Matt Gaetz told a former White House staffer that he was hoping to get a pre-emptive pardon from then-President Donald Trump concerning an investigation into him by the Department of Justice, a report has said.
The allegation came in testimony given to the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, The Washington Post reported.
People with knowledge of his testimony say Johnny McEntee, the former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, told the panel that the Florida Republican told him during a short meeting “that they are launching an investigation into him or that there’s an investigation into him”. Mr McEntee didn’t specify who was investigating the congressman.
Mr McEntee said Mr Gaetz told him that “he didn’t do anything wrong but they are trying to make his life hell, and you know, if the president could give him a pardon, that would be great”.
Mr Gaetz added to Mr McEntee that he had made the request to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, according to The Post.
Mr McEntee was asked by the panel if Mr Gaetz made the request within the context of DoJ’s investigation into allegations that he may have violated federal laws against sex trafficking.
“I think that was the context, yes,” Mr McEntee said, according to those with knowledge of the testimony.
In public in the last months of Mr Trump’s in office, Mr Gaetz was calling for broad pardons to counteract possible future investigations by Democrats.
Mr McEntee said Mr Gaetz met with him for a short meeting one night and spoke of the possibility of a pardon, but Mr McEntee said he was unable to remember if the discussion occurred before or after the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, people aware of the testimony said, according to The Post.
The investigation into Mr Gaetz was launched in the last months of the Trump presidency and was approved by then-Attorney General William Barr. The investigation looks into if Mr Gaetz paid for sex, paid for women to cross state lines to have sex, and if he had sex with a 17-year-old.
The investigation was opened after a federal probe into one of Mr Gaetz’s friends, a man now convicted of sex trafficking. Mr Gaetz has denied the allegations that he paid for sex or that he had sex with a minor when he was an adult.
A spokesperson for Mr Gaetz told The Post that he never asked Mr Trump for a pardon directly but didn’t respond to Mr McEntee’s comments.
“Congressman Matt Gaetz discussed pardons for many other people publicly and privately at the end of President Donald Trump’s first term,” the spokesperson told the paper. “As for himself, President Trump addressed this malicious rumor more than a year ago stating, ‘Congressman Matt Gaetz has never asked me for a pardon.’ Rep Gaetz continues to stand by President Trump’s statement.”
While Mr Gaetz hasn’t been charged with any crimes, his associate Joel Greenberg, formerly a tax collector in Florida’s Seminole County, previously pled guilty to six charges, one of which being sex trafficking of a minor, according to The Post.
The paper reported earlier that Greenberg cooperated with prosecutors and he’s been giving information about Mr Gaetz since 2020.
On 31 March last year, Mr Gaetz texted The Daily Beast: “The last time I had a sexual relationship with a seventeen-year-old, I was seventeen.”
In April 2021, he wrote in an opinion piece for the Washington Examiner that he has “never, ever paid for sex”.
“I, as an adult man, have not slept with a 17-year-old,” he added.
Shortly after Mr Trump’s 2020 election loss, on 25 November 2020, Mr Gaetz said on Fox News that Mr Trump “should pardon everyone from himself to his administration officials to Joe Exotic if he has to”.
Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Mr Meadows, told the January 6 panel that Mr Gaetz had been “personally pushing” for a pardon “since early December” 2020.
“I’m not sure why Mr Gaetz would reach out to me to ask if he could have a meeting with Mr Meadows about receiving a presidential pardon,” she said.
Former Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann told the panel that he thought Mr Gaetz was asking for a pardon.
“The general tone was, we may get prosecuted because we were defensive of, you know, the president’s positions on these things,” he told the panel in prerecorded testimony played during its public hearings. “The pardon that he was discussing requesting was as broad as you can describe ... from the beginning of time up until today for any and all things. Then he mentioned Nixon. And I said Nixon’s pardon was never nearly that broad.”
Mr Gaetz didn’t receive a pardon from Mr Trump.
The Independent has reached out to the office of Mr Gaetz for comment.
