That “blanket pardon” Matt Gaetz definitely didn’t ask Donald Trump for would probably be really good right now. That’s because news broke this morning that Gaetz, who is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice for allegedly having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and paying her in hotel and travel accommodations, might be the subject of seemingly another sex trafficking probe. Investigators are looking into a trip Gaetz took to the Bahamas in late 2018 or early 2019 with marijuana entrepreneur and hand surgeon Jason Pirozzolo. Apparently, Pirozzolo, who seems to have some kind of mutually beneficial friendship with Gaetz, paid for the travel, the accommodations, and female escorts, according to CBS News.
Rumors about politicians and sex workers are nothing new, but the problem for Gaetz is that these escorts may have been illegally trafficked across state lines in order to have sex with the congressman. Worse, now that the Feds are interested in Gaetz’s relationship with Pirozzolo, some questionable behavior is coming to light.
According to CBS News, in July 2018, Pirozzolo made comments on a podcast, suggesting he knew key details of a bill Gaetz was working on to help facilitate more research into medical marijuana. That legislation, the Medical Cannabis Research Act, was introduced in April 2018, and again in January 2019 but failed to pass both times. Gaetz has also spoken at medical marijuana conferences chaired by Pizzolo, using them to hype up his own fundraisers with Pizzolo donating funds to his campaign arm in the process. If it turns out Gaetz was accepting trysts with escorts and trips in exchange for introducing legislation on Pizzolo’s behalf, that would be a federal crime.
Of course, Gaetz’s comms team has denied any and all allegations, calling the probe a “general fishing exercise” and describing Gaetz’s interactions with these women as being “consensual relationships with adults.”
That said, we don’t think this is the last we’ve heard of all this.