story:

Sunny Hostin looks like she’s about to rip the heart out of her producer as she’s forced to issue a correction on Matt Gaetz.

pic.twitter.com/DdGCKaCHG0

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) November 20, 2024

Mark Halperin probably has this right.

“Really smart people who understand Capitol Hill and politics and confirmation history say Gaetz is going to be confirmed,” says @MarkHalperin. “Kennedy is going to be confirmed. Because for one thing, every Republican senator has constituents, donors, staff, family members in… pic.twitter.com/gMxXuTdyjm

— 2WAY (@2waytvapp) November 15, 2024

It's all kabuki so far.