Holy crap! The extortion part is real? Lol.
Here's my take on the whole situation: I imagine most sex-criminals in the news in the way that SVU will eventually spoof them. And the image in my head, of the detectives interrogating a politician about his payments to women, then he really smugly says "people want to mischaracterize my generosity with my partners. I'm a generous lover, you know." And then Ice-T goes "well you were feeling a little too "generous" with a 17-year-old then", and the politician's face gets all serious and contorted and he goes "17-year old? I have no idea what your talking about! All those women were legal", and then he starts cooperating after 15 minutes of tv spent fighting through his obstruction.
Basically, he totally hired prostitutes and did illegal things with them, the part about a minor is substantially less likely but still possible so we shall see, and I would say NBC should hire me to write for them, but a trained monkey could write SVU because they've got a formula (and it works). And also, if it turns out he didn't have sex with any minors, and that piece of information was fabricated by people who knew about the prostitutes and were trying to extort him, they won't even have to write a plot twist when they make this episode.
Edit: for those who haven't or can't read the article Buyetyen posted:
Mr. Gaetz has sought to divert attention from the Justice Department investigation by claiming that he and his father were the targets of an extortion plot by two men trying to secure funding for a separate venture.
The men — Robert Kent, a former Air Force intelligence officer who runs a consulting business, and Stephen Alford, a real estate developer who has been convicted of fraud — approached Mr. Gaetz’s father, Don Gaetz, about funding their efforts to locate Robert A. Levinson, an American hostage held in Iran. They suggested to Don Gaetz that Mr. Levinson’s successful return could somehow be used to secure a pardon for Matt Gaetz if he were charged with federal crimes, according to a copy of their proposal provided to The Times.
Mr. Kent denied the Gaetzes’ assertions. He said he had heard rumors that Matt Gaetz might be under investigation and mentioned them only to sweeten his proposal. “I told him I’m not trying to extort, but if this were true, he might be interested in doing something good,” Mr. Kent said in an interview.
Yeah, that guy was trying to "sweeten his proposal" in the same way Gaetz was "generous with his partners". The criminal euphemisms are in full force here.
Second edit: to be clear, I'm not saying the silly extortion angle is a more or less likely than Gaetz having sex with a minor. I think both those things are unlikely. The facts as are already reported is that Joel Greenburg is guilty of that. So:
1) Joel Greenburg is currently charged with trafficking a 17-year-old girl.
2) Greenburg arranged for Gaetz to sleep with prostitutes.
3) They are very reasonably investigating whether Greenburg arranged for Gaetz to sleep with the 17-year-old. But that doesn't that actually occurred, only that an investigation is justified. I highly doubt the tax collector turned sex trafficker had Gaetz as the sole client he catered to.
