Inside Matt Gaetz’s Family Fortune

Forbes

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/  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:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com 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  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

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.

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