Republican Representative Matt Gaetz just can't seem to follow rules very well, as another mini-scandal popped up this week involving his financial disclosure forms. Gaetz initially failed to report royalties and advances from a book he published last year, which is a clear violation of Congressional rules. Lauren Boebert also had a similar problem emerge this week, as it appears that Republicans just can't keep their finances straight. Farron Cousins explains what's happening.
Link - https://www.businessinsider.com/matt-gaetz-failed-to-disclose-book-firebrand-royalties-2021-8
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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.
Oh, we have yet another Republican who failed to disclose on their recent financial disclosure forms all the money they got last year. Those forms by the way, were due on August 10th. That's why we're seeing so many stories about them right now. People are finally starting to comb through them. And, uh, shortly after Matt Gaetz filed
His, there were some inquiries that asphalt,
Wait a minute, you wrote a book last year called a firebrand, same name as your podcast. And, uh, Y you didn't report anything from that. You didn't report royalties. You didn't report any advances from it, nothing. It's almost as if your book didn't exist, but we know it exists. So where's the money Matt people wanted to know. So Matt gates had to go back about a week later and file an amended report where he revealed, oh, by the way, I made 25 grand in royalties from this still seems to be missing some information because it's very, very likely you got an advanced on that. And as far as I've been able to tell from the press on this, Hughton report that either. So, you know, that is a clear violation of congressional rules,
But don't worry folks, as per usual, nothing happens. Just
Ask Lauren Boebert who also got in trouble this week, because oops, forgot to mention all the money her husband made from the energy sector. Darn it. And then of course, as you know, news broke last week, you had Rand Paul who oops, totally forgot to mention. My wife was doing some stock trades that, you know, basically investing in companies that were going to benefit from the pandemic. So woopsie, we're all a bunch of idiots who totally forgot all this money we pulled in. And as usual nothing's going to happen, these are clear violations from every single one of these individuals, clear violations of congressional rules, clear violations of the standards, put in place the laws, all of this. And they just, oops, silly me. Let me file an amended report. Cause I got caught. Like that's not, that's not how this is supposed to work.
And
As long as we keep not enforcing these rules, as long as we keep these individuals, you know, getting away
With it, they're going to continue to do it. And if they get caught, just
File an amended disclosure form saying, oops, my bad. And if they don't get caught,
They'll never report it. And they really
Have nothing to worry about because nobody ever gets injured trouble.
And that's the problem,
Not just with Congress, but look at corporate America. You know, you get these, these banks that scam their users or billions of dollars, nobody goes to jail. Nobody actually gets in trouble. They get fined by either the DOJ or the sec. They get to write off most of the fine and their taxes, write it off as just the cost of doing business. And they go on continue to scam people every 10 years and other big story breaks. Same thing with agro chemical companies, same thing with drug companies, none of them ever actually have to face justice. They just have to pay some money, which is always less than what they made off the scam to begin with. So, Hey, they're totally cool with it. They live to scam another day and really that's what we're seeing with members of Congress too.
If you're not even going
To enforce these rules, what's the point of even having
Them just so you can say, oh, you better file
That amended return, Matt gates. So we know all the money you're hiding from us. He doesn't care. You're not going to do anything. Same thing with Bovert same thing with Rand, Paul, same thing with anybody else, regardless of party who continues to break these rules, we should demand better from our elected officials. Folks that that's the point of this. I don't care if they're on the left or the right, you got to demand better and you have to demand the other members start doing their job and enforcing
These rules because if they don't, then everything's fake and nothing really matters.
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