Six Compelling Pieces of Evidence Suggesting Matt Gaetz Was Concerned About Insurrection Planning, Not Sex Trafficking, When He Sought a Blanket Pardon From Trump

The NYT's theory of Gaetz's unprecedented proposal—taken, the paper concedes, from "Trump associates"—doesn't add up. And it may hide Gaetz's darker motives.

Introduction

Yesterday the New York Times issued a stunning report alleging that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), arguably former president Donald Trump’s most sycophantic congressional ally, asked the then-president for an unprecedented “blanket pardon” in the waning days of the Trump presidency. But behind this excellent reporting by the Times lies a significant journalistic error: the citation of anonymous “Trump associates” for the critical explanation of what Gaetz wanted that historic pardon for. According to these unnamed members of the least responsible and trustworthy cadre of sources in all of American journalism—associates of Trump—Gaetz likely sought a “group [blanket] pardon” for himself and others as “an attempt to camouflage his own potential criminal exposure” in the now extremely public sex trafficking investigation he faces.

It certainly would be convenient—for Trump and his associates, if not Gaetz—if it turned out that Gaetz wasn’t seeking pardons for himself or others because of any illicit conduct involving Trump himself, but rather for behavior whose implications redound to the detriment of Gaetz and Gaetz alone.

The problem? That story doesn’t add up. And not simply because it comes from an anonymous cadre of people who have willingly chosen to associate with arguably the most dishonest politician (for that matter, businessman) in U.S. history. This article outlines why it is considerably more probable—and is likely to be seen as such by FBI investigators—that Gaetz’s extraordinary request relates to one of Trump’s political scandals, most likely the chief scandal of his presidency: the January 6 insurrection. Indeed, the evidence pointing in this direction is both clear and compelling.

{Note: This article saves the best (or worst) for last. If you haven’t seen or heard Matt Gaetz’s December 20 speech in Florida—which may hold the key to the questions addressed in this article—you need to read the excerpts below. They constitute the gravest acts of incitement-via-political-rhetoric of the pre-insurrection period, Trump’s own January 6 speech included.}

Six Reasons to Disbelieve Trump’s Associates on Gaetz

(1) The timeline. In February 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr issued an unusual edict about federal criminal investigations relating to political figures and their allies. This shockingly broad mandate directed federal prosecutors to take no publicly visible steps in such investigations until after the 2020 presidential election.

At the time, it was clear that Barr’s edict predominantly benefitted President Trump, as the new order covered such a vast swath of the political class in and out of DC (even including non-politicians, such as donors) that it could only serve as a benefit to the most legally endangered candidate in the 2020 general election. We must remember that Trump was already, by early 2020, an unindicted co-conspirator in a campaign-finance case in the Southern District of New York, so his penchant for illicit political schemes (his just-ended and future impeachment trials notwithstanding) was already universally understood by February 2020.

What this means, as Katie Benner of the New York Times noted on The Eleventh Hour with Brian Williams on April 6 (guest hosted by Ali Velshi) is that federal investigators didn’t begin speaking to witnesses in the ongoing sex trafficking investigation focused on Gaetz (R-FL) until “December [2020]”, and moreover it wouldn’t have been until “around the [December] holidays” that Gaetz would have even had his first shot to hear about these interviews. It’s not clear how good a shot it would’ve been, either, given that (a) none of the witnesses interviewed would have been favorable to Gaetz or had any particular reason to assist him; (b) Barr was so keen to avoid any last-minute scandals during the presidential transition period that sometime prior to December 14 he informed Trump he would be leaving the Department of Justice soon, as interviews in the Gaetz case were still ongoing; and (c) while Trump certainly had allies at DOJ, and so by extension Gaetz (a key Trump sycophant) would have had some as well, generally speaking sex crimes involving minors aren’t the sort of cases that arouse sympathy for defendants among prosecutors or investigators, whatever their political leanings.

So why does it matter that the Justice Department correspondent for the New York Times puts “late December or early January” as the earliest dates for Gaetz to find out that he was under federal criminal investigation for sex trafficking? Because Gaetz started publicly discussing his interest in Trump issuing pardons on November 25, before any even potentially non-leakproof actions had been taken on his federal case.

You might ask, however, if Gaetz couldn’t have had an inkling of his legal exposure the moment a Florida associate of his, Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg, was indicted (on federal stalking charges) in June 2020? That’s fair, as Gaetz knows what he did or didn’t do—and who he did or didn’t do it with—and the current allegations are that Gaetz and Greenberg went to Seminole County’s tax collection office together one weekend to sift through driver’s licenses for potential sex-crime victims. If that indeed occurred, Gaetz saw his potential criminal liability as soon as Greenberg was indicted in mid-2020. This of course would not explain, then, why Gaetz waited half a year to broach the topic of a pardon with Trump, raising it only when the president was deeply distracted by his preparations for January 6.

So what other evidence do we have that Gaetz was worried about his actions relating to the insurrection—rather than any sex crimes—when he discussed a blanket pardon with Trump in late December 2020 or early January 2021?

(2) Gaetz denies it. Clearly his denial can be, will be, and must be taken with a shaker of salt. But the fact remains that, per the Times report on Gaetz’s pardon request, “A [Gaetz] spokesman denied that [Gaetz] privately requested a pardon in connection with the continuing Justice Department [sex trafficking] inquiry” (emphasis supplied).

While it would be little surprise if a man under investigation for multiple federal felonies lied about the ancillary matter of how he sought to evade responsibility for his actions ex post, the simple fact is that when you are under ongoing federal criminal investigation by the FBI and DOJ, every lie matters—as some could even see you hit with new charges. Given the fix Gaetz finds himself in, if it was a choice between him keeping his mouth shut and constructing an even more unmanageable mountain of lies relating to his personal and professional lives, why wouldn’t he choose the former?

If Gaetz’s denial that he spoke to Trump about his sex trafficking case (either directly or indirectly) is untrue, he runs into a problem if he ever comes to be interviewed by the FBI. Gaetz denying a conversation with Trump that the FBI might subsequently find out about—especially now that Trump and his allies are abandoning Gaetz—adds self-immolation to stupidity. While we surely ought not put this sort of self-destructive conduct past Gaetz, it’s also the sort of thing that one’s public relations team generally talks one out of, rather than facilitating.

(3) It’s possible for Gaetz’s request to have been about both the insurrection and sex trafficking.

When Gaetz first began talking about pardons in November 2020, it was clear that his concern was for his own involvement in Trump’s political agenda. At the time, Gaetz said on Fox News, “You see from the radical left a bloodlust that will only be quenched if they come after the people who worked so hard to animate the Trump administration with the policies and the vigor and the effectiveness that delivered for the American people” (emphasis supplied).

Putting aside Gaetz’s specious notion that the Trump administration had “policies” related to “deliver[ing] for the American people,” let alone “effective” ones, Gaetz’s emphasis on Trump allies who “worked so hard” for Trump, with notable “vigor,” cites a group that he is not only in but that he perhaps even features in as its most illustrious member. So even if Gaetz later found himself with a second reason to seek a blanket pardon from Trump, why would he feel any need to abandon his first reason—given that by November he had already begun working “hard” and with “vigor” to overturn the results of the 2020 general election? Nothing appears to have occurred between November 25 and early January of 2021 to slake Matt Gaetz’s desire for immunity for his various political gambits in service of the forty-fifth President of the United States.

But it’s more than this. The fact that Gaetz asked for a “blanket” pardon, rather than one specifically targeting an ongoing sex-crime investigation, is telling. A blanket pardon would have been—as the legal experts who spoke with the Times are saying now, along with every attorney who offers legal analysis on social media—historically extraordinary, which doesn’t necessarily mean “legally invalid,” but certainly means susceptible to juridical mishap. A blanket pardon is sufficiently open to interpretation about its bounds that some future judge could determine that its reach did not in fact extend to this or that conduct, or even that blanket pardons offering immunity without specificity are unconstitutional. By comparison, pardons that are explicit and specific in their grants of presidential largesse are far more likely to survive judicial scrutiny.

Some may argue that Gaetz might have asked for a blanket pardon, rather than one for specifically enumerated conduct, because he was unwilling to broach the unpalatable topic of sex trafficking with Trump. So is there evidence that Gaetz would have been more than willing to discuss alleged sexual misconduct (conduct he denied) with Trump? Undoubtedly, yes. Trump well-wished accused child-sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell multiple times; Trump was good friends with the late child-sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein for many years; he issued, in January 2021, some of the most obscene pardons in the history of the United States, suggesting that no ethical lines existed to be crossed in the pardon-granting of Trump’s final weeks in office; he himself has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women (and has in the past reveled in defending other men accused of sexual misconduct as a way of highlighting the only epidemic in the United States he appears to recognize: false rape and sexual assault allegations against upstanding gentlemen like himself); and we know Trump gleefully talks about sexual assault in private. So the notion Gaetz might have been shy about asking Trump for a sex-crime-specific pardon is implausible.

(4) Gaetz’s blanket pardon request was unusually specific in one very particular way. It’s easy to miss in the New York Times report—because so much focus has been on Gaetz and Gaetz alone—but per the Times, Gaetz “privately asked the White House for blanket pre-emptive pardons for himself and unidentified congressional allies for any crimes they may have committed” (emphasis supplied). While the nation’s paper of record posits a cloak-and-dagger reason for Gaetz asking for pardons for Trump’s “congressional allies” (“some Trump associates have speculated that Mr. Gaetz’s request for a group pardon was an attempt to camouflage his own potential criminal exposure”), it’s worth keeping in mind (a) the track record of Trump associates giving scoops to one of the authors of the Times report, access journalist Maggie Haberman, and (b) there’s a much simpler explanation for Gaetz asking for pardons for a group of Trump’s congressional allies: he and those congressional allies actually needed pardons.

As previously reported by Proof, on December 21, 2020, a large group of Trump’s top congressional allies met at the White House to discuss January 6. According to the New York Times, this meeting lasted for hours, and involved all three of the top Trump congressional allies who Stop the Steal co-organizer Ali Alexander has identified as his January 6 co-conspirators: Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), and Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ). Alexander’s co-conspirators within the Stop the Steal group included Alex Jones and Roger Stone—the latter of whom Trump actually did pardon, albeit for crimes unrelated to the insurrection—so it’s not far-fetched to think that by mid-January 2021, at a time when Alexander had already pointed to three of Trump’s congressional allies as guilty parties in the insurrection, Gaetz might have thought Trump would see the need to pardon his full contingent of House sycophants. {Note: This offers another reason, in fact, for Gaetz to have sought a blanket pardon. By not requiring a recitation of specific acts to be pardoned, it would have saved Trump from having to identify anything arguably criminal that his congressional allies might have done on his behalf and/or with his knowledge prior to January 6, on Insurrection Day itself, or in the days thereafter.}

But there’s a problem with this premise, as you may have already noticed: the timeline.

If it turns out that Gaetz first broached the topic of a blanket pardon with Trump prior to January 6, how in the world could Gaetz’s request have related to the insurrection?

Here, again, we return to the mysterious meeting on December 21, 2020: A few notes about this meeting that are relevant to this discussion:

1. As you might expect, Gaetz was there. According to this report in USA Today, Gaetz attended the meeting along with the aforementioned representatives and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). Sidney Powell was also in the White House at the time. According to Politico, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA) and Jody Hice (R-GA) were also there, along with several other (still unnamed) members of Congress.

2. Trump was there. Indeed, according to the reports linked to above, Trump spoke to the assembled group for over an hour—meaning that if anything untoward was said, Trump would have a personal impetus to want to hide it. Gaetz, having been at the meeting, would know that.

3. Vice President Mike Pence was there. The attendance of Vice President Pence is critical, as while Pence didn’t attend every component of the marathon December 21 White House meeting, he did meet with the Trumpist members of Congress who attended. If he told them in December what we know for certain he told the president as late as January 5, Gaetz and Trump’s other congressional allies knew in advance of the insurrection that Pence had absolutely no intention of trying to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory, as he believed he lacked the authority to do so. As key components of Trump’s (and Brooks’) incitement of the mob on January 6 were the false premises that Pence might still “do the right thing”, “come through for us”, “agree to send [the state certifications] back [to the individual states for review]”, and “stand up for the good of our constitution and for the good of our country”—all ideations that Trump knew were moot as he uttered them, as Pence had told him so directly—Trump congressional allies who knew in late December or early January that the whole Trump political team was lying about what even possibly could have happened at the Capitol on January 6 might have sought Trump’s protection in the waning days of his presidency.

{Note: Brooks even told Politico, post-meeting, that that’s basically what they spoke to Pence about, and what he said to them in reply. Per Brooks, “[We are] trying to make sure [with our December 21 White House meeting] that we understand what his [VP Pence’s] view of the procedural requirements are, so we can comply with them. Pence will have a tremendous amount of discretion [on January 6], though I think the rulings he will make [on January 6 in the joint session of Congress] will be pretty cut and dry.” Brooks’ last thirteen words here seem to indicate that Pence told Trump’s allies that he would only make “cut and dry rulings” when he presided over Congress’s joint session on January 6—not the extraordinary ones that Trump would falsely promise a mob of tens of thousands of radicals just seventeen days later.}

The upshot of all this is that while we don’t know what was said at the White House on December 21, we know one of the architects of the insurrection was unusually cagey on this topic when he spoke to CNN about it: “We talked about a lot of things”, Paul Gosar said, without elaborating.

So what “things” may have been discussed at the White House on December 21? Well, we know that ABC News reported, on December 21, that Trump spent that day getting pitched “desperate schemes to overturn the [2020] election” so “unprecedented” in their dimensions that they received real-time, on-site “pushback from the outgoing attorney general [William Barr]”—the same man who acted as generalissimo of Trump’s heavily armed interagency army as it enacted mass violence on unarmed civilians in Lafayette Square in the summer of 2020 (suggesting that it would have taken quite a bit for Barr to issue “pushback” on any of the president’s whims).

That Barr was at the White House at the same time as Sidney Powell, Matt Gaetz, and other Trump sycophants in Congress suggests that his demurral from the schemes then being discussed came in his capacity as the Attorney General—meaning that his determinations related to the legality of the schemes. While Barr had already tendered his resignation six days earlier, on December 16, this militates in favor of the schemes discussed at the White House on December 21 being not just illicit but notably so, as otherwise (for instance, if they were, instead, a “close call”) Barr might have stayed out of the conversation altogether, thereby avoiding making himself a witness in a future federal investigation. He ultimately left DOJ 48 hours after the December 21 meetings.

While the full scope of the matters discussed during the December 21 meetings is unclear, ABC News specifically avers that Barr was at the White House that day to push back against Trump’s “contemplat[ion] [of] ordering the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to seize states’ voting machines…declar[ing] martial law and order[ing] the military to oversee new elections in the battleground states that Trump lost.” If, as would be consistent with Trump’s character and modus operandi, he spent much of his time speaking to Gaetz and his congressional allies on December 21 opining about the very options that apparently Barr deemed unacceptable, it would explain Gaetz—before the end of Trump’s term, and therefore at a time that Trump might still have executed these presumptively illegal schemes—asking for a pardon.

{Note: It is easy to forget that at the time Gaetz sought a pardon, he did not yet know what Trump would or would not do before leaving office. Gaetz and Trump’s other congressional allies might well have wondered if he planned to enact schemes he had previously discussed with them, thus potentially accruing for them significant criminal liability during the Biden administration if Trump’s plans failed.}

As for Trump’s role in the meeting, Politico describes it as relating to “an hour [spent discussing]…how January 6 will play out.” While the digital media outlet specified that at least some of the “logistics” discussed involved basic parliamentary procedure, “such as what the objection language for each state would look like and how the floor proceedings [would] work”, it is hard to imagine the president not sharing, in turn, at least some indication of how he thought his own participation in the events of the day would “play out.” While any such monologue would of course be born as much of narcissism as utility, if it gave Trump’s allies any indication of what Trump believed his speech at the Ellipse might produce, it could reveal exactly the sort of “criminal intent” (mens rea) necessary for a future federal criminal prosecution for incitement.

(5) All of Trump’s known dealings with Gaetz during the presidential transition, and all of Gaetz’s own notable actions during that period, related to either the issuance of controversial pardons or the overturning of a democratic election on January 6.

While Gaetz’s House colleague Jody Hice called the White House meeting the two men attended on December 21 “a big meeting”—adding, interestingly, in the same statement, that besides the Freedom Caucus, “[other] members of Congress” attended, choosing the broader categorization rather than specifying “other House members” (meaning that senators may have been present)—the fact remains that while there is no evidence Gaetz ever discussed his own potential legal troubles with Trump, there is ample evidence that Gaetz’s focus in the days leading up to his request for a blanket pardon was the coordination of what turned out to be one of the most horrific days in American history. So simple odds alone make it exponentially more likely than Gaetz sought a pardon related to the insurrection as opposed to his sex life.

Keep in mind that when Gaetz—before he would’ve learned that he was under federal criminal investigation—publicly advised Trump to pardon himself and his top officials on November 25, Trump retweeted a video of Gaetz’s proposal within 24 hours. Gaetz therefore had reason to know, in fall 2020, that Trump was receptive to such thinking.

Rep. Matt Gaetz @RepMattGaetz

President Trump should pardon Flynn, the Thanksgiving turkey, and everyone from himself, to his admin, to Joe Exotic if he has to. The Left has a bloodlust that will only be quenched if they come for those who fought with @realDonaldTrump to deliver for the American people.

November 25th 2020

3,986 Retweets23,528 Likes

By December 1, Gaetz had expanded on his proposal for Trump pardons, telling top Trump domestic policy adviser Sean Hannity that Trump should pardon “himself, his family, his administration officials, and any of his supporters who’ve been targeted [by the FBI or DOJ].”

That Gaetz would on December 1 expand his pardon proposal to include key Trump “supporters” again suggests that his request had nothing to do with an investigation Gaetz would have had no basis to know about yet. Indeed, while speaking to Hannity, Gaetz was specifically reacting to the possibility of the new Biden administration investigating Trump’s political inner circle—which included Gaetz. Trump is known to be an avid watcher of his adviser Hannity’s Fox News program, so Gaetz would have had very good reason to believe that Trump would hear his words.

And if there was any doubt on this score, it ended a week later, on December 8.

On that day, Gaetz and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis flew with Trump on Air Force One. And six days after that—on December 14—Newsweek reported that Gaetz was now claiming to know Trump’s thinking on what would have been the then-president’s most controversial pardon: a pardon for Edward Snowden. Gaetz, who supported and still supports a Snowden pardon, asserted on December 14 that he knew for a fact that Trump was “listening” to those like himself seeking that pardon. Given that pardoning Snowden implicated national security considerations above Gaetz’s paygrade, Gaetz’s claim to have discussed the pardon with Trump is significant. It suggests he had a level of access to Trump on the matter of pardons—and a level of interest in exploiting that access—that preceded any later discovery that he was under federal investigation.

By December 24—still before the period that Katie Benner of the New York Times says constituted the earliest Gaetz could have found out about his legal troubles at DOJ—Politico was confirming that Gaetz had spoken directly to Trump about at least one pardon (Snowden’s). {Note: Other Florida Trump allies broaching pardons with Trump, per Politico, included former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, the aforementioned Roger Stone, and Newsmax publisher Chris Ruddy, a longtime good friend of Trump’s.}

More important than any of this, however, is what Matt Gaetz did the day before he went to the White House.

On December 20, Gaetz was in West Palm Beach, Florida giving this speech (begins at 3:30 in the video) at the 2020 Turning Point USA conference.

In the speech, Gaetz calls himself “Nancy Pelosi’s worst nightmare.” He repeats the “Big Lie” about massive 2020 election fraud. “And so”, he shortly thereafter continues, now shouting, “on January 6, I’m joining with the fighters in the Congress, and we are going to object to electors from states that didn’t run clean elections!” Gaetz then reveals that he’s just spoken to Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), and that the two men have agreed to not use the “establishment playbook” for how to act post-election and instead “stand and fight.” “The odds may be long”, Gaetz tells the crowd—members of an organization whose founder later claimed he would send “80+ buses [of GOP college students]” to Washington for January 6—“but we’re going for it on January 6!”

It only gets worse—and, oddly, more expletive-laden—from there.

“Democracy is left undefended if we accept the results of a stolen election”, Gaetz tells the rabid crowd. “[We must] fight with every bit of vigor we can muster”, he adds. Then: “We deserve leaders bold enough to take action.” Then: “America is burning, and in need of bold action and true leadership.” The focus of much of his ire on December 20? Members of Congress—the very ones who would be congregating in a joint session on January 6. That Gaetz wanted his audience enraged at Congress is clear from his remarks. Indeed, the most harrowing lines from Gaetz’s December 20 speech are these (emphasis supplied, though keep in mind Gaetz shouted most of this):

Our constitutional system reposes power in the people, and the media resents the hell out of it. They no longer want to program the news, they want to program you—controlling what you see, and what you hear, so they can manage how you behave. I guess in their eyes, we’re all behaving a little badly! But maybe more bad behavior is what we need to advance the America First agenda! ‘Cause I don’t know about you, but I’m not going back to yesterday’s Republican Party. I’m not going back to losing politely…

…

If you want to get the job done—if you want to “drain the swamp”—hire a Florida man [referring to himself and Donald Trump]. We’ve drained swamps in the State of Florida. And we know how to get the job done. Just like the alligators out in the Everglades, the D.C. swamp creatures [members of Congress] have spent seemingly millennia adjusting to their surroundings. And they can be very dangerous if not properly handled. Now we know that the swamp [Washington] isn’t truly drained until we’ve nailed the hides of the alligators to the wall!

As if advocating for violence wasn’t enough, Gaetz then goes completely off the grid.

He attacks Barr’s DOJ—perhaps even realizing that he might encounter Bill Barr the following day at the White House—for not indicting anyone from Biden’s family or the Obama administration, implying that careerism is the source of the DOJ’s and Barr’s cowardice. He then proposes that “in the next term of Donald Trump”, Trump “ought to pick me to be the Attorney General. And if for whatever reason he [Trump] doesn’t run [again], maybe I ought to [be president] and pick the Attorney General!”

Gaetz then admits that “our movement” is “dangerous” to “those who would sell out our country”—a group he’s already said includes members of Congress of both parties.

Analogizing the present moment to the late 1700s, and he and his audience to Colonial revolutionaries, Gaetz then makes explicit his call for violence:

[George] Washington [got] together his rag-tag band of patriots…[to] cross[ ] that icy Delaware River and slaughter[ their enemies]….she [America] may need us now more than ever. And we better fight like hell for her with all we have. For there is no place to run—there is no distant land to convert to our [America First] purposes should we fail. Our day will come to fight and cross the river like Washington had to. I hope you’re ready. And I hope you’ll cross that river with me.

Immediately after Gaetz leaves the stage, former top Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka appears. These are his first words to the frenzied crowd before him: “Don’t we need a few more Matt Gaetz[’s] in the world? Are you ready to fight?”

Gaetz’s Turning Point USA speech may be the most deranged political speech of the presidential transition period, Trump’s January 6 Ellipse speech included. Indeed, it’s very close to an announcement of a 2024 presidential run; notably, Gaetz attacks other potential candidates (like Nikki Haley) and speaks of a “new generation of America First leaders” (one that would, quite evidently, include him). He spends so much time on foreign policy that his Turning Point USA address sounds like a State of the Union. And of course, as noted above, he directly floats his own candidacy for president.

Can you imagine the role Gaetz must have tried to craft for himself—having said these words on December 20—in any conversation the following day with AG Barr? Can you imagine what Gaetz must have said at the White House to try to impress the president on that day? Or how much he might have feared the repercussions of what he said and did and heard and encouraged once the Capitol had been cleared of insurrectionists?

(6) If Gaetz wanted to raise the Greenberg case with Trump, he could have and would have done it much earlier.

In December 2020, both Gaetz and Stone were lobbying Trump to pardon Snowden. But Gaetz and Stone were also conjoined in another way: both are friends with Joel Greenberg, the man whose co-defendant Matt Gaetz may shortly become.

Thick as thieves: Roger Stone (l), Matt Gaetz (c), and Joel Greenberg (r).

Given that Greenberg’s case began in mid-2020, and given that Gaetz and Stone were not only both friends with Greenberg but both seeking pardons for themselves and others in conversations with Trump, why would any blanket pardon Gaetz sought from Trump be a roundabout way of broaching a topic that by all accounts Gaetz would have already broached with Trump well before December?

Indeed, one of the odder discoveries of my research on this topic was a December 18, 2020 article—note the date—by Henry Frederick, a Sanford (Florida) resident whose LinkedIn page says he is the former City Editor of the Taunton Daily Gazette and the former Courts Reporter of the Daytona Beach News-Journal. Frederick wrote, in mid-December 2020, “Could a Trump pardon be in the works for indicted ex-Central Florida tax collector Joel Greenberg via pals Roger Stone and Matt Gaetz?” If Henry Frederick could suss out that Gaetz and Stone were likely speaking to Trump about Greenberg, due to their “well-chronicled relationships with Donald Trump”, it likely occurred to Gaetz and Stone. And December 18 precedes the earliest date when, per the New York Times, Gaetz could have heard of his own liability in the Greenberg case.

In view of the foregoing, there’s every reason to think that the “Trump associates” who spoke to the New York Times are lying to America on a matter of grave import—again.

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