A left-wing public interest group is suing the Justice Department to obtain records of the long-closed case into Rep. Matt Gaetz and allegations that he sex-trafficked an underage girl.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, announced on Tuesday that it seeks investigators’ records to determine the reasoning behind the department’s decision to drop the case, “despite reports suggesting an abundance of evidence that he likely violated sex-trafficking laws.”
The group also seeks to challenge the Justice Department’s general “policy” of “categorically denying FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requests for records relating to investigations of public officials.
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“The public deserves to know whether the decision not to prosecute Gaetz was motivated by political considerations or anything other than the sufficiency of evidence against him, and should not be forced to sue for records every time they seek transparency on investigations of public officials,” CREW said in a statement.
“It is of public interest to understand why a member of Congress was not charged with any crime despite public reporting that suggested that potential crimes had been committed,” CREW said.
The “reports” CREW cited referred to a February 2023 article by the leftist Washington Post about the DOJ’s decision to formally close the case. That came five months after prosecutors pursuing the Fort Walton Beach Republican indicated that the key witnesses against Gaetz lacked credibility.
CREW has previously requested such records, only to be stymied by the DOJ.
While it may fit the parameters of a FOIA request, the group’s argument for getting the records defies logic.
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The case against Gaetz was opened in 2020. However, it was prosecutors under Democratic President Joe Biden, whose administration Gaetz has constantly criticized, who spent more than two years trying to pin the allegations on Gaetz, ultimately without success.
Additionally, one only has to look at the “public reporting” on multiple cases against former President Donald Trump, especially in regard to colluding with Russia in 2016, to understand that just because the media says something happened does not mean it actually did.
Gaetz had denied any wrongdoing from the outset of the probe.
Besides the lack of evidence, the case fell apart, as the Post noted in February 2023, when the supposed victim, who was 17 when Gaetz allegedly had sex with her, was “one of two people whose testimony had issues that veteran prosecutors felt would not pass muster with a jury.”
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The other witness who lacked credibility was Joel Greenberg, a former Gaetz associate and one-time tax collector for Seminole County, who pleaded guilty in 2021 to sex trafficking of a minor and other crimes.
CREW, however, chose to ignore other “public reports” about Gaetz’s innocence.
As the Tampa Free Press reported in February 2023, Tim Jansen, a lawyer representing a former Gaetz girlfriend who testified before a grand jury in the case, told CNN that the DOJ thoroughly pursued its leads against Gaetz.
He disputed claims that Gaetz was cleared because he is an elected official. Instead, Jansen told CNN the evidence against Gaetz simply wasn’t credible and couldn’t hold up in court.
“They turned over every stone. And I think they ultimately made a decision that they didn’t have evidence to prove a crime,” Jansen told CNN.
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