LEDE: Erin Scot was at a friend's wedding rehearsal dinner in 2009 when her old pal from high school, Matt Gaetz, pulled out his phone to show a group of friends a picture of a woman. Scot was surprised. ($) businessinsider.com/matt-gaetz-hig…
The photo was "definitely sexual," Scot told Insider in a recent interview. It was like a "night vision" picture, and Scott said it was clear to her that Gaetz was showing the photo to brag about his relationship with the woman.
"I feel like she was on a bed and maybe as she's looking at the camera like on all fours," Scot said. It felt inappropriate, she said, for Gaetz to be showing off the photo to a group of friends on the deck of a FLA rental house. The photo seemed to depict "a private moment."
Scot & Gaetz had competed on the high-school debate team together about a decade before. They grew close in '01, she recalled, the year after Gaetz graduated. They spent the summer doing "dumb kid things" like shooting paintballs from Gaetz's car & egging houses, she said.
Gaetz was generally "an asshole, but in a good way at the time," she told Insider in a recent interview. "We should have known better," but "it was fun."
When they saw each other years later at their high-school friend's March 2009 wedding, "he was kind of the same old Matt," Scot said. She has photos of them at that wedding. In one, Gaetz draped his arm around her as they grinned for the camera.
Scot said she wasn't surprised when she read reports earlier this month about Gaetz, now a Florida Republican congressman, showing nude photos of women to his fellow members of the US House.
"In general, it's like he always kind of wanted, regardless of whether it was a sexual conquest or any other sort of achievement, he was very big on letting you know that he did it," Scot said.
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