The New York Times’ masthead is displayed in front of the midtown headquarters in New York City on Dec. 7, 2009. (Mario Tama/Getty Images) Media & Big Tech

By Isabel van Brugen April 10, 2021 Updated: April 10, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Several current New York Times staffers were previously employed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-controlled English-language newspaper China Daily, which has in recent years paid U.S. media millions of dollars to publish its state-approved content.

Current employees at the New York Times who formerly worked for the Chinese state-run media outlet include; Jonah Kessel, Director of Cinematography at the Times; Diarmuid McDermott, a current Staff Editor and Designer at the outlet; and Europe culture reporter Alex Marshall, the National Pulse found.

In now-deleted Twitter posts, Kessel, who took on the role of China Daily’s Creative Director from July 2009 to November 2010, wrote that working for the CCP sometimes has its “benefits.” He also mentioned that he was “psyched” for starting the role, which included “redesigning” the propaganda arm of the CCP.

He had disclosed in several posts that he was “working for” and “getting paid” by Chinese state media.

“You know you work for the PRC [The People’s Republic of China] when the first word that comes to your mind when asked to describe your work place is ‘harmonious’ #china,” Kessel wrote in a Twitter post in November 2009.

According to McDermott’s LinkedIn profile and personal website, he worked as editor and designer for China Daily in a Hong Kong-based role for eight years—from November 2012 to November last year. He assumed the same role at the NY Times last year, and is still based in Hong Kong.

He revamped China Daily’s “Asia Weekly” publication, which, according to his profile, involved “Copy editing; Rewriting raw copy; Designing layout and graphics; Sourcing news stories and pictures; Developing and maintaining a web presence across multiple platforms; Outputting pages for printers across the region.”

Marshall was reportedly employed by China Daily as an editor between 2003 and 2004.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the NY Times for comment.

For years, the NY Times has sought expanded access to the Chinese market and accepted millions in advertising revenue from Chinese state-owned media entities.

Records from the U.S. Department of Justice last year show that China Daily paid nearly 19 million dollars to U.S. media companies for advertising and printing expenses over the past four years.

Paid supplements with a pro-Beijing agenda produced by the outlet were published in newspapers such as The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

The CCP-controlled outlet also paid the NY Times $50,000 for advertising, the Justice Department records show.

Young unaccompanied migrants that range in age from 3 to 9 sit inside a play pen at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility, the main detention centre for unaccompanied children in the Rio Grande Valley, in Donna, Texas, on March 30, 2021. (Dario Lopez-Mills/Pool via Reuters) Executive Branch

By Zachary Stieber April 10, 2021 Updated: April 10, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday announced plans to open facilities in Michigan and Pennsylvania as officials struggle to care for the surging number of illegal immigrant minors crossing into the United States from Mexico.

The emergency sites in Albion and Erie will together have a potential capacity of 888 beds. Both are designated for children aged 12 and under who cross the border without a parent or other responsible adult. The children are known as unaccompanied minors.

The number of illegal border crossers soared in March, Biden’s second full month in office, topping 172,000, a jump of over 71,000 from the month prior. The number of unaccompanied minors more than doubled to 18,890.

The figures do not include people who crossed the border and evaded U.S. officials.

Border Patrol has been “overwhelmed” by the surge in illegal immigrants, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) told The Epoch Times last month.

“All our good intentions are being overwhelmed by the pure numbers of people coming in,” he added.

Border Patrol is the initial point of contact for border crossers. After a period of time meant to be three days or less in Border Patrol facilities, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) transfers the immigrants to facilities across the country.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of HHS, is opening the new emergency intake sites in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

The Albion facility will be at the Starr Commonwealth campus. The Erie facility will be at the Pennsylvania International Academy.

The office has a program that includes over 200 facilities in 22 states but has been forced to open at least 11 new sites to handle the sharp increase in unaccompanied minors, including several at U.S. military bases.

The Trump administration was expelling young immigrants who crossed the border but once Biden took office, he directed all minors to be accepted into the country and quickly united with a sponsor, usually a parent or other family member, already in the country.

Administration officials have described the change as part of an effort to develop a “more humane” immigration system. Stephen Miller, one of former President Donald Trump’s top immigration advisers, has said the policies incentivize parents to send their children on long, dangerous treks to the United States alone.

HHS was caring for nearly 17,000 unaccompanied minors as of April 8. Another 3,881 were in Border Patrol custody.

Republicans and some Democrats have repeatedly criticized the Biden administration for its reversal of key Trump-era policies, arguing the changes have spurred the spike in illegal immigrants crossing the border.

“This is out of control. It’s the middle of the night. We’ve seen dozens of children flow freely across the border in just the past few minutes. This is the reality of Joe Biden’s disastrous amnesty agenda,” House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) said in a video from the border on April 9.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a federal agency, meanwhile, told news outlets that it reached an agreement to pay for 1,200 hotel beds and other necessary services for illegal immigrants in Texas and Arizona.

“Under the contract, shelter is intended to be short-term, and generally less than 72 hours, for immigration enforcement processing including establishing appropriate terms and conditions of release. All families will receive a comprehensive health assessment to include COVID-19 testing,” the agency said.

Some of the hotels are in Chandler and Phoenix, the office of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) said.

Sinema recently spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “and has called on the Department to provide more resources in Arizona to manage the flow of migrants,” the office said in a statement.

“Senator Sinema is continuing to monitor the situation and will hold Secretary Mayorkas and DHS accountable for protecting Arizona communities and ensuring all migrants are treated fairly and humanely,” it added.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo speaks as White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki looks on during a daily press briefing at the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House April 7, 2021 in Washington. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) China-US News

By Reuters April 8, 2021 Updated: April 8, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

The U.S. Commerce Department said April 8 it was adding seven Chinese supercomputing entities to a U.S. economic blacklist for assisting Chinese military efforts.

The department is adding Tianjin Phytium Information Technology, Shanghai High-Performance Integrated Circuit Design Center, Sunway Microelectronics, the National Supercomputing Center Jinan, the National Supercomputing Center Shenzhen, the National Supercomputing Center Wuxi, and the National Supercomputing Center Zhengzhou to its blacklist.

The Commerce Department said the seven were “involved with building supercomputers used by China’s military actors, its destabilizing military modernization efforts, and/or weapons of mass destruction programs.”

This is the first time the Biden administration has taken action to penalize Chinese companies on national security grounds.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“Supercomputing capabilities are vital for the development of many – perhaps almost all – modern weapons and national security systems, such as nuclear weapons and hypersonic weapons,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a statement.

Companies or others listed on the U.S. Entity List are required to apply for licenses from the Commerce Department that face tough scrutiny when they seek permission to receive items from U.S. suppliers.

The new rules take effect immediately but do not apply to goods from U.S. suppliers already en route.

During the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump, the United States added dozens of Chinese companies to its economic blacklist, including the country’s top smartphone maker Huawei Technologies, top chipmaker SMIC and the largest drone manufacturer, SZ DJI Technology Co Ltd.  Those companies were sanctioned for a range of reasons including their role in aiding the Chinese military, and supporting the Chinese regime’s repression against ethnic Musim minorities in the region of Xinjiang.

The Biden administration is still formulating its China policy, and has broadly indicated it would continue the Trump administration’s tough-on-China posture. President Joe Biden has repeatedly said the United States is in “extreme competition” with the Chinese regime.

By David Shepardson. Cathy He contributed to this report.

The apps of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple on Aug. 28, 2019. (Denis Charlet/AFP/Getty Images) Media & Big Tech

By Samuel Allegri April 7, 2021 Updated: April 7, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said on April 7 that he will be scrutinizing five big tech companies that might have potentially caused harm to Indiana consumers through “abusive, deceptive and/or unfair” practices.

The five companies to be scrutinized by Rokita are Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter.

The attorney general is particularly looking into procedures that allegedly restrict consumers’ access to specific content, referring to the deletion or obscuring of conservative posts.

“In a free society, few assets are more important to consumers than access to information and the opportunity to express political viewpoints in meaningful forums,” Rokita said. “It is potentially harmful and unfair for these companies to manipulate content in ways they do not publicly discuss or that consumers do not fully understand.”

The attorney general is also probing into allegations that attorney Vanita Gupta took actions that encouraged censorship of conservative voices by the relevant companies.

Gupta is President Joe Biden’s nominee for associate U.S. attorney general. She was questioned in March by Republicans over her partisan record.

“Her Twitter feed has painted Republicans with a broad brush, describing our national convention last year as three nights of ‘racism, xenophobia, and outrageous lies,’” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said.

Rokita has previously been critical of censorship on social media. In February, he posted a Valentine’s Day card with President Trump’s image with the words “You stole my heart like a 2020 election.” Twitter initially reacted by blocking the ability for the post to be retweeted or receive replies, as well as adding a tag on the post saying that false information could cause violence.

Texas Senate Passes Social Media Bill

The Texas Senate passed a bill that forbids social media companies that have at least 100 million users per month to block, ban, demonetize, or discriminate against any of their users due to their political views.

Senate Bill 12, which was sponsored by Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes, passed on April 1 and would apply to Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms.

“I think we all have to acknowledge, these social media companies are the new town square,” Hughes said.

“And a small group of people in San Francisco can’t dictate free speech for the rest of us. It needs to be an open exchange of ideas, and Senate Bill 12 is going to get Texans back online.” https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=EpochTimes&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfX0%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1377534968159698946&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theepochtimes.com%2Ffive-big-tech-companies-to-be-investigated-for-censorship-of-conservative-content-indiana-ag_3766366.html&sessionId=dccdfb15b871ee859a34d57746dc068ffa157e41&siteScreenName=EpochTimes&theme=light&widgetsVersion=1ead0c7%3A1617660954974&width=550px

He said the bill is on its way to the state House and that it’s expected to get a good consideration, adding that he hopes that the governor will sign it into law soon.

The measure would require companies to make their moderation policies known, publish reports about the content blocked out by the platform, and create an appeals process for the removed content.

Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo speaks during a daily press briefing at the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on April 7, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) Executive Branch

By Ivan Pentchoukov April 7, 2021 Updated: April 7, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo told reporters at the White House on April 7 that the Trump administration’s tariffs on steel and aluminum saved American jobs.

“With respect to tariffs, there is a place for tariffs. The 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum have in fact helped save American jobs in the steel and aluminum industries,” Raimondo said, marking a rare point of agreement with the policies of the prior administration.

“So what do we do with tariffs? We have to level the playing field. No one can out-compete the American worker if the playing field is level,” Raimondo continued. “And the fact is, China’s actions are uncompetitive, coercive, underhanded. They’ve proven they’ll do whatever it takes. And so I plan to use all the tools in my toolbox as aggressively as possible to protect American workers and businesses from unfair Chinese practices.”

President Donald Trump in March 2018 imposed a 25 percent tariff on steel and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports. Some countries were temporarily exempted from the tariffs. Currently, South Korea, Argentina, Australia, and Brazil are permanently exempted. The tariffs on Canada and Mexico were lifted with the signing of the U.S. Mexico and Canada Agreement.

During the same month in 2018, Trump fired the first salvo in the trade war with China, imposing tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese goods. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) responded with retaliatory tariffs and the tit for tat has escalated since. Trump had reasoned that the tariffs were necessary to force the CCP to abandon unfair trade practices and pay a price for years of rampant intellectual property theft from the United States.

Trump had also targeted private Chinese companies over concerns national security concerns, including the potential that troves of data on Americans were relayed to the communist regime in Beijing.

Raimondo made the remarks in response to a reporter who had also prompted her to clarify the Biden administration’s stance on TikTok, a social media app that Trump threatened to ban unless the Chinese company that owns it sells its American business to a U.S. company.

“So I would say, here’s my broad view, and I don’t want to get into details on any particular company,” Raimondo said. “My broad view is what we do on offense is more important than we do on defense. To compete in the long run with China, we need to rebuild America in all of the ways we’re talking about today, and by the way, do that with our allies. We have to work with our allies and find common ground where we can.”

President Donald Trump holds a press conference at the White House in Washington on April 3, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times) Democrats

By Jack Phillips April 7, 2021 Updated: April 7, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Ten more House Democrat lawmakers joined a lawsuit accusing former President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and several groups of allegedly inciting the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol.

The suit was filed by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), alleging that Trump and Giuliani’s respective speeches incited the breach. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for Washington D.C., while the Proud Boys, Warboys, and Oath Keepers were also named as defendants.

The Democrat House members who joined the lawsuit (pdf) include Reps. Karen Bass (Calif.), Maxine Waters (Calif.), Barbara Lee (Calif.), Steve Cohen (Tenn.), Bonnie Watson Coleman (N.J.), Veronica Escobar (Texas), Hank Johnson (Ga.), Marcy Kaptur (Ohio), Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), and Pramila Jayapal (Wash.).

The suit claims Trump and Giuliani “conspired” with the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys to “incite an assembled crowd to march upon and enter the Capital of the United States for the common purpose of disrupting, by the use of force, intimidation, and threat.”

“The insurrection at the Capitol was a direct, intended, and foreseeable result of the Defendants’ unlawful conspiracy,” the lawsuit stated. “The carefully orchestrated series of events that unfolded at the Save America rally and the storming of the Capitol was no accident or coincidence. It was the intended and foreseeable culmination of a carefully coordinated campaign to interfere with the legal process required to confirm the tally of votes cast in the Electoral College.”

Cohen recalled having “difficulties falling and staying asleep … difficulties with his digestion” after the Jan. 6 breach. He also claimed he  “became jumpy whenever he heard a loud or unfamiliar noise in his home.”

Escobar said she had “violent nightmares” and sought professional treatment.

Thompson, meanwhile, said that he is filing the suit to hold Trump “accountable … that he so blatantly planned.”

Trump in January was impeached in the House of Representatives over the Jan. 6 incident before the Senate voted to acquit him.

His impeachment lawyers said Democrats presented a flawed case before the Senate.

“Burden of proof was on them, and they didn’t meet their burden of proof,” said attorney Bruce Castor. Trump, meanwhile, said the second impeachment was part of the “greatest witch hunt in the history of our country.”

“No president has ever gone through anything like it,” the former commander-in-chief remarked. “It continues because our opponents cannot forget the almost 75 million people, the highest number ever for a sitting president, who voted for us just a few short months ago,” he said, while adding at the time that his Make America Great Again movement “has only just begun.”

The Epoch Times has contacted Giuliani’s office and Trump’s team for comment.

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas poses for the official group photo at the U.S. Supreme Court in the District of Columbia on Nov. 30, 2018. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images) Constitutional Rights

By Jack Phillips April 5, 2021 Updated: April 5, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas appeared to signal that Big Tech firms could be regulated after Facebook and Twitter suspended President Donald Trump earlier this year.

Thomas, considered a conservative on the high court, made the point during a 12-page submission as the Supreme Court issued an order that rejected a lawsuit over Trump’s blocking of certain Twitter users from commenting on his posts before his account was taken down. The Supreme Court said the lawsuit ultimately should be dismissed as Trump isn’t in office anymore and was blocked from using Twitter, coming after the Second Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled against Trump.

“Today’s digital platforms provide avenues for historically unprecedented amounts of speech, including speech by government actors. Also unprecedented, however, is control of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties,” Thomas wrote Monday (pdf). “We will soon have no choice but to address how our legal doctrines apply to highly concentrated, privately owned information infrastructure such as digital platforms.”

Thomas also noted there are arguments suggesting digital platforms such as Twitter or Facebook “are sufficiently akin to common carriers or places of accommodation to be regulated in this manner.”

Thomas made reference to the respective owners of Facebook and Google by name—Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin.

“Although both companies are public, one person controls Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg), and just two control Google (Larry Page and Sergey Brin),” he wrote.

Thomas agreed that Trump’s Twitter account did “resemble a constitutionally protected public forum” in certain aspects, he noted that “it seems rather odd to say that something is a government forum when a private company has unrestricted authority to do away with it,” possibly referring to Twitter’s ban against Trump following the Jan. 6 incident.

“Any control Mr. Trump exercised over the account greatly paled in comparison to Twitter’s authority, dictated in its terms of service, to remove the account ‘at any time for any or no reason,’” he added. “Twitter exercised its authority to do exactly that.”

Thomas then said that modern technology isn’t easily addressed by existing laws and regulations. But he warned that the Supreme Court may “soon have no choice but to address how our legal doctrines apply to highly concentrated, privately owned information infrastructure such as digital platforms.”

“The Second Circuit feared that then-President Trump cut off speech by using the features that Twitter made available to him,” Thomas said. “But if the aim is to ensure that speech is not smothered, then the more glaring concern must perforce be the dominant digital platforms themselves. As Twitter made clear, the right to cut off speech lies most powerfully in the hands of private digital platforms. The extent to which that power matters for purposes of the First Amendment and the extent to which that power could lawfully be modified raise interesting and important questions.”

Thomas noted that Big Tech firms have a vast amount of power over the flow of information—even books. He said it does not matter that Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and others are not the only ways in which to distribute speech as long as their power to do so is unequaled.

“A person always could choose to avoid the toll bridge or train and instead swim the Charles River or hike the Oregon Trail,” he wrote. “But in assessing whether a company exercises substantial market power, what matters is whether the alternatives are comparable. For many of today’s digital platforms, nothing is.”

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) arrives at the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 27, 2020. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) Politics

By Masooma Haq April 6, 2021 Updated: April 6, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) says that the Biden infrastructure bill proposed by Democrats is actually a welfare and reparations bill that follows the agenda of the progressive Green New Deal, rather than infrastructure.

“This is a Green New Deal, welfare, and reparations bill. Being charitable, less than 10 percent of the bill is devoted to infrastructure and we don’t even know what the projects are, you know who picks and projects? Speaker Pelosi, Senator Schumer, and President Biden,” Kennedy told Fox News on Tuesday.

“Now one need not be clairvoyant to see that their projects are going to end up in New York and California and blue states,” said Kennedy. “So, there you have it—you’ve got a political slush fund.”

Kennedy also criticized the bill’s massive price tag, urging Democrats to make an effort to get GOP input.

“Now, will they work with us? I hope so, I hope they do. I will do old-man backflips if they’ll work with us, but I don’t have my hopes up.”

The Green New Deal Kennedy referred to was introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) with the main objective being to achieve economic and racial justice in the United States.

Her 2019 resolution states, “clean air and water, healthy food, access to nature, a sustainable environment, and the promotion of justice and equity by stopping oppression of ‘indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth” are the priorities of the bill.

The Deal also aims “to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers.”

Although Biden’s infrastructure plan would spend less on each item, it will nonetheless fund many of the Green New Deal’s objectives like non-fossil fuel energy, transportation, childcare, agriculture, housing, schools, broadband, water supply, and land protection.

Some of the proposals in Biden’s infrastructure package that don’t have an estimated price tag, but are part of the Green New Deal agenda, include calling on Congress to:

• Tackle long-term unemployment and underemployment through a new subsidized jobs program.
• Eliminate sub-minimum wage provisions in section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act and expand access to competitive, integrated employment opportunities and fair wages for workers with disabilities.
• Ensure all workers have a free and fair choice to join a union by passing the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and guarantee union and bargaining rights for public service workers.
• Tie federal investments in clean energy and infrastructure to prevailing wages and require transportation investments to meet existing transit labor protections.
• Provide the federal government with the tools it needs to ensure employers are providing workers with good jobs—including jobs with fair and equal pay, safe and healthy workplaces, and workplaces free from racial, gender, and other forms of discrimination and harassment.
• Take immediate steps to spur the construction and rehabilitation of homes for underserved communities.
• Pass the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act, which calls for the creation of a new federal tax credit that will produce new equity investment dollars for the development and renovation of 1-4 family housing in distressed urban, suburban, and rural neighborhoods.
• Quadruple support for the Manufacturing Extensions Partnership—increasing the involvement of minority-owned and rurally-located small-and-medium-sized enterprises in technological advancement.
• Ensure that new jobs created in clean energy, manufacturing, and infrastructure are open and accessible to women and people of color.
• Invest in job training for formerly incarcerated individuals and in improving public safety.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) speaks to reporters in Washington on April 21, 2020. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Donald Trump

By Zachary Stieber April 7, 2021 Updated: April 7, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Former President Donald Trump said Wednesday that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) did not request a pardon from him.

“Congressman Matt Gaetz has never asked me for a pardon,” Trump said in a statement.

“It must be remembered that he has totally denied the accusations against him,” he added.

Citing two anonymous sources, the New York Times claimed in a recent report that Gaetz asked the White House for preemptive pardons for himself and others.

A spokesperson for Gaetz said that the sources were conflating Gaetz’s public call last year for Trump to pardon a slew of people.

“Entry-level political operatives have conflated a pardon call from Representative Gaetz—where he called for President Trump to pardon ‘everyone from himself, to his administration, to Joe Exotic’—with these false and increasingly bizarre, partisan allegations against him,” the spokesman said. “Those comments have been on the record for some time, and President Trump even retweeted the congressman, who tweeted them out himself.”

Gaetz is reportedly being investigated for possibly paying a minor girl for sex. The Florida representative has vehemently denied the accusations.

“First, I have never, ever paid for sex. And second, I, as an adult man, have not slept with a 17-year-old,” he wrote in an op-ed this week.

Gaetz said he is not a monk and is enjoying monogamy. He is engaged.

“It comes as no surprise that my political opponents want to sensationalize and criminalize my prior sex life just as I am getting engaged to the best person I’ve ever known. It is regrettable that the battle of ideas should thus become so personal. But then again, when your ideas suck, you need to stoop this low,” he added.

The updates came after a former Air Force officer, Bob Kent, admitted to being part of a group that tried to press Gaetz’s father, former Florida Sen. Don Gaetz, for $25 million in return for making his son’s “future legal and political problems go away.”

Kent said what happened was not extortion and that there was never any threat involved.

Rep. Gaetz has described what Kent and others did as attempted extortion and said his dad wore a wire as part of a federal probe into the matter

The FBI declined to comment to The Epoch Times and the Department of Justice has not returned inquiries.

Documents published last week outlined the alleged extortion scheme. They included an email from assistant U.S. Attorney David Goldberg confirming to Don Gaetz’s lawyer that he was cooperating with the FBI.

A former Gaetz staffer came forward on Monday to accuse the FBI of approaching him with “baseless” claims as he attested to Gaetz’s character.