Former President Donald Trump denied a report that Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz asked him for a pardon.
“Congressman Matt Gaetz has never asked me for a pardon. It must also be remembered that he has totally denied the accusations against him,” Trump said in a statement via tweemail Wednesday, a day after the New York Times reported that the lawmaker privately asked the White House for blanket pardons for himself and other unnamed lawmakers.
HERE’S WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE REPORTED FEDERAL INVESTIGATION INTO MATT GAETZ
The Florida congressman is under investigation by the Department of Justice for an alleged sexual relationship with a minor and whether he paid women found on the website Seeking Arrangement for sex, although he has denied the allegations. Gaetz, when the news of the investigation broke last week, claimed that he suspected the timing of the news was intended to thwart another FBI investigation into an extortion attempt against him.
This was Trump’s first time wading into the scandal that has engulfed one of his biggest defenders left on Capitol Hill.
Don Gaetz, the congressman’s father who previously served as the state Senate president, forwarded a text message to his son that he received on March 16 from former Air Force intelligence officer Bob Kent, who was proposing a plan that could help the younger Gaetz’s “future legal and political problems go away.”
A day later, Kent and convicted felon Stephen Alford presented Don Gaetz with a three-page, typed document titled “Project Homecoming” detailing the plan asking them for $25 million.
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The money, according to the document, would be used to fund a rescue operation for ex-FBI agent-turned-spy Robert Levinson from Iran and, in return, Kent would “strongly advocate that President Biden issue a Presidential Pardon, or instruct the Department of Justice to terminate any and all investigations involving Congressman Gaetz.”
Kent denied that the communications were designed as a threat in an interview with CNN on Monday.
Gaetz, in an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, reiterated his claims of innocence and implied he could be a target of the deep state.
“Folks won’t be surprised that bizarre claims are being made about me shortly after I decided to take on the most powerful institutions in the Beltway: the establishment; the FBI; the Biden Justice Department; the Cheney political dynasty; even the Justice Department under Trump,” he wrote. “Yes, just like the mafia, the D.C. swamp protects its ‘made men.’ Since I’m taking my turn under the gun, let me address the allegations against me directly. First, I have never, ever paid for sex. And second, I, as an adult man, have not slept with a 17-year-old.”
