U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz hired one of former President Donald Trump’s defense attorneys amid a federal probe into the lawmaker’s relationships with women recruited online for sex, including possibly a 17-year-old girl.
Marc Mukasey confirmed in an email Friday that he’d been hired by Gaetz, a Florida Republican and staunch Trump supporter. The New York-based Mukasey is also one of the lawyers representing the former president in a separate criminal investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance as well as another probe by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Gaetz’s legal team “will take the fight to those trying to smear his name with falsehoods,” a spokesperson for the congressman said in a statement. “Matt has always been a fighter. A fighter for his constituents, a fighter for the country, and a fighter for the Constitution. And he’s going to fight back against the unfounded allegations against him.”
News of the hiring comes one day after Joel Greenberg, a former Florida tax collector who’s a political ally of Gaetz, told a judge he is ready to plead guilty in a child sex-trafficking and identity-theft case. Gaetz has denied wrongdoing and suggested he is the victim of an extortion scheme.
At a status hearing Thursday in federal court in Orlando, Greenberg agreed with prosecutors that his case “should resolve by guilty plea” at a hearing set for May 15 before U.S. District Judge Gregory A. Presnell, court records show.
The New York Times reported last week that the Justice Department is investigating whether Gaetz violated federal sex-trafficking laws through his connection with Greenberg. Fritz Scheller, Greenberg’s lawyer, told reporters for CNN and other outlets after the hearing that he is “sure Matt Gaetz is not feeling very comfortable today” but didn’t elaborate further.
Mukasey, the son of former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, is known in New York legal circles as a protege of another Trump lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. But Marc Mukasey has distanced himself from the election-fraud claims pushed by Trump and Giuliani.
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