Lengthy POLITICO story about Matty. Begins with:
Gaetz runs the Trump playbook for scandal: Keep talking, and talking
One thing the former president proved is that unless you're Donald Trump and sit in the White House, his strategy doesn't work as well.
Ever since the first report that he faced a Department of Justice investigation into potential trafficking of an underage girl, Rep. Matt Gaetz has channeled the former president as he tries to explain the inquiry away.
By KYLE CHENEY and MATT DIXON 03/31/2021 05:32 PM EDT
A person in serious legal jeopardy tends to, per their lawyer’s advice, shut up. Matt Gaetz is handling his current problems a little differently. Trying to deflect from the threat of a federal criminal investigation for potential trafficking of a minor, Gaetz raced to Twitter, Fox News and other outlets seeking maximum exposure — a flood-the-zone approach reminiscent of Donald Trump’s strategy for talking his way through scandal. And so the GOP congressman from Florida, to the bewilderment of legal experts, made himself unavoidable for comment as the threat to his political career began to metastasize. "My hope is that the truth will set me free, so I'm trying to get as much truth out as possible,” Gaetz, who represents a Florida panhandle district, said in an interview Wednesday.
It’s an unorthodox strategy that former prosecutors and defense attorneys described as dubious and perhaps even counterproductive, since Gaetz's interviews this week risk handing fodder to prosecutors as they build a possible trafficking case against him. But Gaetz's path, they said, is well-worn by politicians who are more concerned about the court of public opinion than the courtroom — none more visibly than the former president whose politics Gaetz has championed. “It would seem to me that he is digging himself a deeper hole,” David Weinstein, a former assistant U.S. attorney from the Southern District of Florida, said of Gaetz. “His statements yesterday seem to have given credence to the allegations, not defeated them.”
Ever since the first report that he faced a Department of Justice investigation into potential trafficking of an underage girl, Gaetz has channeled the former president as he tries to explain the inquiry away. One of Gaetz's claims is eerily similar to Trump's response to the federal probe of his ties to Russia: It's all part of a DOJ-orchestrated smear, the congressperson says, meant to silence a prominent conservative. Other Gaetz responses served as further distractions, all without definitive proof or refutation of the trafficking allegation he faces: It’s an elaborate extortion plot, he says, meant to bilk his wealthy family of millions. Oh, and DOJ once attempted to convince a previous romantic interest to pin him with a pay-for-play scandal, he adds. And by the way, Gaetz says, his dad was planning to wear a wire to catch the current extortionists, one of whom had a bizarre request related to freeing an American hostage in Iran.
Thus went the first 24 hours of Gaetz’s ongoing media blitz, which began minutes after The New York Times broke the first story about the trafficking probe. Along the way, he admitted that he’s ferried romantic interests across state lines, paying for their travel, but he insisted the young women were all of legal age and that he was simply being chivalrous. Those comments, legal experts said, run counter to the typical defense strategy of denying allegations and lay low.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/3 ... dal-478740
As President Obama so beautifully put it: Please proceed.
s titular Mama June in Fogbow's Favourite Show™ Mama June: From Not To Hot! Fogbow's Theme Song™ Edith Massey's "I Got The Evidence!" 
