Washington scandal cycles are predictable, and sex is especially potent in politics. Let me first remind everyone that I am a representative in Congress, not a monk, and certainly not a criminal.
Nancy Pelosi once defended President Bill Clinton after he got an intern to fellate him in the Oval Office. But when it comes to the allegation that I, a grown man, paid for an adult girlfriend’s expenses? Well, consider that a bridge too far for the power-hungry hypocrites.
I want to be clear about something as we process the leaks and lies from the past week. To this point, there are exactly zero credible (or even non-credible) accusers willing to come forward by name and state on the public record that I behaved improperly toward them, in the manner by which Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has ten accusers.
Instead, CNN, the New York Times, Politico, and others are just repeating false allegations about a congressman who loathes the swamp and fights both sides of it on a daily basis.
Just as they once falsely attacked President Donald Trump as a Russian asset, Justice Brett Kavanaugh as a gang rapist, and even John McCain as having fathered a child out of wedlock, they now attack me. Of course, none of what they say ever amounts to anything, yet it is endlessly repeated by leftist television anchors such as Chris Cuomo, who uses his platform to cover for his brother’s appalling subjection of nursing home patients to death by the coronavirus. They think themselves such wonderful arbiters of moral purpose.
Folks won’t be surprised that bizarre claims are being made about me shortly after I decided to take on the most powerful institutions in the Beltway: the establishment; the FBI; the Biden Justice Department; the Cheney political dynasty; even the Justice Department under Trump.
Yes, just like the mafia, the D.C. swamp protects its “made men.” Since I’m taking my turn under the gun, let me address the allegations against me directly. First, I have never, ever paid for sex. And second, I, as an adult man, have not slept with a 17-year-old.
Predictably, the anti-Trump cheerleaders such as Meghan McCain, Bill Kristol, and sadly, some of my feckless colleagues in Congress are going to call for me to resign.
This is how D.C. works. The guilty and wrong point fingers at the innocent and right. Remember President Joe Biden’s Ukraine scandal? Or the Lincoln Project’s professions of moral superiority? Their scorn and moral posturing is all merely projection.
And no, I am absolutely not resigning.
The Washington Post recently accused me of stating that I’m really enjoying my current embrace of monogamy. That is the truest thing they’ve ever written about me. I’m a better man today than I was years ago. Heck, I hope to be a better man than I was yesterday, every day of my life.
My lifestyle of yesteryear may be different from how I live now, but it was not and is not illegal. I defended Rep. Katie Hill’s “throuple” when her own Democratic colleagues wouldn’t. I just didn’t think it was anyone’s business.
It comes as no surprise that my political opponents want to sensationalize and criminalize my prior sex life just as I am getting engaged to the best person I’ve ever known. It is regrettable that the battle of ideas should thus become so personal. But then again, when your ideas suck, you need to stoop this low.
My personal life is and always has been conducted on my own time and my own dime. Consensual adult relationships are not illegal. Although I’m sure some partisan crooks in Merrick Garland’s Justice Department want to pervert the truth and the law to go after me, I will not be intimidated or extorted. The battle for America’s future demands gladiators, and I am going to keep getting back up and fighting, every single day.
The Biden Justice Department would rather investigate me for adult, consensual sex than Hunter Biden for his shady business dealings, than others for illegal leaks, or a former Justice Department official for the evident extortion of a congressman. Go figure.
You’ll see more “drip, drip, drip” of leaks into the media from the corrupt Justice Department and others. When you do, ask yourself why. They aren’t coming for me — they are coming for you. I’m just in the way.
As for me? I’m going to fight like hell for my constituents and the country I deeply love. You deserve no less, especially right now.
Rep. Matt Gaetz represents Florida’s 1st Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. This opinion as first posted in The Washington Examiner
By Rep. Matt Gaetz
