So many Trumpist congress critters are nothing more than blowhards doing nothing more than blowing hard. They all need to quit congress and stick to Trumpy TV. But I'm wondering, could this news that dropped yesterday have anything to do with Matt's decision making...U.S. Congressman Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., has spent so much time making cable TV appearances that he had a TV studio installed at his father’s house in the Florida Panhandle.
TV appearances are so appealing to Gaetz that he’s reportedly considering quitting Congress for a gig with Newsmax, the Boca Raton-based media outlet that’s trying to build viewership among former President Donald Trump’s fan base.
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Oh, way to get your father killed! (If there really is an organized criminal element involved.)Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) defended himself after news broke on Tuesday of a Department of Justice (DOJ) probe reportedly investigating whether the lawmaker had sexual relations with a teenager, claiming he was the victim of “an organized criminal extortion” involving a former DOJ official.
“Over the past several weeks my family and I have been victims of an organized criminal extortion involving a former DOJ official seeking $25 million while threatening to smear my name,” Gaetz said in a series of tweets on Tuesday.
“We have been cooperating with federal authorities in this matter and my father has even been wearing a wire at the FBI’s direction to catch these criminals. The planted leak to the FBI tonight was intended to thwart that investigation,” he wrote.
The Hill
Whatever, Matt.The Florida congressman also called on the DOJ to “immediately release the tapes, made at their direction, which implicate their former colleague in crimes against me based on false allegations.”
Indeed he should not. And, by the way, 17 is about the proper stage of maturity for Matt Gaetz. Although 13 would be closer.Even Tucker Carlson is backing away from Gaetz. (Which makes me wonder, not for the first time, what sex scandal of his own Tucker Carlson is eager to keep under wraps.)According to The New York Times, the DOJ probe is investigating whether the Florida lawmaker had sexual relations with a teenager. The probe, which reportedly launched during the last months of the Trump administration, is also looking at whether the congressman violated federal sex trafficking laws by allegedly paying for the girl to travel with him.
The girl is reportedly 17 years old.
[...]
The probe is reportedly part of a larger investigation into Joel Greenberg, a former local Florida tax collector and an ally of Gaetz who is facing charges of sex trafficking a child and payment to at least one female minor for sex. Greenberg has reportedly pleaded not guilty to the charges.
[...]
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) has called for Gaetz to be suspended from the House Judiciary Committee, on which they both serve, pending the outcome of the probe.
“He should not be sitting on a Congressional Committee with oversight over the DOJ while the Department is investigating him,” Lieu tweeted on Tuesday shortly after the Times published its report.
Matt Gaetz would be a defense attorney's nightmare.“If you just saw our Matt Gaetz interview, that was one of the weirdest interviews I have ever conducted,” Carlson said to his viewers after the segment on his Fox News show “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
[...]
[Gaetz] denied the allegations but confirmed that he was under investigation.
Gaetz said that the accusations were part of an “extortion effort against my family for $25 million ... in exchange for making this case go away.”
[...]
“They even claimed to have specific connections inside the Biden White House,” he added. “Now, I don’t know if that’s true. They were promising that Joe Biden would pardon me. Obviously, I don’t need a pardon. I’m not seeking a pardon. I have not done anything improper or wrong.”
And what an obvious bogus claim about the Biden White House. Pathetic.
"Cancel culture"?“You would think that he would be wanting to work with the FBI and you would think he would want to keep this quiet,” Katie Benner, who covers the Justice Department for the Times, said in an appearance on “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
“So you have to put this all into context and say that in doing this and basically blowing up an FBI investigation into people trying to extort his family, you know, he has both complicated that investigation and also cast aspersions on something that was serious enough that Attorney General [William] Barr approved it," Benner added.
[...]
“But what I am troubled by is the real motivation for all of this,” Gaetz said to Carlson. “You know, just tonight, Ted Lieu, a Democrat, was calling on me to be removed from the House Judiciary Committee. I believe we are in an era of our politics now, Tucker, where people are smeared to try to take them out of the conversation.”
Which liar do you believe? It's so hard to choose.Gaetz told Carlson there have been similar attempts to use law enforcement to intimidate him, something he said the host should be aware of since it came up while Carlson and Gaetz were at dinner together once.
“I can say that actually, you and I went to dinner about two years ago, your wife was there, and I brought a friend of mine, you will remember her,” Gaetz said. “And she was actually threatened by the FBI, told that if she wouldn’t cop to the fact that somehow I was involved in some pay-for-play scheme that she could face trouble. And so I do believe that there are people at the Department of Justice who are trying to smear me.”
Carlson said he had no recollection of that event.
Or not.“That story just appeared in the news a couple of hours ago, and on the certainty that there is always more than you read in the newspaper, we immediately called Matt Gaetz and asked him to come on and tell us more, which, as you saw, he did,” Carlson said about the interview. “I don’t think that clarified much, but it certainly showed this is a deeply interesting story, and we will be following it. Don’t quite understand it, but we will bring you more when we find out
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
In the interview, Gaetz detailed how his father was texted by someone asking for “$25 million in exchange for making horrible sex trafficking allegations against me go away” and how the FBI asked his dad to wear a wire.
Then, as Carlson looked intently into the camera, Gaetz dramatically called on the FBI to share the resulting tapes.
“Tonight, I am demanding that the Department of Justice and the FBI release the audio recordings that were made under their supervision and at their direction, which will prove my innocence,” Gaetz said.
Before Carlson could ask a follow-up question about the tapes, Gaetz said the publication of a New York Times story revealing the investigation was purposely timed to ruin an imminent sting operation and provide cover for the extortionist.
“And this former Department of Justice official tomorrow was supposed to be contacted by my father so that specific instructions could be given regarding the wiring of $4.5 million as a down payment on this bribe,” Gaetz said. “I don't think it's a coincidence that tonight, somehow The New York Times is leaking this information smearing me and ruining the investigation that would likely result in one of the former colleagues of the current DOJ being brought to justice.”
Later in the interview, Gaetz referenced a slightly different time for the supposed sting, mentioning “money that was supposed to be paid today.”
[...]
Carlson remained pokerfaced as the Florida congressman seemed to try to appeal to him by raising what Gaetz characterized as similar accusations faced by the Fox News anchor.
“I'm not the only person on screen right now who has been falsely accused of a terrible sex act,” Gaetz said. “You were accused of something that you did not do. And so you know what this feels like, you know, the pain it can bring to your family.”
Gaetz did not specify what allegations he meant. But while assuming an off-hand manner, Carlson replied that the congressman must have meant “a mentally ill viewer who accused me of a sex crime 20 years ago. And it, of course it was not true. I'd never met the person. But I do agree with you that being accused falsely is one of the worst things that can happen. And you do see it a lot.”[*]
The incident Carlson mentioned likely occurred after he joined Fox as a contributor in 2009. It was something he detailed in a 2017 episode of his Fox News show, when he discussed being falsely accused of felony rape by a certified public accountant in Indiana who he “had literally never even seen.”
The Hill
Hey, Trumpers, I thought it was supposed to be Democrats who were child sex traffickers. WTF?Both Don [Matt's father] and Matt Gaetz have accused former federal prosecutor David McGee of being behind the alleged plot. McGee, who is now a lawyer at Florida-based firm Beggs & Lane, told the Daily Beast in an interview on Tuesday that the claims were “completely, totally false.”
“The FBI asked me to try and get that information for Matt and an indication we would transfer money to Mr. David McGee,” Don Gaetz told Politico. He didn't say what information he was intended to get for his son.
Don Gaetz also told Politico that he wore a wire during a meeting earlier this month with McGee, and was going to meet with Stephen Alford, who he also claimed was part of the effort.
The elder Gaetz said that he was trying to get Alford to discuss payments he was making to McGee, but the meeting fell apart when the Justice Department's investigation into Matt Gaetz was reported in the press.
The Hill
*
UPDATE:
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UPDATE:
UPDATE: How it began...
You can't say the man wasn't bold.The Justice Department is investigating allegations that Gaetz had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and paid for her to travel across state lines, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. Gaetz confirmed the inquiry in an interview with Axios, but has said the allegations are an attempt to extort his family. The FBI is separately investigating the extortion claim, The Post reported.
[...]
[L]ast June [...] federal investigators arrested [ex-GOP official Joel Greenberg] on stalking and child sex trafficking charges, prompting his resignation.
[...]
It’s unclear exactly how Greenberg’s criminal case is connected to the Gaetz investigation; Greenberg’s lawyers did not immediately respond to messages from The Post. But it is clear that the two men, who posed for a photo together outside the White House in 2019, had ties in Florida, where they both first gained power in the GOP around 2016.
[...]
Greenberg made headlines [shortly after being elected Seminole County tax collector] as he pushed for his deputy tax collectors to be allowed to carry guns to work — a move opposed by then-attorney general Pam Bondi (R). He began wearing his tax collector badge around his neck like a police official, and in December 2017, flashed the badge to pull over a woman and accuse her of speeding, WESH reported. A month later, he used his title while trying to sway an actual police officer who stopped him for driving 39 mph in a 25 mph zone.
[...]
Greenberg also navigated a political quagmire after the Orlando Sentinel reported he had inappropriately funneled $3.5 million of taxpayer dollars to his friends, including three men who were in his wedding party.
An independent audit conducted for the county also found he had used public funds to buy body armor, weapons, ammunition and a drone. He also purchased a $90,000 server room to benefit a cryptocurrency company he created. Those servers overloaded a circuit breaker inside a county building, sparking a fire that caused $6,700 in damages that weren’t covered by insurance, the audit said.
WaPo
He was a busy man.On June 23, federal officers raided his home in Heathrow, Fla., and arrested the tax collector on charges that he had stalked a political adversary. He resigned the next day.
The federal investigators said Greenberg had posed as a “very concerned student” in anonymous letters sent to the school where the political rival worked as a teacher. The letters accused the teacher of having inappropriate sexual contact with a student. The tax collector also created impostor Facebook and Twitter accounts made to look like they belonged to the teacher and wrote posts that portrayed his adversary as a “segregationist and in favor of white supremacy,” the indictment said. (Greenberg himself had a documented history of posting anti-Muslim rhetoric, as Orlando Weekly reported in 2018.)
In August, federal investigators added charges that Greenberg had used his government position to commit identity theft and accused him of sex trafficking a child.
And Roger Stone. That name turns up in all the depraved scandals.Greenberg was released on bond to await his trial, but was taken into custody again in early March after he violated the conditions of his pretrial release by leaving his home after curfew to search for his wife, who told police she had left to “take a break from the stressful situation with Joel.”
[...]
Until last year, Joel Greenberg was an ascendant political player in Seminole County, Fla. [...] and flaunted his connections to prominent Republicans with close ties to then-President Donald Trump, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Roger Stone.
UPDATE:
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