Florida State Attorney: Matt Gaetz’s Fox News Interview ‘May Have Made Tucker Carlson a Witness’

Florida State Attorney for Palm Beach County Dave Aronberg appeared on Morning Joe Wednesday morning and warned that Fox News host Tucker Carlson might have become a witness in the sordid FBI investigation into Rep. Matt Gaetz alleged sex trafficking charges after a bizarre appearance Tuesday night.

Given the subject matter—and the long-established political inclinations of all involved—one might expect a level of schadenfreude from the various remote sets of Morning Joe. Still, all in all, the discussion, which also featured the New York Times reporter who broke the story, Michael Schmidt, was remarkably dispassionate and fact-based.

Quick context on the back story: news broke late Tuesday night that Rep. Gaetz was under investigation for sex trafficking charges connected with a 17-year-old girl, which also involves a currently jailed Florida Tax Collector.

Gaetz appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight to explain his side in an appearance that included charges that a DOJ official was blackmailing him and that he and his father were wearing wires as part of a sting operation to expose. But the appearance failed to convince Carlson, as well as the millions of likely sympathetic viewers. Tucker Carlson himself appeared to throw Gaetz under the bus in a coda to the interview that dismissed Gaetz’s appearance as bizarre and confusing.

Schmidt and Aronberg came on to provide further context and insight on the story, and host Joe Scarborough showed off some of the “simple country lawyer” skills he is often referencing by reducing the curious story to its essence. Viewers learned that the Morning Joe host had had a long relationship with the Gaetz family from his time serving in office in the Florida panhandle and that father, Don Gaetz, has been a long-time contributor to Scarborough’s political campaigns.

Viewers were then treated to a smart summary of the Gaetz story, all of the moving parts, and plenty of mentions of Tucker Carlson without any predictable dings on a fellow cable news contributor. But Dave Aronberg noted that Carlson might have been dragged into the investigation unwillingly at the end of the segment.

Mika Brzezinski asked him if anything stood out in Gaetz’s performance on Tucker Carlson. “Did anything make sense to you? And what is the potential consequence for the charge that the justice department is looking at?”

“Yeah, Mika, he may have made Tucker Carlson a witness because on his show, he said ‘Hey, you remember the woman I was with. She was overage.'” Aronberg continued to say that Gaetz’s main defense is going to be that he has never dated anyone underage.

“And this whole thing about extortion, as Joe correctly pointed out, that’s more of a smokescreen for the court of public opinion,” he added. “That is not a defense to a charge of child sex trafficking. So, let’s see what the evidence shows. I have a feeling we’re going to learn a lot more very soon.”

Watch above via MSNBC.