Federal investigators are investigating a trip to the Bahamas that Matt Gaetz allegedly took in late 2018 or early 2019 as part of an investigation into whether the Florida representative violated sex trafficking laws, multiple sources told CBS News.
Gaetz was on that trip with a marijuana entrepreneur and hand surgeon named Jason Pirozzolo, who reportedly paid for travel expenses, accommodation and female escorts, the sources said.
Investigators are trying to determine whether the escorts were being illegally traded on national or international lines for sex with the congressman.
“Traveling across state lines is what sets a federal hook for prosecution,” said Arlo Devlin-Brown, a former prosecutor and partner at Covington & Burling, in a report aired on the “CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell. . ” “That does not matter [Gaetz] paid personally, as long as he knows someone does. “
The Justice Department declined to comment. Pirozollo did not respond to repeated attempts to contact him and declined to comment on his relationship with Gaetz and whether he paid for escorts for him when asked by CBS News outside his Orlando office on Wednesday.
In a statement to CBS News, a spokesman for the Gaetz office said, “Rep. Gaetz has never paid for sex, nor has he had sex with an underage girl. What started with screaming headlines about ‘sex trafficking’ has now grown into a general fishing exercise on vacations and consensual relationships with adults. Yesterday we even heard of some nonsense ‘pardon’ story that turned out to be false, and today it’s just more euphemism. It’s interesting to see how the Washington wheels are so grind hard when one of their lies is overthrown. “
Investigators also want to know if Gaetz accepted paid escorts in exchange for political access or legal favors, the sources said.
In a July 2018 podcast, Pirozzolo told Ganjapreneur.com that Gaetz was in the process of enacting federal legislation that would boost medical research on cannabis.
“Congressman Matt Gaetz is in fact working out legislation in Washington, DC that will help facilitate research at the national level. And we should see a lot of good out of it,” Pirozzolo said in the podcast. “We have Congressmen currently working on this federal law.”
Gaetz introduced the Medical Cannabis Research Act in April 2018 and again in January 2019, although it was never voted on.
“If there is evidence of something in return that benefits the congressman in return for sponsoring a law of interest to the donor, it is a federal crime,” said Devlin-Brown.
Pirozzolo is the co-founder and chairman of the board of the Medical Marijuana Physicians Association (AMMPA), and Gaetz was a speaker at two of the organization’s conferences. The first took place in October 2017 when Gaetz was joined by Trump ally Roger Stone. According to the Central Florida Post, the conference was immediately followed by a fundraising campaign for Gaetz’s convention campaign. The second was in May 2018 at the group’s “NFL and Medical Cannabis Conference” in Miami.
FEC records reviewed by CBS News show that in March 2016 and May 2017, Pirozzolo made two separate donations of $ 1,000 each to Gaetz’s campaign arm, “Friends of Matt Gaetz.”