Criminal Investigation Of Matt Gaetz Broadens To Include Corruption

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According to a new report from CNN, the federal criminal investigation into Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) now includes an examination of the question of “whether Gaetz took gifts, including travel and paid escorts, in exchange for political favors.” These political favors, CNN explains, would have been in the medical marijuana field — in 2018, Gaetz was a guest on a trip to the Bahamas that also included Dr. Jason Pirozzolo, who is heavily involved in the promotion of medical marijuana. Among other issues, prosecutors have been examining whether that Bahamas trip involved paid escorts.

Besides potential corruption, Gaetz has also been under federal criminal investigation over issues including potential child sex trafficking. Now, CNN reports that “investigators are also scrutinizing Gaetz’s connections to medical marijuana, both in terms of legislation he’s sponsored and his connections to people involved in the industry, searching for so-called pay-to-play arrangements.” In a book that Gaetz released in 2020, he characterized Pirozzolo as one of his “best friends.”

Pirozzolo, an apparent Florida resident, is a co-founder of an organization called the American Medical Marijuana Physicians Association, and Gaetz has spoken at events hosted by the group on at least two occasions. Additionally, in 2018, a business that Pirozzolo co-founded took a $2.1 million stake in a south Florida medical marijuana company, possibly setting him up for financial benefits from loosened medical marijuana restrictions. After becoming a member of Congress in 2017, Gaetz took up medical marijuana as a personal concern.

Among other examples of his promotion of the substance, Gaetz proposed legislation in April of 2017 that would have re-classified marijuana on the federal level as a schedule III controlled substance, which would have relaxed restrictions around research into the material. The following year, Gaetz introduced legislation that was meant “to establish a new, separate registration process for manufacturers of cannabis for research,” CNN reports, adding that Gaetz “hand-delivered a fully written draft of the bill to his staff… suggesting that Gaetz’s staff did not play a role in crafting it.” In theory, Gaetz could have been ferrying agenda items from outside interests like Pirozzolo to Congress.

The immediate future of the Gaetz case isn’t clear, although investigators are clearly taking the investigation more seriously than the Congressman might like to admit — late last year, the feds seized Gaetz’s phone. More recently, Gaetz associate Joel Greenberg, who is an ex-county official in Central Florida, has been reported to be sharing information with investigators in preparation for a plea deal over a slew of charges, including child sex trafficking, that he is facing. Greenberg could be helping feds build a case against Gaetz.