Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) unleashed an angry rant on Monday about the possibility that he will be indicted in a sex-trafficking investigation that has ensnared at least one of his associates.
Without being prompted, Gaetz complained about the investigation during an appearance on Steve Bannon's War Room: Pandemic podcast.
The Florida Republican explained the concept of a "cut-out" where a group or person is "activated," giving the government a reason to respond.
Gaetz argued that the purported sex-trafficking investigation had the same "pattern" as the impeachment of former President Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
"Using a cut-out seems like exactly what they were trying to do to me!" Gaetz told Bannon. "We are going to take power and when we do, it's not going to be the days of Paul Ryan and Trey Gowdy, where the Republicans go limp-wristed, where they lose their backbone and fail to send a single subpoena. No, it's going to be the days of Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene."
Gaetz claimed that the Department of Justice has "gone totally off the rails" because of the investigation into him.
"There is a pattern that is consistent through the Russia hoax, through the Ukraine matter, through my matter, through Jan. 6," he said. "And that is that you have these grey operators that are adjacent to the intelligence community."
"They go an activate other people to seed a lie," the congressman continued, "or engage in an activity that then gives the national security apparatus the authority to do something that they wouldn't otherwise be able to do."
Gaetz posited that the events that led up to the sex-trafficking investigation were likely part of a government "operation" to take him down.
"I'm starting to wonder whether or not what they tried to do to me was extortion or an operation," he opined. "And more and more, it looks like an operation."