Podcast “On Topic”

Matt Gaetz (April 17, 2021)

Notes on Interview with Renato Mariotti

• Gaetz is certainly a subject of the investigation.
• A target means that the prosecutor intends to indict.
• Being a subject is not something you should feel good about.  It means they’re trying to develop enough information to charge you.
• The defense attorney can ask if his/her client is a subject or a target.
• Sex trafficking statute.  Drugs potentially can go to the coercion part of the law.
• Drugs are at the very least a thing of value you can be exchanging for sex.
• Mariotti is talking about the decisions that go into charging, whether there is enough evidence to win in court on a specific count. 
• Mariotti maintains that he would want to have the 17-year-old count.  Juries will look at the defendant as such a sleaze they won’t be able to think of anything else. 
• The Mann Act is a “strange act.”  Enacted over a century ago. Weird language in it. 
• It had been used to prosecute people for sex among adults.  People questioned the use.  Mariotti maintains that it is not a normal act for the federal government to charge under.
• When there are federal Mann act cases, they usually involve child sex trafficking.
• My note: Why was Bill Barr so determined to stay away from this case and Matt Gaetz?  Why didn’t he quash the case?
• There is the speculation that this case is larger than the underage girl question?
• Mariotti argues that he would want a slam dunk charge like identity fraud or bank fraud.  Then, he would introduce the other sex acts as context.  The idea is to convict Gaetz on the fraud charges (the “slam-dunk”) and then tell the judge that the fraud was committed in the context of the sexual behavior which the judge would consider in sentencing.
• My note: I don’t really understand this but it sounds sleazy as hell.
• My note: Why is Mariotti even talking about Gaetz being charged for political reasons?  Is he arguing that they should charge the “slam-dunk” instead of the sex charges because it can be argued that the sex charges are politically motivated?  Why?  What difference does that even make?  Why are people so afraid of what some Republican might say about criminal behavior?  If Gaetz has violated the law, he has violated the law.
• My note: Mariotti is maintaining that one of the considerations in charging is: “How will this cause people to view the Justice Department differently?”  So, what’s Mariotti’s actually saying is that the Justice Department itself is making political decisions (the politics of their own image) in charging.
• My note: This is the type of attitude that led Comey to make some of the decisions he made that were so disastrous for the Democrats.  He made decisions partly on the basis of what he thought was good for the Justice Department and its image, not on what DOJ policy was and had been when he announced they were not charging Clinton, but probably should have.
• My Note: Gaetz was showing photographs of naked women to other men on the floor of the House and bragging that they were his conquests.  I would like to know who he showed these photographs to and why they didn’t report him and have him censured?  Who were they? 
• My Note: Matt Gaetz, a Republican, and his behavior with underage girls speaks to the repeated projection by the Republican party.  They have spent years accusing Democrats of running a pedophile ring.  Now that they have a pedophile in their midst and they are fine with it.  It’s all projection.  So, I keep thinking about the “baby eating” charge.
• The interviewer asks, as a prosecutor would you bring in the fact that Gaetz showed these photos on the House floor?  Mariotti says that if he were the judge he would not allow this evidence in because it would be too prejudicial.  My note: Jesus Christ.
• Mariotti argues that it would be too prejudicial because “Jurors would judge him (Gaetz).”  My note: Well, hell yeah.  Quite rightly.
• Mariotti is talking about “streamlining” cases, what prosecutors do to “streamline” cases.  My note:  this is part of what’s wrong with the system.
• My note: In what universe is Gaetz’s showing nude photos of women on the floor of the House not evidence of a pattern of exploitive behavior towards women?
• Gaetz has chosen Mark Mukasey as his attorney.  Mukasey’s father was at the Justice Department after Alberto Gonzalez. Mukasey’s a very good trial lawyer, according to Mariotti.  He is very closely tied to Giuliani.  Perhaps also representing the Trump Organization.
• My note: So now we know that Mukasey is part of the club.
• Gaetz still thinks he’s living in a world where Trump is president and can shield him.
• My note: these men wouldn’t be behaving like this, like they were above the law, if they hadn’t been for their entire lives.  The world Mariotti lives in has shielded these elite criminals for decades.