Matt Gaetz’s father backs up extortion allegation, but ex-FBI agent Bob Levinson enters picture

U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz’s father, Don Gaetz, a former Florida Senate president, backed up his son’s claims of extortion Wednesday and said he wore a wire for the FBI to try to prove that crime, according to Politico.

A Washington Post report indicated the alleged extortion might have involved an attempt to recover a long-missing FBI agent.

The Post reported that, according to sources, two men wrote to Don Gaetz and offered to help his son if he gave then a large sum of money to help locate Robert A. Levinson, an American hostage in Iran who disappeared in 2007 and hasn’t been seen since a video in 2010.

Don Gaetz was suspicious and viewed it as an extortion attempt, the report said, especially since the investigation was not public knowledge, which is why he went to the FBI.

Levinson, of Coral Springs, was a former agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI and was working for the CIA when he planned a trip in 2007 to Kish Island, an Iranian resort island in the Persian Gulf. He was there trying to cultivate an informant for the CIA.

In March 2020, Levinson’s family said the U.S. government concluded he had died while in Iran’s custody. In December, the Trump administration said Iran was responsible for Levinson’s death.

The senior Gaetz also acknowledged there is a federal probe into whether his son was involved in the sexual trafficking of a 17-year-old girl, an investigation that he said a former Justice Department official would keep quiet if he were paid to do so.

Shortly after the New York Times reported Tuesday that Matt Gaetz was being investigated for sex trafficking, stemming from the prosecution of former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg, Matt Gaetz claimed on Twitter that he and his family were the victims of “an organized criminal extortion.”

A former Justice Department official, he wrote, was seeking $25 million. His father had been wearing a wire in cooperation with the FBI, he wrote, and “the planted leak to the FBI tonight was intended to thwart that investigation.”

The former official was named in news reports as David McGee, a Pensacola attorney and former federal prosecutor.

McGee told the Post that Matt Gaetz’s allegations of extortion are “completely false. It’s a blatant attempt to distract from the fact that he’s under investigation for sex trafficking of minors. I have no connection with that case at all, other than, one of a thousand people who have heard the rumors.”

In an interview with Politico, Don Gaetz said, “The FBI asked me to try and get that information for Matt and an indication we would transfer money to Mr. David McGee.” But he did not specify what information.

Don Gaetz did not return a request for comment Wednesday. McGee’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Information from the South Florida Sun Sentinel archive was used in this report.

slemongello@orlandosentinel.com