Matt Gaetz's 'amazing and shocking' private quotes 'consistent' with allegations: lawmaker

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) raised serious questions about the nomination of Matt Gaetz for attorney general and revealed some of the Florida Republican's troubling private behavior.

Republican senators have indicated they're not willing to confirm Donald Trump's nominee, who resigned from the House shortly after his nomination and a day ahead of the likely release of an Ethics Committee report on sex trafficking allegations against him, and Cohen told CNN that the former lawmaker's private comments were consistent with accusations against him.

"He made some statements to me when he was a freshman that I found just kind of amazing and shocking, and I just had to look forward," Cohen said. "We were in the committee room and I guess he thought he was a young guy and he was getting started, and and I sponsored a decriminalization of marijuana law, and he came up and he said something, and I just thought, 'My god, I can't believe he's saying that to me.' So it's consistent, I'm not going to go into it, but it's consistent with what he's been charged with."

ALSO READ: A giant middle finger from a tiny craven man

Multiple sources told CNN in 2021 that Gaetz had shown other lawmakers photos and videos of nude women while on the House floor and talked about having sex with them, and Cohen said the publicly known allegations against the former congressman raise too many red flags to put him in charge of federal law enforcement.

"It's really not from House speaker Mike Johnson, even though he has power," Cohen said. "His power is, he's just a conduit for the power that comes from Mar-a-Lago, and so that's the fear is Trump. He's the bad guy, and I don't think they'll release [the report] – I think [the committee vote] will be five-[to]-five. It won't go out, but it should go out because the American public has a right to, they don't have a right, but they they need to see it. They need to see who's been nominated to be the top law enforcement officer in the country, and it would also be a teaching tool to the Congress people, including myself, I don't know. It was talking about the salacious things, the sex and the 17-year-old and the drugs, and that's wrong and bad and illegal and blah, blah blah."

"But there's stuff in there about taking a bribe," Cohen added. "I want to know what kind of, did he get $50 and vote for something or $500 or something else? That is kind of a quid pro quo deal. They said he used his congressional perquisites for people that was unauthorized. I don't know what they mean. Did somebody vote for him? Did he give his voting card to somebody and they voted for him or what? Whatever he did, I don't even understand from the charges, and then there's some other things in there concerning using his campaign fund for personal expenses. Did he charge the the plays and the and the tickets to New York and the hotel room to his campaign, members representation allowance, which is illegal."

Watch below or click the link here.

- YouTube youtu.be