Report: Matt Gaetz Asked Trump to Pardon Him for “Any” Crimes He Might Have Committed (Like Sex With a Minor)

As you’ve probably heard by now, the Justice Department is currently investigating Rep. Matt Gaetz for allegedly paying women for sex and, separately, having sex with a 17-year-old and transporting her across state lines. The inquiry, which began under Donald Trump’s DOJ, is said to be part of a broader probe into a close friend of the congressman’s, Florida tax collector Joel Greenberg, who was indicted last summer on numerous charges, including sex trafficking a minor. (According to The New York Times, investigators believe Greenberg would meet the women on websites like Seeking Arrangement and then introduce them to Gaetz. The 17-year-old girl the Republican lawmaker also allegedly slept with is reportedly the same girl Greenberg was charged with trafficking.) Greenberg pleaded not guilty last year to a whopping 33 charges, which, on top of the sex trafficking, include stalking, wire fraud, identify theft, conspiracy to bribe a public official, theft of government property, and creating fake IDs. Gaetz has similarly denied all the accusations against him. And yet, he was apparently concerned enough about the prospect of going to prison for crimes he didn’t commit that he tried to secure a preemptive pardon from his favorite president.

The Times reports that in the final weeks of Trump’s term, the congressman asked the White House for “blanket preemptive pardons for himself and unidentified congressional allies for any crimes they may have committed,” according to two people familiar with the discussions. It’s not clear if Gaetz knew he was under DOJ investigation at the time, but if he did, he didn’t mention it to anyone in the West Wing, or that it was for matters that could land him in prison for at least 10 years; associates of the president have speculated that the lawmaker’s request “for a group pardon” of anyone who could find themselves in Trump’s political opponents’ crosshairs was an attempt “to camouflage his own potential criminal exposure,“ which in retrospect looks quite desperate. Regardless, the request was denied, which is pretty sad considering the pathetic lengths to which Gaetz has gone in service to Trump! Per the Times:

Though Mr. Gaetz had little formal power in the House, where he remains a backbencher, he offered Mr. Trump what he craved and what Republican congressional leaders would not always offer: fierce loyalty and a taste for bare-knuckle political combat. In his memoir published last fall, Firebrand: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the MAGA Revolution, Mr. Gaetz recalled his first one-on-one phone call with the president in late 2017. Mr. Trump had seen Mr. Gaetz on Fox News attacking Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, and thought he had heard an ally. “I need warriors, you know what I mean?” the president told him.

Mr. Gaetz knew precisely. Though he came from the more conservative Florida Panhandle, the young congressman shared Mr. Trump’s taste for boasts, particularly about sexual exploits, and a knack for self-promotion. Neither was particularly impressed by the trappings of traditional power in Washington, and both were sons of powerful men. Mr. Gaetz’s father, Don Gaetz, was the president of the Florida Senate and a wealthy businessman, and Mr. Trump’s father a successful real estate developer in New York. After Democrats took back the House in 2018 and began cranking up pressure on the Trump administration, Mr. Gaetz emerged as a standout in what he called the “warrior class” of lawmakers who made it their mission to protect the president.

When Democrats called Michael D. Cohen, the president’s former fixer, to testify against him in early 2019, Mr. Gaetz threatened to reveal what he said were extramarital affairs by Mr. Cohen. Democrats accused him of witness intimidation and the Florida Bar, of which Mr. Gaetz is a member, investigated. Mr. Gaetz brought the first impeachment investigation into Mr. Trump, later that year, to a halt, albeit briefly, when he led dozens of Republican lawmakers into investigative hearing rooms and refused to leave. Mr. Trump publicly singled out Mr. Gaetz, saying he was a “great talent, young, handsome,” thanking him for his advocacy on the president’s behalf and predicting Mr. Gaetz was “going places.”

And in a stomach-churning passage from his book, Gaetz wrote: “The president has called me when I was in my car, asleep in the middle of the night on my Longworth Office cot, on the throne, on airplanes, in nightclubs, and even in the throes of passion (yes, I answered).” And Gaetz’s fealty didn’t stop with Trump’s election defeat. After Trump left office, Gaetz suggested he would leave Congress to defend Trump full time, though in yet another sad turn, “Trump’s advisers showed no interest.” The Congressman also publicly attacked Rep. Liz Cheney, holding an anti-Cheney rally in Wyoming, after she had the audacity to vote to impeach Trump. And as a show of thanks, Trump has…done absolutely nothing to defend Gaetz, which has got to hurt considering the complimentary things he’s said about sexual predators in the past.

Spokesman for the Congressman insisted that he had never requested a pardon “in connection with the continuing Justice Department inquiry,” which might mean more if the Times report hadn’t specifically said that Gaetz did not mention that he was under investigation but rather lumped his request for a pardon in with ones for other allies. “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 spokesman 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.”

Oh, and in other Gaetz news, the Washington Post reports that as a state Representative, Gaetz was one of just two people to vote against a bill aimed at preventing individuals from sharing sexually explicit photos of their ex-partners online, i.e revenge porn. Retired Republican Tom Goodson said on Monday that Gaetz was “the leading opponent of the nonconsensual pornography bill [Goodson] spent years trying to pass,” and described a meeting at which Gaetz claimed that if a person gives an explicit photo to a romantic partner, that image becomes the recipient’s property. “Matt was absolutely against it,” Goodson told the Orlando Sentinel. “He thought the picture was his to do with what he wanted. He thought that any picture was his to use as he wanted to, as an expression of his rights.”

All of which checks out, given last week‘s report from CNN that Gaetz, who resembles a revolting mutation of a young Ted Kennedy, apparently showed nude photos of women he’d supposedly slept with to colleagues on the House floor.

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