It seems controversial Republican Florida House Rep. Matt Gaetz got so worked up as the news of his alleged sex scandal was breaking, that he verbally lashed out at and attacked several FBI agents who were actively working to help his father during an alleged blackmailing incident — and then quickly ran to Fox News to spew lies about all of it.
According to a recent report from the Daily Beast, FBI investigators were actively assisting the GOP House Rep.’s father, Don Gaetz, who was allegedly being blackmailed at the time, only to be verbally attacked by Don’s son as the news that he was also under investigation for alleged sex crimes was actively breaking.
The Beast’s Roger Sollenberger covers a report from one FBI agent that details Matt’s reaction as news publicly broke alleging that he had paid money to a close associate who then allegedly used that money to pay very young women for sexual favors — raising high suspicions and concerns about sex trafficking.
The FBI report says investigators were in the middle of a meeting with Matt Gaetz’s father, Don, a former president of the Florida Senate, over claims that Matt’s father was being blackmailed by people claiming to have serious dirt on his lawmaker son. FBI officials alleged in the report that Matt Gaetz burst into the meeting.
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Sollenberger reports that the elder Gaetz was trying to hand over a recording device to the FBI agents while asking them to collect more evidence in the case when the younger Gaetz came barging in and verbally lashed out at the investigators.
“That evening—around 7:45 p.m., according to the FBI report—two special agents rang the doorbell at the Gaetz family residence. They had come for their recording device. The sting was off, but the records don’t explain why, and they don’t mention the Times story,” Sollenberger writes for the Beast before quoting the FBI report that reads, “M. GAETZ yelled, ‘He has a lawyer!’ multiple times.”
“M. GAETZ yelled, ‘Do you have a warrant to be here?’ and asked his father if they took anything from him. The agents did not respond, the report says. Don Gaetz answered his son: no, they only took the recording device they had previously given him,” the publication reports.
Gaetz then quickly went on to head over to Fox News where he would sit down with Tucker Carlson for what the Fox talking head described as “one of the weirdest interviews I’ve ever conducted.”
“Minutes later, Matt Gaetz was on national television delivering a broadside against the men he still alleges extorted his family, while at the same time describing a series of events that FBI records show wasn’t accurate,” the Beast report reads.
Gaetz’s office was contacted for a response to the discrepancies between what Gaetz told Fox viewers and what the FBI report read, but a spokesperson for the GOP lawmaker merely released a statement, saying, “Rep. Matt Gaetz stands by every word he has said about this fiasco. Time has only vindicated his claims and resulted in the guilty plea of one of the people involved in a shakedown of his family. Due to ongoing investigations of other people involved in this shakedown, we will not have further comment.”
Matt Gaetz reportedly remains under investigation by both federal and Florida state officials for his alleged sex crimes.
Read the full report from the Daily Beast here.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
