Gaetz came on Tucker Carlson and attempted to get in front of the allegations, and claimed that a specific DOJ employee had been attempting to extort him. And implied that the DOJ and FBI may have leaked the investigation to the NYT in order to bury the investigation.
Relatively quickly, team Blue reacted by trying to embarrass him in regards to the interview:
In their defense, nobody in their circles does this.
He was going to take the hit no matter what happened. That's why the idea that you would try to extort a conservative by saying you would go to the press with the extortion claim is absurd to us. Don Lemon would rape your dog on live TV if the thought it could hurt your poll numbers. Why on God's Green Earth would anyone believe that the Antifa supporting communists of twitter Trots and racist lynchers would not try to defame any Republican given an opportunity.
Jesus, look how they treat John McCain and Mitt Romney who are effectively on their side at this point. They exist only to be used to claim their positions have mass bi-partisan support, and then are run over with a truck.
Even if Gaetz paid 25 million dollars in gold bullion to the person who contacted him, the Washington Post would say that claiming Matt Gaetz didn't rape a 12 year old girl was a baseless conspiracy theory. There is no upside to this deal.
But Washington politicians are so fundamentally cowardly that they are not prepared to take any hits in order to gain victories. Someone else has to get hurt for them. Gaetz knew that asking for mercy from Leftist media would be both stupid and self-defeating. Also, 'granting a pardon' means still getting a conviction. So, he took the hit to the face, got in front of the story, and (for a moment) re-took the initiative.
He should not be waiting for the FBI to release their recordings though.
Part of the problem here is that I'd bet money that it was the FBI agents he was working with that leaked the story of the investigation. You think FBI and DOJ employees wouldn't work together to try and destroy a populist politician? Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if we found out that the former DOJ employee that asked for the $25 million was an FBI informant, and this was a ruse to get Gaetz dad (and maybe himself) put in prison by having Don Gaetz give money to an FBI informant at the behest of the FBI.
As if the FBI hasn't engaged in entrapment before.