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As Republicans debated removing Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from the speakership this week, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) took fire on the House floor for using his bid to oust McCarthy as an opportunity to raise money for himself.
Gaetz fired right back, shaming his colleagues who “grovel and bend knee to the lobbyists and special interests who own our leadership.”
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Republicans booed him.
“Oh, boo all you want!” Gaetz responded. “I’ll be happy to fund my political operation through the work of hard-working Americans, 10 and 20 and 30 dollars at a time.”
But as much as Gaetz postures that he’s raising small dollars from working Americans, he also has other donors in mind.
Last month, as Gaetz and his faction of right-wing anti-institutionalists were plunging the government headlong towards a shutdown, he leveraged the moment to hold an invitation-only joint fundraising event with a select group of big conservative donors, some of whom have engaged in the exact type of swampy, “pay-to-play” politics that Gaetz has made a career of bashing.
The event took place via video conference on Sept. 26, and was billed as an “exclusive Zoom briefing” and Q&A with Gaetz and fellow Freedom Caucus member Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT), according to an invitation obtained by The Daily Beast.
The next day, Gaetz and Rosendale created a joint fundraising committee, called “Rosendale Gaetz 2024,” according to a Federal Election Commission filing. (Neither campaign has submitted its own required filing confirming participation in the venture.)
The Daily Beast also obtained a full video recording of the fundraiser, an open-ended fiscal discussion hosted by far-right podcaster Steve Bannon and orchestrated by Jan. 6 fundraising bundler Caroline Wren. While Gaetz titillated the donor class by disclosing details from a private “off the record” conversation with former President Donald Trump, the story itself fell flat. Instead, it was Wren who provided what was perhaps the most striking moment of the event—one that sharply contrasted with Gaetz’s public-facing probity about how money should work in D.C.
At one point, Wren told the donors about a recent conversation where she instructed a wealthy GOP patron to use a screenshot of a maximum campaign contribution to pressure a reluctant Gaetz ally.
“Congressman Gaetz and I’ve been talking each night and one night he called and said, ‘I’m a little worried this person’s wavering,’ and I looked at their donor list, noticed a donor I knew had not given to her before,” Wren explained.
Wren said that when she called the donor to solicit a contribution to the unnamed congresswoman, the donor replied, “Yeah, I can’t stand her.”
She then asked, “Would you write a max donation to her, take a screenshot, and text it to her and say I’m only doing this because you’re bravely standing up against the CR,” referencing a bipartisan stopgap spending bill Gaetz was trying to block.
The congresswoman, Wren claimed, ended up siding with Gaetz.
“So please use your money and recognize it as a tool to go back to these people and say hey I did this for a reason and if you don’t continue holding the line, then I will cut off my funding,” Wren told the group of donors.
The Daily Beast reached out to Wren and a Gaetz spokesperson, but neither returned our requests for comment.
More broadly, however, the choice to enlist Wren shows that Gaetz is not at all simply focused on appealing to everyday grassroots donors.
A prodigious MAGA fundraiser—her megadonor solicitations ahead of the Jan. 6 rally landed her an interview with congressional investigators—Wren works as a hired gun for candidates and causes who want to tap her deep network of ultra-wealthy conservatives eager to trade their money for influence and status. Her involvement suggests that Gaetz might have a larger, more sustainable insurgent project in mind.
Indeed, the attendees at that Sept. 26 event included a number of major conservative financiers. Tellingly, only four of them appear to have ever donated to Gaetz or Rosendale previously, for a combined $28,650 over the last five years, according to FEC data—indicating that Wren may have recruited some new faces.
Over the course of the 52-minute event, Gaetz and Rosendale fielded questions from Ohio-based urologist Richard Nord, real estate investor and Broadway producer Barry Habib, Montana banker and hotelier David Lossef, former Merrill Lynch senior vice president of wealth management turned Trump campaign bundler Joyce Spragens, and Mar-a-Lago member and vegan activist Phil Nicozisi.
Two former Trump diplomats also chimed in, each of whom has applied their extraordinary corporate wealth to political interests in ways that would appear to fit Gaetz’s colleagues’ criticism—raising money in connection with official government actions.
One of them was former Ambassador to Denmark Carla Sands, an investment manager who poured more than $4 million into her own failed 2022 Senate bid, shotgunned hundreds of thousands of dollars to various Republican campaigns and PACs, and violated the Hatch Act by using her official government Twitter account to solicit Trump campaign donations.
The other ex-diplomat was Lee Rizzuto Jr., son of the founder of beauty product giant Conair, where Rizzuto also held an executive position. Two weeks after Trump nominated Rizzuto as ambassador to Barbados and a basket of other Caribbean island nations, Rizzuto pledged “upwards of probably $15,000 or $20,000 or $25,000” to underwrite a Mar-a-Lago gala.
But Rizzuto—who has donated major sums to GOP causes, including $449,000 to Trump Victory—failed to pass his Senate confirmation after reports that he had spread a number of conspiracy theories and tasteless smears about Trump’s 2016 opponents. Rizzuto was later named to an unconfirmed post as U.S. consul general in Barbados, sparking days of protests on the island.
During the Sept. 26 event, the donors took turns floating questions and armchair political and economic theories to the congressmen, who generally served up rehashed talking points—though Gaetz was especially complimentary of Sands’ observations about line-item spending edits, calling that issue “the big ball.”
He also regaled his prospective patrons with details from what he cast as a secret private conversation with Trump.
When a cameraman from Bannon’s podcast asked whether the ultimate aim was to dismantle the mainstream GOP—“get these guys out if they’re not voting with us”—Gaetz turned to Wren.
“This is not on the record, right Caroline? I can say whatever I want?” he asked.
When Wren confirmed, Gaetz said what was on his mind. “This is exactly what I talked to President Trump about. I said, ‘You know, we’re not gonna win all of these. We’re gonna take some votes on stuff and we’re gonna take some crushing defeats and some of our people are going to see some of these things that Rosendale and I are fighting for lose, and I don’t want to demoralize people.’”
Trump, Gaetz said, replied that, “You gotta primary the hell out of them”—a line taken verbatim from Trump’s address to insurrectionists on Jan. 6.
But aside from a few other notable moments—Rosendale admitting he had been “praying” against a big GOP win in 2022, as The Messenger reported, and Bannon at one point using a donor’s “War Room” T-shirt to promote sales of said T-shirt—the biggest takeaway from the event was the event itself.
The moves suggest that Gaetz has a plan—or a plan to make a plan—beyond the rabble-rousing and chaos that resulted in a historic but possibly short-sighted ouster of the Speaker of the House. Instead, Gaetz is showing that he appears to understand and may potentially come to embrace some of the same tactics he has torched in other leaders, such as McCarthy.
“It is a covenant based on money,” Gaetz told Time magazine a few months ahead of the 2022 midterms. “Kevin McCarthy is the most elite fundraiser in the history of the Republican caucus. He is the LeBron James of lobbyist and PAC fundraising. And that is his covenant with the conference.”
While it’s unclear whether Gaetz is crafting his own competing covenant, the high-dollar joint appeals—which Wren promised would continue—certainly point to the affirmative. And his choice of Rosendale for his first partner also suggests a larger financial and political strategy.
While Gaetz’s deep red panhandle district doesn’t demand a GOP incumbent with extraordinarily deep pockets, Rosendale could use the boost. The Freedom Caucus member from Montana is said to be eyeing a move to the Senate, to the dismay of mainstream Republicans hopeful to flip that seat.
To do so, Rosendale would have to win a rematch against Democratic incumbent Jon Tester, who as of June 30 sat on a $10 million mountain of cash. As Gaetz likely would have predicted, McCarthy has been starving his Republican enemies. (Rosendale currently has only about $570,000 on hand. His failed 2018 Senate campaign raised a total $6 million.)
But it wouldn’t be the first time Gaetz has seen money as a means to secure allegiances. When Gaetz found himself politically beleaguered amid a barrage of reports related to his allegedly central role in an underage sex trafficking investigation, he aligned himself with another radioactive representative—Marjorie Taylor Greene.
While Gaetz cast Greene as a fellow outsider, she was also at the time the most formidable Republican fundraiser in the House. The duo launched a cross-country grassroots fundraising tour seeking donations for their joint committee, called “Put America First,” which drew national attention before flaming out in spectacular fashion.
But while Gaetz and Greene seem like a natural fit, their relationship has reportedly soured. That is largely due to their opposite approaches to McCarthy, who has kept Greene as a close ally throughout the Freedom Caucus revolt.
This summer, the HFC expelled Greene from its ranks; she did not vote with Gaetz to oust McCarthy this week. Their joint fundraising committee hasn’t reported a donation in almost exactly one year, and it was illegal—an illegal and since refunded excessive contribution from an American who runs Saudi Arabia’s first film production studio. The last legal donation came half a year before that. The committee has zero dollars on hand.
It’s also possible that Gaetz isn’t looking out for his colleagues at all.
A rash of recent reports have amplified the possibility that Gaetz, who pledged to support a three-term limit (four terms ago), has his eyes on the Florida governor’s mansion in 2026. If so, he would need to amass an arsenal of cash to win statewide, and Florida law would allow him to transfer unlimited amounts of money from his federal campaign to a state-level PAC supporting a run for governor.
While Gaetz has shot down those reports as “overblown clickbait,” his father—former president of the Florida state Senate Don Gaetz—is at 75 years old about to make another run for his old seat.
But unlike his son, Don Gaetz—one of the most influential forces in the panhandle and a millionaire several times over—likely wouldn’t need much money. The only other candidate in the race dropped out after Don’s announcement.
