The claim came in testimony given to the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol Hill riot on January 6, 2021, the Washington Post reported. People familiar with his testimony say Johnny McEntee, the former director of the White House Office of the President’s Personnel, told the panel that the Florida Republican told him during a brief meeting “that they are investigating him or that there is an investigation into him.” Mr McEntee did not specify who was investigating the MP. Mr. McEntee said Mr. Gaetz told him he “didn’t do anything wrong, but they’re trying to make his life hell, and you know, if the president could pardon him, that would be great.” Mr. Gaetz added to Mr. McEntee that he had made the request to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, according to The Post. Mr. McEntee was asked by the committee whether Mr. Gaetz made the request as part of a Justice Department investigation into allegations that he may have violated federal anti-sex-trafficking laws. “I think that was the context, yes,” Mr. McEntee said, according to those familiar with the testimony. Publicly in the final months of Mr. Trump’s term, Mr. Gaetz sought broad pardons to deal with possible future investigations by Democrats. Mr. McEntee said Mr. Gaetz met with him briefly one night and talked about the possibility of a pardon, but Mr. McEntee said he was unable to recall whether the conversation took place before or after his rebellion. Capitol on January 6, 2021, people aware of the testimony said, according to The Post. The investigation into Mr. Gaetz began in the final months of the Trump presidency and was authorized by then-Attorney General William Barr. The investigation is looking into whether Mr. Gaetz paid for sex, paid for women to cross state lines to have sex, and whether he had sex with a 17-year-old girl. The investigation began after a federal investigation into one of Mr. Gaetz’s friends, a man now convicted of sex trafficking. Mr. Gaetz has denied allegations that he paid for sex or had sex with a minor when he was an adult. A spokesman for Mr. Gaetz told The Post that he never directly asked Trump for a pardon, but did not respond to Mr. McEntee’s comments. “Congressman Matt Gaetz advocated for many other people publicly and privately at the end of President Donald Trump’s first term,” the spokesman told the paper. “As for himself, President Trump addressed this malicious rumor more than a year ago by saying, “Congressman Matt Gaetz never asked me for a pardon.” Representative Gaetz continues to support President Trump’s statement.” While Mr. Gaetz has not been charged with any crime, his associate Joel Greenberg, a former tax collector in Seminole County, Florida, previously pleaded guilty to six counts, one of which was sex trafficking of a minor, according to The Post. The paper earlier reported that Greenberg had cooperated with prosecutors and had been providing information on Mr Gaetz since 2020. On March 31 of last year, Mr. Gaetz texted the Daily Beast: “The last time I had sex with a seventeen-year-old girl, I was seventeen.” In April 2021, he wrote in an opinion piece for the Washington Examiner that he “never, ever paid for sex.” “I, as a grown man, have not slept with a 17-year-old,” he added. Shortly after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election, on November 25, 2020, Mr. Gaetz told Fox News that Trump “should pardon everyone from himself to his administration officials to Joe Exotic, if needed”. Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Mr Meadows, told the January 6 panel that Mr Gaetz had been “personally pushing” for a pardon “since early December” 2020. “I’m not sure why Mr. Gaetz would contact me to ask if he could have a meeting with Mr. Meadows about receiving a presidential pardon,” she said. Trump’s former White House lawyer, Eric Hersman, told the panel he thought Mr. Gaetz was asking for a pardon. “The general tone was that we might be prosecuted for defending, you know, the president’s positions on these things,” he told the panel in taped testimony played during his public hearings. “The pardon he was debating asking was as broad as you can describe … from the beginning to the present day of all things. Then he mentioned Nixon. And I said that Nixon’s pardon has never been so broad.” Mr. Gaetz was not pardoned by Mr. Trump. The Independent has approached Mr Gaetz’s office for comment.
