Fox News’s Tucker Carlson said his interview with Rep. Matt Gaetz following a report that the Florida Republican is under investigation for a possible sexual relationship with a 17-year-old was “one of the weirdest interviews” he’s ever conducted.
“If you just saw our Matt Gaetz interview, that was one of the weirdest interviews I’ve ever conducted,” Carlson said Tuesday night after the segment on Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Gaetz joined Carlson hours after the New York Times reported that Gaetz is under investigation by the Justice Department over a possible sexual relationship he had with a 17-year-old and whether he paid for her to travel with him.
“It is a horrible allegation, and it is a lie,” Gaetz told Carlson. “The New York Times is running a story that I have traveled with a 17-year-old woman, and that is verifiably false. People can look at my travel records and see that that is not the case. What is happening is an extortion of me and my family involving a former Department of Justice official. On March 16, my father got a text message demanding a meeting wherein a person demanded $25 million in exchange for making horrible sex trafficking allegations against me go away.”
MATT GAETZ NAMES FORMER DOJ OFFICIAL HE SAYS TRIED TO EXTORT HIS FAMILY FOR $25M
Gaetz confirmed on Tuesday that he has been under federal investigation, and he claimed it is “rooted in an extortion effort.” He named David McGee, an attorney with Beggs & Lane, as the man who is allegedly trying to extort $25 million from his family.
During the Carlson interview, Gaetz claimed that similar efforts to use law enforcement to intimidate him have occurred, recalling a dinner he once had with Carlson.
“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’ll 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 denied any recollection of the dinner.
“But what I am troubled by is the real motivation for all of this,” Gaetz added. “You know, just tonight, Ted Lieu, a Democrat, was calling on me to be removed from the House Judiciary Committee. And 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.”
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After the interview, Carlson said the interview had not “clarified much” and that he didn’t “quite understand” the whole story.
“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’ll bring you more when we find out.”
