Government

Can Someone Remind Matt Gaetz That He Has The Right To Remain Silent?

For the love of God, man, SHUT UP!

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Matt Gaetz (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

“Just tweet through it! And when you’re finished tweeting, go on national television and tell Tucker Carlson everything.”

Said no defense lawyer ever.

Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, 38, has been on quite a tear since the New York Times reported yesterday that he is “being investigated by the Justice Department over whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him.”

In brief, it appears that sometime last year — i.e., when Bill Barr was still king of the DOJ — Gaetz was drawn into an investigation of his friend Joel Greenberg, a former Seminole County Tax Collector. In an epic scandal of truly Floridian proportions, Greenberg has been charged with stalking a political opponent, producing fake IDs, and paying a minor for sex. An independent audit found that he misused $1.5 million of taxpayer money, including $90,000 to set up a server for his cryptocurrency venture. Who among us, right? 

Here are Gaetz, Greenberg, and Roger Stone in happier days.

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Rep. Gaetz, a William & Mary Law grad who is apparently unaware of his right to remain silent, has been screaming bloody murder since the story dropped last night.

“I only know that it has to do with women,” Gaetz told the Times. “I have a suspicion that someone is trying to recategorize my generosity to ex-girlfriends as something more untoward.”

Then he hopped on the phone with Axios, for more cringey awfulness about what a generous lover he is.

“I have definitely, in my single days, provided for women I’ve dated,” he gushed. “You know, I’ve paid for flights, for hotel rooms. I’ve been, you know, generous as a partner. I think someone is trying to make that look criminal when it is not.”

But that was just the warm up.

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As best we can piece together this word vomit salad, it appears that Gaetz is accusing David McGee, who left the Justice Department in 2005 and is currently a litigator at the Florida firm Beggs & Lane, of colluding with current DOJ employees to cook up the investigation as part of an extortion plot. Gaetz says that McGee demanded $25 million to make the federal investigation go away and/or to secure a pardon from President Biden. So his father Don Gaetz contacted the FBI, who wired him up to record McGee in the act.

“The FBI and the Department of Justice must release the tapes that are in their possession, that were done at their direction,” Gaetz told Fox’s Tucker Carlson last night. (Because of course he did!) “Those tapes will show that I am innocent and that the whole concept of sex charges against me was really just a way to try to bleed my family out of money and probably smear my name because I am a well-known, outspoken conservative, and I guess that’s out of style in a lot of parts of the country right now.”

In his telling, McGee’s conspirators at the Justice Department leaked the story to the Times last night in a dastardly plot to stop Papa Gaetz from getting more smoking gun wiretap evidence.

“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 for trying to extort me and my family,” he said.

McGee appeared gobsmacked to be drawn into the story, describing the allegations as “a blatant attempt to distract from the fact that Matt Gaetz is apparently about to be indicted for sex trafficking underage girls” in a late-night interview with the Daily Beast.

But Gaetz could not stop talking.

“I’m not the only person on screen right now who has been falsely accused of a terrible sex act,” he told a visibly horrified Carlson, before going on to remind the host of the fun double date they shared, just Tucker, the Missus, Rep. Gaetz, and his extremely-young-but-not-jailbait girlfriend.

I can say that actually you and I went to dinner, about two years ago, your wife was there, I brought a friend of mine, you’ll remember her, 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!

Looking like he smelled a fart, Carlson responded, “I don’t remember the woman you’re speaking of or the context at all, honestly.”

Which may or may not earn him a visit from a friendly FBI agent. Who knows! The night is young, and so are Matt Gaetz’s dates.

TL, DR?

Matt Gaetz should shut the hell up already. But he won’t.

Matt Gaetz Is Said to Face Justice Dept. Inquiry Over Sex With an Underage Girl [NYT]
Ex-GOP official Joel Greenberg flaunted ties to Matt Gaetz. Then he was charged with child sex trafficking. [WaPo]
Matt Gaetz Interview Transcript on Sex Trafficking Allegations [Rev]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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