Rep. Matt Gaetz is under investigation for alleged sexual contact with a 17-year-old girl

Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz may face charges for alleged sexual connection with a 17-year-old girl, New York Times reported this week.
Rep. Gaetz is under investigation by the Department of Justice for in incident in which the 38-year-old official allegedly paid the young woman to travel with him outside of Florida in the final months of the Trump administration.
Gaetz told the Times that he is not a target of investigation while his lawyers are in contact with DOJ. The Representative himself declines all allegations and insists on his innocence.
“I only know that it has to do with women,” Gaetz told the paper. “I have a suspicion that someone is trying to recategorize my generosity to ex-girlfriends as something more untoward.”
Over the past several weeks my family and I have been victims of an organized criminal extortion involving a former DOJ official seeking $25 million while threatening to smear my name.
— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) March 30, 2021
We have been cooperating with federal authorities in this matter...
"The allegations against me are as searing as they are false," Gaetz said. "I believe that there are people at the Department of Justice who are trying to criminalize my sexual conduct, you know when I was a single guy."
"I have definitely, in my single days, provided for women I've dated," Gaetz added. "You know, I've paid for flights, for hotel rooms. I’ve been, you know, generous as a partner. I think someone is trying to make that look criminal when it is not."
...and my father has even been wearing a wire at the FBI’s direction to catch these criminals. The planted leak to the FBI tonight was intended to thwart that investigation.
— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) March 30, 2021
No part of the allegations against me are true, and the people pushing these lies are targets...
...of the ongoing extortion investigation.
— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) March 30, 2021
I demand the DOJ immediately release the tapes, made at their direction, which implicate their former colleague in crimes against me based on false allegations.
However, a close ally of the former president, who announced his engagement to 26-year-old Ginger Luckey in December, wrote in his Twitter that his family was the target of a plot under investigation by the FBI.
"It is a horrible allegation and it is a lie," Gaetz told Tucker Curlson. "The New York Times is running a story that I have traveled with a 17-year-old woman and that is verifiably false. People can look at my travel records and see that that is not the case."
Thank you for sharing the moment with us Judge! https://t.co/w9Mejm46mZ
— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) December 31, 2020