Extortion

New Jersey senator Bob Menendez was found guilty of all sixteen charges today, including bribery, extortion, acting as a foreign agent, obstruction of justice and several counts of conspiracy. Three businessmen paid bribes to the Democratic senator and his wife in exchange for taking actions to benefit them and the governments of Qatar and Egypt, or so the prosecutors argued. Those bribes included $100,000 in gold bars, a Mercedes-Benz and more than $480,000 in cash. Two of the New Jersey businessmen tried alongside Menendez were also convicted on all counts. Menendez did not plead guilty or testify in his own defense. His team argued that he was acting on behalf of his constituents and that the prosecution couldn’t prove that the gold bars and money were bribes.

Rep. Matt Gaetz is requesting a meeting with Israel's ambassador to the US, Gilad Erdan, to discuss the alleged extortion plot of the Gaetz family, according to a letter obtained by The Spectator. As previously reported, days before news broke that the FBI was investigating the Florida congressman for sex trafficking allegations, Jake Novak at the Israeli consulate in New York told Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams about the probe. 'I come as a friend to Israel. Supporting the US-Israel relationship is very important to me and to my constituents,' Gaetz writes in the letter. 'Jake Novak is the Broadcast Media Relations Director at Israel's Consulate in New York.

Federal authorities indicted a man on Tuesday who stands accused of extorting Rep. Matt Gaetz’s father for $25 million. For months, Gaetz has claimed Stephen Alford, the indicted man, conspired with a former Air Force intelligence officer and a retired DoJ prosecutor to extort his family, amid an ongoing FBI investigation into the lawmaker for sex trafficking. At the center of the alleged plot was an attempt by the group to free an ex-American spy, Bob Levinson, who was captured in Iran over a decade ago and believed to be dead. The development raises more questions than answers in the Matt Gaetz sex trafficking saga.

Some hot water this week for Rep. Matt Gaetz. The Sunshine State Republican and adroit controversialist stands accused of everything from having sex with a 17-year-old girl to throwing orgies with underage prostitutes to showing his fellow lawmakers pictures of nude women on the House floor. He has yet to be caught chucking an alligator into a drive-thru window or attacking a Disney princess with a flamethrower, but even by Florida Man standards these are serious charges. The Justice Department has opened an investigation, while Gaetz himself has denied everything, claiming he’s being extorted. And certainly he deserves due process and the benefit of the doubt. Yet the allegations against him raise a thorny question: where do Republicans draw the line on sexual misconduct?