A former Air Force intelligence officer in the middle of an “extortion plot” of Matt Gaetz and his father, Don Gaetz, said the Florida congressman is “trying to divert attention from himself” as he laid out the story of an attempted rescue of a former FBI agent kidnapped in Iran.
Bob Kent explained that there were no threats or demands involved when he approached Matt Gaetz’s father to finance an effort to locate and rescue Robert Levinson, whom he believed could possibly be alive and in captivity in Iran. When Kent spoke with the elder Gaetz, he said he had heard rumors of an investigation involving his son.
“Matt Gaetz is in need of good publicity, and I’m in need of $25 million to save Robert Levinson,” Kent told Michael Smerconish. Watch the interview between Kent and Smerconish for the full explanation.
After the Monday morning interview, Bob Kent went on CNN with Chris Cuomo for further clarification.
Also on Monday, Matt Gaetz published an op-ed in the Washington Examiner in which he claimed he was “not a criminal” who was “not resigning,” despite an investigation into allegations of sex trafficking opened by Trump administration Attorney General Bill Barr.
In the op-ed article, Gaetz portrayed that as an “allegation that I, a grown man, paid for an adult girlfriend’s expenses.”
“I am a representative in Congress, not a monk, and certainly not a criminal,” he wrote.
“My lifestyle of yesteryear may be different from how I live now, but it was not and is not illegal,” the 38-year-old added. “My personal life is and always has been conducted on my own time and my own dime.”
Sources at CNN, Daily Beast, and NBC