Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) tweeted a threat to President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen on the eve of his public testimony before the House Oversight Committee.
It is a new level of mafia-like behavior that has crept into politics during the Trump era.
Hey @MichaelCohen212 – Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot…
— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) February 26, 2019
Cohen originally postponed his appearance before various congressional committees in part because of “threats against his family” from Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Cohen is expected to testify before two separate House committees this week that Trump directed him to commit multiple crimes.
They include sending illegal hush payments to two of the president’s former mistresses, and lying to Congress about the timeline of negotiations for a Trump Tower in Moscow.
Gaetz, a Trump loyalist, recently told the New York Times that he thinks it’s “right” that scrutiny of investigations by congressional Republicans has “aided in the president’s defense.”
“It’s that last line that seems really problematic,” said Stephen Vladeck, a professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law, “‘She’s about to learn a lot…’ What is the test implied in that statement, as opposed to the insinuation that as a result of his testimony, his wife is going to come into negative information about him?”
Last December, Trump applied the term “rat” to Cohen, who told a federal court that the president had directed him in violating campaign finance law, including by buying the silence of two women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump before he became president.
Remember, Michael Cohen only became a “Rat” after the FBI did something which was absolutely unthinkable & unheard of until the Witch Hunt was illegally started. They BROKE INTO AN ATTORNEY’S OFFICE! Why didn’t they break into the DNC to get the Server, or Crooked’s office?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 16, 2018
The use of the rodent name for is someone who “secretly aids the police to apprehend criminals.”
Experts date its use in the “underworld” — the abode of criminals and organized crime — to 1902, while it began to be employed by police in the 1920s, as they squeezed the underlings of gangsters and mafia bosses enriching themselves in the illicit liquor trade.
It is most associated with infamous mob boss Al Capone.
Gaetz generated news earlier this month when, at a congressional hearing, he called for the removal of two fathers whose children were killed in last year’s mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.
Gaetz has a long history of controversial statements and actions, including inviting internet troll and occasional Holocaust denier Chuck Johnson to the State of the Union and becoming a leading voice in the brief movement to release a memo written by Republican Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) that many on the right believed would damage Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign.
Gaetz even appeared on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s show to discuss the memo.
His moralizing outrage defending Trump, opposing the Mueller investigation, and sticking up for the NRA is often met with contempt online from his critics.
Opponents of Gaetz point out he was arrested in 2008 for DUI.
He’s also been cited for at least 16 other driving violations since 1999.