Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) responded to the new child sex trafficking allegations against Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) in a familiarly bellicose fashion on Wednesday. In short, Gaetz has been under federal investigation since last year, according to The New York Times, and he’s suspected of possibly paying for a 17-year-old to travel with him across state lines under the pretenses of sexual interactions. Gaetz claims that the allegations are false and connected to a supposed extortion plot, but these issues appear to be separate, and it’s unclear how real that the extortion plot even is — but Greene jumped on Gaetz’s bandwagon.
Gaetz claimed that federal authorities have audio tapes revealing the existence of the extortion plot, and he insisted that the feds should release this material. Gaetz named former Justice Department official David McGee as the supposed perpetrator of the extortion scheme, but McGee unequivocally denied these claims in comments to The Daily Beast. New York Times reporter Katie Benner confirmed that McGee wasn’t even involved in the Justice Department’s Gaetz investigation.
Nevertheless, as Greene put it:
‘The DOJ needs to release the tapes instead of allowing another witch hunt to take place.’
The DOJ needs to release the tapes instead of allowing another witch hunt to take place. https://t.co/0rb7mTykcb
— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) March 31, 2021
Greene’s readiness to take Gaetz, a noted liar, at his word isn’t, of course, particularly surprising. Gaetz suggested that the investigation constituted some kind of political pushback against his conservative views, but according to the Times, the federal inquiry began in the Trump era, when Bill Barr was still in charge of the Department of Justice as U.S. Attorney General. Gaetz says that the supposed extortion plot got going just this month — long after the original investigation reportedly began. Besides — if Gaetz was the victim of an extortion attempt, then that might imply that there’s legitimately damaging information available against him that could be used as leverage. The Department of Justice doesn’t just make stuff up.
According to the Times, the federal investigation into Gaetz is connected to an investigation into Joel Greenberg, an ex-county official in Central Florida who was indicted last year on charges including child sex trafficking and is apparently currently in jail. Greenberg visited the White House with Gaetz in 2019 and posted a photo online featuring himself, the Congressman, and longtime Trump ally Roger Stone in 2017, writing that it was “Great catching up.”
Check out Twitter’s response to Greene’s nonsense below:
