ORLANDO, Fla. — Joel Greenberg, the former Seminole County tax collector at the center of a sprawling criminal investigation into everything from stalking to wire fraud to sex trafficking, used taxpayer money to pay $7,500 in legal fees to Florida state Rep. Anthony Sabatini, records show.
While still serving as tax collector, Greenberg gave Sabatini a $3,000-a-month “legal counsel” contract in September 2019 — five days after Sabatini was admitted to the Florida Bar. Greenberg canceled the contract a little more than two months later, citing “extreme budget constraints.”
It’s not clear what Sabatini, a Republican from Howey-in-the-Hills who casts himself as a crusader against “wasteful” government spending, did for the $7,500.
Emails provided Monday by the tax collector’s office show that Sabatini was asked to help with litigation involving a software contractor and with a trio of disputes involving former employees. But the emails didn’t show any work Sabatini produced, and records compiled as part of a Seminole County audit into Greenberg’s office spending show officials were “not sure” what exactly Sabatini worked on.
Sabatini, who reported a net worth of negative $110,000 on his most recent financial disclosure, said via text message that he worked on “wrongful termination cases against him (Greenberg) from the employees that he terminated when he took office.”
Greenberg resigned as Seminole tax collector last summer after he was first arrested in a federal investigation that has since sprawled in multiple directions — and also ensnared U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, the prominent Florida Republican who is reportedly under investigation along with Greenberg over allegations that they had sex with a 17-year-old girl and paid for sex and trafficked in other women.
Gaetz has broadly denied the allegations and said specifically that he has never paid for sex nor had sex with a 17-year-old as an adult. Greenberg’s attorneys and prosecutors announced Thursday that they expect Greenberg to strike a plea deal sometime in the next month.
Sabatini is one of the few elected Republicans who has publicly defended Gaetz. Sabatini has tried to emulate Gaetz’s bombastic and confrontational style in politics and has already announced plans to run for Congress himself in 2022.
Incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster, who currently represents Lake County, criticized Sabatini for potentially challenging him. But Gaetz has expressed tacit support for Sabatini’s decision to run because Florida lawmakers may draw a new congressional seat in the area when they redo legislative boundaries next year.
Asked if he’d spoken to investigators as part of the Greenberg investigation or if he was aware whether his name has come up in any of the probes, Sabatini responded by text: “Lol no.”
The payments to Sabatini were just one small part of what auditors deemed as excessive spending on legal fees.
The audit found that Greenberg spent approximately $1.4 million on lawyers and lobbyists over a period of three years and eight months — including on a lobbying contract to Ballard Partners, the prominent Tallahassee firm run by one of Florida’s top Republican fundraisers.
A typical Florida tax collector, they said, would spend between $10,000 and $20,000 a year on legal fees.
