The Daily Beast has FBI documents that reveal details of the FBI sting operation that led to Okaloosa County developer Stephen Alford pleading guilty to trying to extort $25 million from the father of Rep. Matt Gaetz to help free Bob Levinson, an American taken hostage in Iran, in exchange for a presidential pardon for the congressman.
Alford and an associate described their plan as “Project Homecoming.â€
The news site lays out how the federal agency was tipped off about the crime. The narrative that Rep. Gaetz told Tucker Carlson was that he had gone to the FBI for help, but the documents obtained by The Daily Beast tell a different story.
According to The Daily Beast, the FBI found out about the plot elsewhere and contacted the Gaetz family. A retired agent from Jacksonville tipped off a female FBI special agent to a lead. She followed that lead to another former FBI agent based in Miami who told her about Project Homecoming.
When the FBI got in touch with Matt Gaetz over the phone, he claimed his father, former Florida Senate President Don Gaetz, had met twice with two men to discuss their plan. According to Rep. Gaetz, Alford was brought in for the second meeting and promised to “make Congressman Gaetz’s criminal case go away.â€
At the end of the phone call, Gaetz asked the FBI agent to call his father.
On March 25, 2021, Don Gaetz and his attorney met with two special agents in the FBI’s Fort Walton Beach office. The agents laid out – using a PowerPoint presentation – how they wanted to sting the alleged perpetrators.
On March 26, Papa Gaetz taped an in-person conversation with Alford’s lawyer and later recorded another conversation with Alford during which the developer promised a presidential pardon for his son.
Four days later, Don Gaetz met a special agent at a Publix in Niceville to receive a recording device for a follow-up conversation with Alford the next day. Hours later, The New York Times disclosed the sex trafficking investigation into Congressman Gaetz.
That evening—around 7:45 p.m., two special agents rang the doorbell at the Gaetz family residence. They had come for their recording device. The sting was off, but the records don’t explain why, and they don’t mention the Times story. Shortly after the FBI visit, Rep, Gaetz was interviewed on television by Tucker Carlson.