Rep. Matt Gaetz requested a preemptive pardon from former President Donald Trump while he was being investigated by the Justice Department, sources familiar with the discussions told the New York Times.
The report, published Tuesday, said it was unclear whether Gaetz was aware of the investigation when he made the request, and the Florida Republican is said to have asked that other congressional allies be given the same treatment.
Last week, it was revealed that federal officials have been investigating the 38-year-old Gaetz since last summer over whether he had sex with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him. In an op-ed in the Washington Examiner, the congressman denied he “slept with” a 17-year-old girl, said he is being subject to “false allegations,” and insisted he won’t resign. Gaetz also claims he is a target of extortion.
A spokesperson for Gaetz denied that the congressman sought a pardon in connection to the DOJ inquiry.
“Entry-level political operatives have conflated a pardon call from Representative Gaetz — where he called for President Trump to pardon ‘everyone from himself, to his administration, to Joe Exotic’ — with these false and increasingly bizarre, partisan allegations against him,” the representative said in a statement. “Those comments have been on the record for some time, and President Trump even retweeted the congressman, who tweeted them out himself.”
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The spokesperson was referring to a Fox News interview in November.
“He should pardon everyone from himself to his administration officials to Joe Exotic if he has to,” Gaetz said at the time. “Because you see from the radical Left a bloodlust that will only be quenched if they come after the people who worked so hard to animate the Trump administration with the policies and the vigor and the effectiveness that delivered for the American people.”
A clip of the interview was posted to Twitter by Gaetz on Nov. 24 and subsequently retweeted by the then-president. Trump pardoned many of his allies in the weeks leading up to President Joe Biden’s inauguration, but there was no such announcement for Gaetz.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Trump’s office for comment on the pardon report but did not immediately hear back. A representative for the former president declined to comment to the New York Times.
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The DOJ has not publicly confirmed the existence of an investigation into Gaetz.
The congressman is scheduled to speak at the Save America Summit on Friday at Trump’s Doral golf club and resort in Miami on Friday. “Thank you to ‘Women for America First’ for the invitation to share my vision for our great nation,” Gaetz said in a tweet on Tuesday.
