This is possibly the most interesting side story of any scandal in some time.
Matt Gaetz tried to distract from the sex-trafficking investigation into him by claiming that the REAL scandal is that someone in the government was trying to blackmail his father by making up charges about him. And it could actually end up being a big story itself.
It’s important to first understand that Gaetz’s dad Don, a healthcare exec, is one of the most powerful lawmakers Florida state politics has ever had. The Gaetz family is also, as you might’ve guessed, very rich. If you ever saw The Truman Show, that’s the house Matt grew up in. You might see Matt as a Florida redneck, but he’s from hoity-toity 30A. That’s an entirely different country than the rest of the panhandle or the rest of the state.
So apparently two officials tried to shake Don down for $25m, which if he paid they’d make his son’s investigation go away. The investigation itself was only known about by insiders and some GOP leaders (of course), and the implication here is that they had—and have—Gaetz cold. This investigation would only ever have gone away with a pardon from the president, and these two officials had a plan to make that happen as well.
Bob Levinson was captured in Iran in 2007 while working for the CIA. He’s been presumed dead for several years but these guys told Don Gaetz that there’s a confirming video showing that Levinson is still alive. Daddy Gaetz’s money was needed to free him, and Baby Gaetz would get the credit.
One of the officials was David McGee, a former federal prosecutor. The other was Bob Kent, who’s alternately described as a former Air Force intelligence officer or a Naval intelligence officer in reports. It doesn’t take much imagination to see that Kent more than likely works for a different American intelligence agency, one better known for its covert missions.
The implication here is that McGee & Kent are looking to fund an operation, one that Congress either doesn’t want to pay for or doesn’t want to now about. The CIA has funded those sorts of activities for decades with kidnapping, blackmail, importing & selling drugs, and all sorts of other activities. Like their Russian counterparts, they’re known to collect kompromat on domestic politicians, and this is a perfect example of it. Levinson might really still be alive, or might not, but it looks like there was a real intent to pay for a covert operation.
Whatever that operation was, and especially if it was indeed about Levinson, Gaetz killed it by taking it public. It wasn’t likely the payoff could’ve worked for him anyway; having a Democratic president pardon a Republican sex-trafficker was a very long shot, even if he did somehow get credit for bringing Levinson home.
But now it looks like IF there was ever any chance for him to get out of the legal mess he’s built for himself that might’ve been the only one. His goose is cooked.
And although I hope I’m wrong, McGee & Kent will most likely slip out of the headlines before Gaetz even stands trial.
