The Feds are investigating whether Matt Gaetz rigged a Florida State Senate election. The whole thing just got even uglier.

| 9:20 pm EDT April 10, 2021
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Earlier this week the New York Times reported that the federal criminal investigation into Matt Gaetz has expanded to include whether Gaetz conspired with a lobbyist to try to rig a Florida State Senate election by fronting a sham third-party candidate. This story immediately set off alarms, because just three weeks ago another Florida politician was arrested for having rigged his own State Senate election in the exact same fashion.

Then last night Rachel Maddow revealed on-air that roughly a dozen elections in Florida in 2020 were swayed by the presence of similarly suspcious third-party candidates that appeared to have had significant backing despite having no public presence. This raised the question of whether all of these sham elections in Florida could have been a coincidence.

Now the Miami Herald newspaper is reporting that when Florida politician Frank Artiles was arrested three weeks ago, he had campaign documents in his possession for third-party spoiler candidates in two different Florida districts. That means he apparently committed fraud in his own election and in someone else’s election. So if at least two of the sham elections in Florida in 2020 were part of the same criminal conspiracy, what are the odds that it was just two of them?

Matt Gaetz says that he had nothing to do with any third-party candidate in any election. If this is true, then he has nothing to worry about. But it’s sure starting to look like all of these sham candidates in Florida in 2020 may have been part of the same conspiracy – which should make it easier for the Feds to get to the bottom of the entire thing. Gaetz had better hope he’s not involved.