A spokesman for Newsmax said on Monday that the company had no plans to take up a job request from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) after reports in March suggested he would leave Congress early to take a role with the network.
“Newsmax has had no plans to hire Rep. Gaetz,” Brian Peterson, a spokesperson for Newsmax, told The Hill.
A source told Reuters that Newsmax “never told [Gaetz] we were interested.”
Shortly after Axios reported that the three-term congressmen would leave his House seat to pursue a career in television, reports emerged that Gaetz was being investigated by the Department of Justice over an alleged relationship with a 17-year-old girl, charges he has denied.
A spokesman for Gaetz refuted the Reuters story.
Gaetz had considered leaving Congress to pursue a career in television, setting his sights on prominent conservative news channels such as Fox News, One America News Network (OANN) and Newsmax, a favored news source of former President Trump, with whom Gaetz is aligned.
In April, Fox News confirmed that it had no plans to hire Gaetz.
“No one with any level of authority has had conversations with Matt Gaetz for any of our platforms, and we have no interest in hiring him,” the network said in a statement at the time.
The founder and CEO of OANN, Robert Herring, later told the Daily Beast that he was “not really hiring anybody for talk shows,” as Gaetz reportedly desired. Herring said that he advised Gaetz to remain in Congress.
Former Gaetz associate Joel Greenberg pleaded guilty last month to six federal crimes, including sex trafficking of a minor. Greenberg made a plea deal with investigators, agreeing to cooperate in the probe. A federal judge last week approved the plea deal for Greenberg.
— Updated June 8, 1:43 p.m.