It looks like Florida congressman Matt Gaetz will avoid prosecution for child trafficking and other lesser charges, primarily because the U.S. Attorneys looking into the case realize that their primary witnesses have some big credibility issues. That’s how it goes sometimes. I’d call it a lucky break, but Gaetz will no doubt call it vindication.

The biggest break Gaetz was his choice of co-conspirator.

…Joel Greenberg, a former tax collector for Seminole County, Fla…pleaded guilty last year to sex trafficking of a minor and a host of other crimes as part of a cooperation deal with authorities…

Greenberg was first charged in 2020 with fabricating allegations and evidence to smear a political opponent, but prosecutors continued to investigate and added additional charges to his case. He ultimately agreed to plead guilty to six criminal charges, including sex trafficking of a child, aggravated identity theft and wire fraud…

…It was in exploring Greenberg’s conduct that investigators came upon evidence potentially implicating Gaetz in sex trafficking, people familiar with the matter have said. Prosecutors had been exploring whether Greenberg paid women to have sex with Gaetz and whether the two shared sexual partners, including the 17-year-old girl at issue in Greenberg’s case, these people said…

…Greenberg’s credibility would be a significant challenge for any prosecution of Gaetz, in part because one of the crimes Greenberg admitted to was fabricating allegations against a schoolteacher who was running against him to be a tax collector. Greenberg had sent letters to the school falsely claiming the teacher had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student — a similar allegation to the Gaetz case.

Before you find someone guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, you need a witness who hasn’t in the past made false accusations of a similar nature. Greenberg’s testimony was never going to be good for anything more than substantiation of other more credible evidence.

The other primary witness against Gaetz was supposed to be an ex-girlfriend, but prosecutors found felt her “testimony has issues that…would not pass muster with a jury.”

I’m not privy to the other evidence collected in the case, but I trust the prosecutors to know when they have a rock solid case and when they don’t. What we know for certain is that Gaetz was so worried about going to prison that he was aggressively seeking a preemptive pardon from Donald Trump in the last weeks of his presidency.

To be fair, I wouldn’t put someone behind bars on a born liar like Gaetz’s say-so, so it’s not a surprise that it’s hard to put him in jail on the say-so of his shady friends.

I predict it will not be long before he runs afoul of the law again, and the next time he may face justice.