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FBI Records Reveal Matt Gaetz Was in Chaos Mode as Scandal Broke


Fifteen minutes ago Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) will join Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program on March 30, 2021 — hours after it was reported that he is being investigated for alleged sex trafficking of a minor—Gaetz repeatedly shouted at FBI agents at his family home.

“Do you have orders to be here?” Gaetz shouted, according to an FBI report of the event obtained by The Daily Beast.

But as confrontational as Gaetz in those times, the agents do not pursue him. They were literally there to help him, and his father, who teamed up with the FBI for several days on a stinging operation that Gaetz announced on live TV minutes later would remove his name.

This scene and others detailed in previously unreported documents, shed new light on the burning operation, which Gaetz had helped orchestrate in the frenzied days before. The New York Times published the explosive report that changed the public and political life of the Panhandle congressman.

The documents, in the possession of federal prosecutors and exclusively by The Daily Beast, confirm parts of the story of international conspiracy and fraud that Gaetz described to Carlson minutes later. after the agents left his home. But the filings also contradict basic claims in Gaetz’s version of events, raising new questions about the congressman’s own role in the sting, as well as when and why he was arrested. cooperation with the federal government.

One document contains an important but still elusive detail about the origins of the ongoing federal sex-trafficking investigation into Gaetz: when exactly it began.

When the first Gaetz retell the story for Carlson, to an unprepared public still processing news of the sex trafficking investigation, a turning but event.

According to Gaetz, two men approached his father — Don Gaetz, a wealthy former president of the Florida Senate and a politician. power broker to this day – with a strange trick: If Don Gaetz offered them $25 million, they could bring the investigation into his son’s alleged sex crimes to an end.

The stated motive for the $25 million payout is perhaps even more bizarre. The men said they wanted to use the money to rescue Bob Levinson, an American held hostage in Iran and presumed long dead.

“Our family was so worried about it, we reached out to the local FBI,” Gaetz told Carlson.

But FBI records dispute that sequence of events.

According to the documents, the FBI learned of Levinson’s plot independently through layers of intermediaries. The agents spoke to Matt Gaetz only after contacting him through one of those intermediaries.

Gaetz also tells the story in a different way, telling Carlson without proof that this is all a “deep state” plot against him. He stated the charges in Times The report somehow emerges from this same plot. But that logic is not correct. According to the documents, the Gaetz probe is several months old. The FBI’s investigation into Levinson’s plot had only begun a few days ago.

When the Fox News section ended, Carlson was confused summon it’s “one of the weirdest interviews I’ve ever done.” In the end, however, Gaetz was exonerated to some degree when one of the men at the heart of the hostage scheme, felon convicted Stephen M. Alford, admitted in November of that year. Last year there was a scam related to that conspiracy.

However, the records contradict Gaetz more than they confirm his sequence of events.

According to the documents, Gaetz had his first conversation with the FBI on March 19, when he told agents that his father had met two men – Alford and another associate – just a day before there to discuss their offer directly.

As Gaetz has stated, his family has been in contact with the FBI to discuss a potential blackmail plot. According to the FBI agent’s crime scene report contained in the documents, the agent learned of the plot earlier that day when a retired agent from Jacksonville brought her in.

The active agent that followed led to another former FBI agent – this one based in Miami – who told her about the Levinson scheme. The man who made the offer, the Miami agent said, claimed to have “information about Congressman Gaetz.” (The report also clarifies that the Miami agent’s tip didn’t come directly from Gaetz.)

When the FBI finally reached Matt Gaetz by phone, he testified that the day before, his father had had two face-to-face meetings with the men to discuss their plans. Mr. Matt Gaetz noted that Alford had been brought in for the second meeting and promised to “get the GAETZ MP’s criminal case resolved.”

Ending the phone call, Gaetz asked the FBI agent to call his father.

Contact between Gaetzes and Alford ended without agreement. And on March 25, a week after his meeting with Alford, Don Gaetz showed up at the FBI’s Fort Walton Beach office, along with his attorney and two agents. The meeting’s transcript shows agents circling through a PowerPoint-assisted strategy session designed to restart Levinson’s negotiations — and flag the alleged perpetrators.

During that meeting, Don Gaetz mentioned his son’s investigation. He told the pair of agents he had heard from, the trio, that a former Justice Department attorney involved in the Levinson scheme had launched the investigation during a chat. When the agents questioned further, Don Gaetz’s attorney intervened and referred them to Matt Gaetz’s attorney.

Matt Gaetz — whose campaign paid $5,000 to Trump whisperer and infamous “deep state” villain Roger Stone for a strategy consultation the day before his father’s meeting with the FBI — days later would call the former DOJ attorney a “deep state” man in his Carlson appearance.

The next day, March 26, Don Gaetz secretly recorded a live conversation with Alford’s attorney, the aforementioned former DOJ attorney. He then taped another conversation with Alford himself, where Alford promised a presidential pardon for his son.

Then, according to the records, around 2:30 p.m. on March 30, Don Gaetz met with an agent at a Publix grocery store in Niceville, Florida, to receive a device that would record his follow-up conversation with Alford on the next day. A few hours later, New York Times disclosure the sex trafficking investigation into Gaetz.

That night — around 7:45 p.m., according to the FBI report — two agents rang the doorbell at the Gaetz family’s mansion. They have come for their recording equipment. The stain is off, but the records don’t explain why and they don’t mention it Times story.

After Don Gaetz gave them the recording device, agents asked if they could take pictures of his text messages with Alford, according to FBI records on the case. Don Gaetz “voluntarily” handed over his phone, and when an agent took a picture of the message, Matt Gaetz “appeared outside from another area of ​​the mansion.”

“M. GAETZ shouted, ‘He has a lawyer!’ many times,” the report said. The agent returned the phone to Don Gaetz, and they arranged to contact his attorney.

When the agents returned to their vehicles, according to the document, “M. GAETZ shouted, “Do you have orders to be here?” “And asked his father if they had taken anything from him. The agents did not respond, the report said. Don Gaetz replied to his son: no, they just took the recording device they had given to him earlier.

Minutes later, Matt Gaetz on national television offered a broad view against the men he still alleges had blackmailed his family, and described a series of events that the FBI records shown to be incorrect.

A Gaetz spokesman told The Daily Beast that Gaetz sided with his version of events.

“Answer. Matt Gaetz stood by every word he had to say about this failure. Time only vindicated his claims and led to the guilty plea of ​​one of the people involved in the family leak. him,” the spokesperson said. “Due to ongoing investigations into others involved in this takedown, we will have no further comment.”

It’s not clear why Gaetz, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee and has oversight of the Justice Department, sought to disclose a previously unreported and allegedly ongoing investigation. Three people familiar with the facts denied there was an investigation and the FBI declined to comment. The Daily Beast can only confirm that one of the people involved is currently under investigation: Matt Gaetz.

Although the ongoing investigation is lengthy with little recent action, government records provide new details about when the investigation began.

According to previous reports, the DOJ, appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr by Trump, launched an investigation in the “the final months of the Trump administration. “But the FBI document is more narrow in saying that starting the investigation is “summer 2020. ”

DOJ records obtained by The Daily Beast show that the investigation opened specifically in August 2020 – the same month that involved the prosecution of Joel Greenberg, Gaetz’s former “winger” on allegations of sex trafficking. minors at the center of the Gaetz investigation.

In the end, only one man – Alford – pleaded guilty in the amnesty scheme to hostages, admitting last November to some wire transfer fraud. The sentence lasts up to 20 years, and Alford is currently awaiting sentencing at the Santa Rosa County Jail. At the end of April, the court push his sentencing date back until June 1, for reasons still sealed.

On Monday, a federal judge in Florida’s Middle District also adjourned Greenberg’s sentencing for the third time. Greenberg, who pleaded guilty to human trafficking a year ago, is now expected to be sentenced in August. The judge said the delay was “in the interest of justice.”



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