Most Americans knew the late Scott Adams for <\/span>Dilbert<\/span><\/i><\/a>, his beloved comic strip about an office worker and his dimwitted colleagues. Later in life, Adams became known as a kind of <\/span>right-wing shock jockey<\/span><\/a>. But the cartoonist caught the FBI’s attention for something a little bit different: the sex crimes investigation into former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R\u2013Fl.) and a bizarre blackmail scheme that grew out of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The FBI <\/span>released<\/span><\/a> its files on Adams last week, five months after his death, in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from <\/span>Reason<\/span><\/i>. The records include the heavily redacted results of a background check and a request to Twitter\u2014the social media network later renamed X\u2014to preserve Adams’ account data, including his private messages.<\/span><\/p>\n

The investigation into Adams seems to have begun in the spring of 2021, when he was entangled in the Gaetz scandal. On March 30, 2021, <\/span>The New York Times<\/span><\/i> reported<\/span><\/a> that Gaetz was under federal investigation for having sex with an underage teenager. Gaetz <\/span>claimed<\/span><\/a> that he was actually the <\/span>victim<\/span><\/i> of blackmail, and the federal investigation focused on the extortionists.<\/span><\/p>\n

Three days later, <\/span>The American Conservative<\/span><\/i> published<\/span><\/a> screenshots of a text conversation between Adams and Jake Novak, a former journalist who was then working on the media staff of the Israeli consulate in New York. (The Israeli consulate <\/span>later told<\/span><\/a> Politico<\/span><\/i> that Novak’s involvement in the Gaetz case “was not in any way, shape or form a part of his role at the consulate.”)<\/span><\/p>\n

Novak wrote to Adams that the investigation into Gaetz “is screwing up my efforts to free Bob Levinson,” a former FBI agent who disappeared in 2013 while conducting an <\/span>unauthorized mission<\/span><\/a> for the CIA in Iran. “Gaetz’s dad was secretly finding [sic] us. So I’m very much wanting this to be untrue. I’ve got a commando team leader friend of mine nervously waiting for wire transfers to clear,” Novak explained. He claimed that Gaetz’s extortion claim “burned” Bob Kent, a private investigator involved in the <\/span>efforts to free<\/span><\/a> Levinson.<\/span><\/p>\n

Those efforts were unlikely to succeed. The federal government <\/span>declared<\/span><\/a> in 2020 that Levinson had died in Iranian captivity.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a CNN <\/span>interview<\/span><\/a>, Kent acknowledged that he asked Gaetz’s father for money to help rescue Levinson, but denied making any “threats” or “demands.” A few months later, Florida businessman Stephen Alford\u2014whom prosecutors called Kent’s “<\/span>associate<\/span><\/a>“\u2014pleaded guilty to making “<\/span>materially false promises<\/span><\/a>” of a pardon for Gaetz in exchange for funding the Levinson mission. Kent and Novak were not charged with crimes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Years later, a congressional investigation concluded<\/a> that Gaetz had indeed paid a 17-year-old girl for sex, though the federal government declined to prosecute<\/a> him.<\/span><\/p>\n

Adams never quite gave a satisfying explanation for why he was involved in the case. “Jake [Novak] and I shared an interest in the mechanics of persuasion, and in interesting business\/political stories in general. Most often the stuff with a persuasion or Israel angle. That was our initial connection…people often tell me their scoops before they hit the news just to build credibility. Might have been that,” he <\/span>told<\/span><\/a> Politico<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The FBI files do little to shed light on that mystery, but they do put some of Adams’ old comments in a new light. “Do you think they looked at my personal data because I ever had a conversation with somebody from another country? Probably. And I can’t find that out, can I? If I sued the government, could I find out if they looked at my data I could FOIA the FBI,” he said in a <\/span>2022 livestream<\/span><\/a>. It turns out that the answer to these questions was yes.<\/span><\/p>\n

The post Why did the FBI Want <i>Dilbert<\/i> Creator Scott Adams' Twitter Data<\/a> appeared first on Reason.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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