Florida State Attorney for Palm Beach County Dave Aronberg said Wednesday that Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz “may have made Tucker Carlson a witness” in the sex trafficking investigation against him.
Aronberg made the claim while appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to give his analysis on the allegations against Gaetz, as well as the congressman’s Tuesday appearance on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” (RELATED: Rep. Matt Gaetz Says Taxpayer Money Fueling Migrant Waves: ‘US Government May Be One Of The Biggest Human Traffickers’)
“Did anything strike you in Gaetz’s performance on Tucker Carlson and what he said? Did anything make sense to you? And what is the potential consequence for the charge that the Justice Department is looking at?” host Mika Brzezinski asked Aronberg.
“Yeah, Mika, he may have made Tucker Carlson a witness, because on his show he said, ‘Hey, you remember the woman I was with. She was over age,’ and he was like, ‘I don’t remember any of that.’ And so, that’s something that struck me,” Aronberg responded.
He went on to say that Gaetz’s “main defense” is going to be that he never dated anyone who was under age, and that the claims of extortion are “more of a smoke screen” in the court of public opinion. He added that those claims there “not a defense” to a child sex trafficking charges, and we’ll have to see what the evidence shows. “I have a feeling we’re going to learn a lot more very soon,” he added.
Gaetz said Tuesday that he is the subject of a federal sex trafficking investigation, but maintains that he has done nothing wrong. He also claimed he’s the victim of a $25 million extortion plot perpetrated by a former Department of Justice official named David McGee.
Gaetz appeared on Carlson’s show to deny the allegations and talk about the alleged extortion plot, where he named McGee as the perpetrator. McGee, currently a Florida-based lawyer, denied the allegations and said they were “completely, totally false.”