by Fabiola Santiago
Poor Rep. Matt Gaetz — proud “Florida man” who carried with pride his weird, boyish rube rap, now betrayed and facing a serious Department of Justice investigation into sex trafficking a minor.
From his time as a Panhandle state representative to the last years as a goofy but powerful 30-something-year-old working the halls of Congress, Gaetz made quite a name for himself by making the most out of every opportunity to take the GOP’s agenda viral.
His James Dean haircut helped. His verbosity on Fox News helped. So did his prolific tweeting.
The guy could take a poignant moment in history like the coronavirus outbreak and throw some spin — and most of all, some wackiness, like wearing a gas mask in Congress — and take the edge off the president’s incompetence, at least momentarily.
And, that’s exactly what Gaetz is doing in his own defense now — spinning, confusing and deflecting — in an attempt to create doubt about a New York Times report that says the DOJ has been investigating him for months for allegations that he had sex with and paid to bring across state lines a 17-year-old girl.
Gaetz says it never happened and is peddling as a defense that the investigation was leaked because a former federal prosecutor was trying to extort his father for $25 million that he refused to pay.
The wild story is being carried by right-wing rags that parade as serious online publications as truth, from Washington to Miami, where the sex-trafficking story isn’t being told but the extortion story is.
He deserves the right’s defense. He’s always been there for them.
A faithful soldier ready to take up whatever former President Donald Trump needed done and whatever the right’s agenda demanded, Gaetz was always there for the GOP, so animated you couldn’t take your eyes off him even if you wanted to very badly.
Like the time Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, facing jail time, was spilling the beans, and Gaetz, a lawyer, tried to intimidate him just before he was to appear before an open session of the House Oversight Committee to testify.
Gaetz suggested in a tweet that Cohen had cheated on his wife, Gaetz knew all about it and was ready to tell. And so, he entered into witness-tampering territory, prompting a Florida Bar investigation.
Gaetz, whose millionaire father was an influential Florida senator, has always been the train wreck you could see barreling down the tracks.
But consequences have eluded him, perhaps … until now?
The Florida Bar didn’t do a thing to him for threatening Cohen, too politically risky.
Likewise, a 2008 DUI arrest after leaving the Swamp, a nightclub on Okaloosa Island, was dismissed. He had refused a Breathalyzer test, yet didn’t have his license suspended as Florida law demanded. Who suffered? The officer who arrested him was forced to resign.
His servitude to the GOP, however, might not be totally paying off this time.
Fact: The person who had to approve the investigation into the sex-trafficking allegations against Gaetz wasn’t a Democrat, but Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, another devotee of the former president until he could be no more, and, at the last minute, defected.
The investigation was opened during the final months of the Trump administration.
It’s part of a broader probe into a political ally of Gaetz, Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg, who was indicted last year on an array of charges, including sex trafficking of a child and financially supporting women in exchange for sex — at least one was an underage girl.
The investigation of Gaetz was in full throttle as he passionately embraced helping spread the big lie that the election was stolen from the president and persecuted Republicans who broke ranks with Trump after the Capitol riot.
It’s hard to believe that a servant to Trump and to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as reliable as Gaetz would be put in this position if there wasn’t something to the allegations.
And, unrelated to the probe, CNN reported Thursday allegations that Gaetz bragged about sexual encounters and showed photos and videos of naked women he slept with to fellow members of the Freedom Caucus.
He might just join the growing ranks of the Trump-supporting and indicted. But Gaetz has that wonder-boy aura — and a lot of friends in high and low places in the GOP, for whom he was a useful tool.
He worked hard, no spin too low for a boy-man who trolled his way to fame.
He’s not Florida man personified for nothing. He’s been the perfect tool, but it remains to be seen how well it will serve him now.
Fabiola Santiago is a columnist for The Miami Herald.
