Are Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Jim Jordan and Other Leaders of the GOP’s Far Right House Freedom Caucus Plotting to Overthrow the “Washington Swamp” or Merely Replace its Current Masters?

The Caucus’s expressed aim of serving as a voice for the downtrodden masses would be more credible if its members weren’t so fond of lodging at luxury resorts while plotting their "populist" strategy.

Video footage taken last September at a Denver theater shows House Freedom Caucus member Lauren Boebert being led out of a musical after shocked audience members espied her giving a hand job to then-boyfriend, Quinn Gallagher, the man behind the congresswoman in the blue jacket, through his matching trousers.

From the moment she took office three years ago, Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert “has been a stalwart voice for conservative principles, , and our way of life,” reads a freshly-emitted fundraising appeal for the House Freedom Caucus, the small but powerful bloc of ultra-right Republican lawmakers that includes many of former President Donald Trump’s most demented supporters. “With your continued support, we WILL ensure that the House is filled with  AMERICA FIRST PATRIOTS committed to preserving our LIBERTY and FREEDOM.”

The pitch was part of a regular stream of pleas for cash emitted by the Caucus, or HFC, which was founded in 2015 and currently has 37 members. The group advertises itself as an exclusive domain reserved for only the most principled moral titans and steadfast champions of downtrodden “ordinary citizens,” whose interests have been sold out by the despicable Democrats and ignoble “establishment” Republicans that predominate in the country’s corrupt ruling “Uniparty,” which caters only to the nebulous coalition of sleazy “special interests,” “deep pockets,” and “well-connected insiders” who reign as lords over the “Washington Swamp,” to borrow liberally from the HFC’s standard rhetoric.

The Caucus’s broad depiction of the way Washington works often hits the mark, but its members have failed, and quite abysmally, to live up to the high moral standards they espouse. Boebert, a leader of the conservative crusade against drag queens, who she accuses of “sexualizing kids,” was escorted out of a musical at a Denver theater last September, a month before she filed for divorce from her husband of 18 years, after she was observed jerking off her boyfriend – who owns a bar that hosts drag shows, naturally – as the couple sat in a crowd that included families with children. “Do you know who I am?” Boebert, who was also seen vaping, singing and taking pictures with Gallagher during the performance, screamed at theater employees as they led her to the exit. 

Congressman Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, a colleague of Boebert’s in the Caucus whose official House website called him "a strong advocate for life and traditional family values," announced he wouldn’t run for reelection in January several months after his wife filed for divorce on the grounds he’d committed adultery. Melody Duncan charged that her husband’s most recent extramarital partner was a woman named Liz Williams, a former Deputy House Liaison with the Heritage Foundation and lobbyist whose clients included the National Rifle Association. During last August’s "Faith and Freedom BBQ," an annual event Duncan hosts in his home district that attracts right-wing leaders and activists from around the country, the congressman described Melody as his “supportive and loving wife,” yet the very next day fled for Washington, where he went "directly to the home of his paramour," according to the divorce filing. 

Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, one of the HFC’s most prominent members, was the subject of a federal grand jury probe launched in 2021 for allegedly having sex with a 17-year-old girl and trafficking her across state lines to engage in prostitution. Gaetz was never indicted in the case, though his close friend Joel Greenberg, a former Florida tax collector who was sentenced to 11 years in prison after pleading guilty to the identical charges as well as identity theft, stalking, and conspiracy to bribe a public official, said he witnessed the congressman having sex with the teen. Roxanne Luckey, the younger sister of Ginger Luckey, who the congressman married in August of 2021, told the Daily Beast she was “unfortunately not surprised” Gaetz was under investigation for sex crimes, saying he was “weird and creepy” and had pressured an older man to court her when she was 19.

Screenshot from ad targeting Congressman Matt Gaetz, on left, for his “close friendship” with convicted sex trafficker Joel Greenberg. The ad, which was paid for by a Super PAC called Florida Patriots, hit the airwaves this week.

The HFC’s record on serving as a voice for America’s otherwise voiceless Jack and Jill Lunchbuckets doesn’t hold up any better than its track record as moral guardians, which I expect will come as a surprise to virtually no one. And how could it be otherwise? The lion’s share of donations to the HFC’s fundraising arms, including the House Freedom Fund, which sent out the recent solicitation lauding Boebert for defending “American values,” is provided by a subset of right-wing billionaires within the broader national oligarchy that finances all of the narrowly divergent wings within the Democratic and Republican parties. 

In April of 2021, three wealthy Floridians, Lewis Topper, the nation’s No. 1 Wendy’s franchisee, William Cooley, a West Palm Beach real estate developer, and Peter Lamelas, an advisor to the private equity firm Legacy Ventures, hosted a House Freedom Fund gala at Mar-a-Lago that was headlined by Trump and featured about a dozen HFC members, including Jordan, Boebert, and Marjorie Taylor-Greene, who was expelled from the Caucus last year after she called Boebert a “little bitch” during an argument on the House floor. Congressman Gaetz had also been expected to attend the fundraiser, where the price of admission ranged from $2,500 a head at the low end up and ran to $10,000 per couples who wanted to be listed as honorary “VIP Hosts,” but didn’t turn up, reportedly because he decided it would be best to lie low due to the cloud of scandal that then surrounded him owing to his status as a suspected pedophile and target of a federal investigation, which was first reported just a month prior to the affair.

This House Freedom Caucus fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago was marred by the absence of Congressman Matt Gaetz, who was reportedly unable to attend simply because he was suspected of having sex with a teenage girl who he also trafficked across state lines to engage in prostitution. It just goes to show that life truly is unfair.

Topper, Cooley, Lamelas, and kindred retrograde oligarchs that support the HFC won’t have the precise same package of political goals as rich donors who back “The Squad,” but all billionaires share many more concerns with each other than they do with the peasants in the lower orders. The chief one, even for the most extreme social conservatives that provide Caucus members with the essential cash they need to finance their electoral campaigns, is invariably seeking to ensure that US government policy on tax cuts, corporate subsidies, federal contracts, and related matters makes them richer even if it makes most everyone else poorer, as laws and legislation billionaires favor inevitably do. 

While the lawmakers mustered in the HFC regularly bleat out impassioned cries about the need for populist measures to make life better for their beloved constituents at the bottom end of the economic pyramid, they typically vote for the same basic pro-business, feed the rich measures their public enemies in the Republican “establishment” support, and which aren’t greatly dissimilar to those promoted by the Democratic Party’s dominant corporate-friendly wing. The right-wing billionaires behind the Caucus aren’t bothered by populist rhetoric as they fully understand elected officials in the HFC must obligatorily mouth lines that appeal to the plebes when they’re on the campaign trail. From their perspective as political megadonors, actions speak louder than words, and the fact that the core group of oligarchs that backed the Caucus from its earliest days continue to funnel vast piles of cash to its members demonstrates they are pleased by their return on investment.

What’s equally revealing and even more grimly amusing about the utter insincerity of the HFC’s periodic attacks on rich political insiders and special interest groups, is that the Caucus often  draws up its political plans that are purportedly intended to give preference to ordinary citizens’ needs at “retreats” that elite megadonors and sympathetic political insiders are invited to attend and offer their personal policy priorities and recommendations. Many of the gatherings, which are typically scheduled during the winter season and held at luxury resorts, hotels, and private properties located in warm-weather destinations, are organized and paid for by the Washington-based Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), which describes itself as “the hub of the conservative movement,” but is more accurately seen as a lavish welfare program for former Trump administration officials, denizens of the MAGA ecosphere, and other assorted creatures of the Washington Swamp. 

CPI has a particularly close relationship to the HFC, helped fund and launch an affiliated network of state-level Freedom Caucuses, and a number of Caucus entities operate from its offices on Capitol Hill, including the House Freedom Fund and House Freedom Action, the group’s second major fundraising vehicle. CPI and HFC also have numerous overlapping staffers, such as  former North Carolina Congressman Mark Meadows, who was a founder of the Caucus and succeeded Jordan to become its second chairman, before resigning his House seat in 2020 to take the position of Trump’s White House chief of staff, and now makes close to $1 million annually in his role as Senior Partner at the Institute.

The Institute and Caucus also share many of the same key funders. The most significant is Houston software developer Mike Rydin, who has contributed to numerous HFC members and was revealed to have provided $15.5 million to CPI in 2022 alone, 62 percent of its total funding that year, by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which found the information in a partially unredacted copy of one of the Institute’s nonprofit tax disclosures it obtained.

I found details about the CPI-financed retreats in disclosure reports on privately-paid congressional travel, such as a trip to Miami during the three days prior to Valentine’s Day in 2021 that was briefly mentioned in a story that year by Business Insider. A great deal more about the trip is available in the disclosure reports, which show the Institute shelled out just north of $41,000 to pay for at least two dozen House Republicans, almost all HFC members, three Caucus staffers and a number of other associates of the group to travel to Miami and put them up at the Coral Gables Biltmore Hotel, which features tropical landscaping, a golf course, spa, 23,000-square-foot swimming pool, and other amenities that make it “one of the most luxurious destinations in the world,” according to a Florida tourism website. 

The event’s purpose was to “establish conservative policy priorities for and develop [a] national coalition strategy furthering those priorities,” which obviously is much better done in tropical Miami in February, when the average temperature ranges between 64 degrees and 75 degrees, as opposed to Washington, where congress is located, but the comparative numbers for highs and lows that month are a decidedly less pleasant 27 degrees and 47 degrees. 

Among the HFC members who were scheduled to attend the event according to disclosure reports were Andy Biggs of Arizona, who then chaired the Caucus; Paul Gosar, a member of the Arizona Dental Association's Hall of Fame and easily one of the most unhinged members of congress, who was  censured by the House nine months later for posting a photoshopped video on social media that showed him murdering Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and a trio of future divorcees, Boebert, Duncan, and subsequently expelled HFC member Taylor-Greene, who like a number of the junketeers brought along her spouse, Perry Greene, who ended their marriage in 2022, saying it was “irretrievably broken” for a list of reasons, not all that were enumerated, but undoubtedly included his wife’s affairs with a tantric sex guru and fitness trainer, both whom she met at her local gym in Georgia. 

Attendees at the retreat heard from an all-star cast of VIP speakers, including former Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows of CPI, Newt Gingrich, and Steve Bannon. However, the schedule provided multiple opportunities for wining and dining, leisure and diversion, and the junketeers had the option of staying in Miami for Valentine’s Day the day after the retreat ended, though they had to pick up any additional costs that resulted from extending their sojourn in the Sunshine State.  

In February of 2022, CPI flew dozens of HFC members, at least 11 of their spouses, and many other Hill staffers and political consultants to its “Winter Leadership Conference” in Amelia Island, Florida, where they discussed “important issues and how we can work together to improve policies for the good of the US,” between February 10 and February 14, so they didn’t have to pay to stay for Valentine’s Day as had tragically occurred a year earlier in Miami, according to a disclosure filing. In addition to Biggs, Gosar, and the trio of divorcees who were at the Miami event the previous year, Caucus members who were in attendance according to disclosure filings included Gaetz, who was still being investigated for allegedly having sex with a teenager and trafficking her across state lines, but circumstances had sufficiently settled down that he was listed as a featured speaker as well, and North Carolina Congressman Congressman Madison Cawthorn, a self-professed Christian conservative whose political career ended three months after the conference when he was defeated in the GOP primary during his bid for reelection after several women accused him of sexual assault and leaked videos emerged that showed him laying in bed naked with a man he was thrusting his genitals at and another that found him him in a car with a male aide who had his hand on the the congressman’s crotch and had reportedly showered him with thousands of dollars in gifts and loans.

Screenshot of invitation to the joint Conservative Partnership Institute-House Freedom Caucus retreat held in 2022 at the Ritz-Carlson oceanfront resort in Amelia Island, Florida.

Trump’s Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and Blaze Media CEO Glenn Beck were among the other right-wing luminaries listed as scheduled speakers at the event, which was held at the comfortable confines afforded by the Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island. The property is “nestled along 13 miles of immaculate shorelines,” offers guests exquisite “panoramas that unfold...from the secluded haven” of their hotel room balconies, a spa and wellness center where they can “surrender to a realm of serenity…[and be] transported to a state of bliss,” and “the verdant fairways of our exclusive private golf course, an oasis adorned with time honored moss-draped oaks,” according to the resort’s website. 

When they weren’t plotting to overthrow the corrupt US political establishment and the sinister deep pocket donors who control it, though needless to say not the ones who were paying the freight for their excursion to Amelia Island, the junketeers had plenty of time to enjoy the surroundings. On Thursday, February 10, the day of their arrival, there was nothing on the schedule other than an evening reception and dinner. Friday was busier, but in compensation the only event Saturday morning was a breakfast buffet to discuss “review conservative policy solutions” and the next one wasn’t until noon, when attendees gathered for a lunch buffet to discuss their priorities for 2022. The pace quickened slightly on Sunday, but relief came again the following day, when the only thing on the schedule was a “Farewell Valentine’s Day Breakfast,” after which junketeers were free to stroll along the ocean, hit the links, or get a badly needed massage at the resort spa.

The view of the ocean from the pool at the Ritz-Carlton Amelia Island property where the House Freedom Caucus drafted plans to crack down on the wealthy oligarchs who reign over the “Washington Swamp.” Photo from the resort’s website.

This February, CPI and the HFC teamed up for a return trip to the Coral Gables Biltmore Hotel in Miami, where numerous Caucus muckety-mucks were on hand, including a heavy contingent of participants at the earlier affairs in Florida. The HFC’s then-Executive Director Justin Ouimette also attended the retreat, where he spoke on a panel with CPI President Edward Corrigan that provided tips on “Leveraging the Rules and Procedures of the House,” which presumably included pointers on how members of Congress, their staffers and hangers-on are able to travel to sunny spots like Coral Gables in the dead of winter without spending a dime of their own money. 

Perhaps due to complaints from junketeers, the schedule at the affair was far less grueling than at earlier retreats. The event opened on February 8, which was a day off other than a discussion over dinner about the junketeer’s “retreat goals.” On Friday, there were a few scattered panels between breakfast and lunch buffets, an evening reception, dinner and “After Dinner Reception” to “mix and mingle with new and old friends” on the Biltmore’s outdoor terrace.

So help attendees recover from their unceasing exertions on Days 1 and 2,  Saturday opened with a “Breakfast at Leisure” served between 9 and 10:30, which was followed by a 30-minute rest period, an “Al Fresco Mid-Morning Tea” that allowed the dedicated but nearly exhausted conservative activists to “enjoy fresh air, treats, and a variety of teas,” and a buffet lunch. There were a few post-lunch panels that required the junketeers to put their noses to the grindstone, but after that came a two hour break at 4:15 that ended with yet another reception, a dinner, and, for a change of pace, an Al Fresco dessert reception. 

God set Sunday aside as a day of rest, and retreat planners did too. The only events that day were a discussion of “Faith, Conservatism, and Policy” at a breakfast buffet and two panels, the last which ended at 11:35 when the retreat formally came to a close and attendees could enjoy a bit of rest and relaxation before heading to the airport or, for those who planned well, enjoy a day or two soaking up the sun before returning to dreary, cold Washington, DC.

CPI has sponsored many other junkets for Caucus members, with additional destinations including Orlando, Florida, and the Eastern Shore in Maryland. There they stay at the Institute’s hunting lodge, which is named “Camp Rydin” in honor of Mike Rydin, the Houston businessman and political megadonor who provides ample financial support to both organizations, including the money that paid for the hunting lodge.

To judge from their appreciation of the good life and the high-end recreational activities that only the wealthiest people in the country – such as their billionaire campaign donors, who they quite evidently admire and aspire to join in the ranks of the leisure class – it seems like the HFC’s members would prefer to replace the lords of the Washington Swamp rather than curtail their political influence. Either way, if I were a Swamp Lord, I wouldn’t spend much time worrying about the Caucus. 

Even if any of those who lead the HFC have any desire to make good on their populist promises, it’s unlikely they’d be able to accomplish anything significant given the weight of all the buffet meals and wining and dining they endure at the luxury resorts where they diligently devise strategies to curb the influence of the rich donors who pay for their lodging and expenses, in order to lift up the downtrodden masses who sadly don’t have the essential financial resources or political clout needed to get them through the front door.