Republican Donor Allegedly Offered Hush Money To Underage Girl He's Accused Of Trafficking

Anton Lazzaro, a prominent Republican donor from Minnesota, has been indicted on charges of sex trafficking, and that's just the beginning of his disgusting story. In a new court filing this week, Lazzaro is accused of offering hush money to the victims and their families in order to keep them quiet. Republicans have remained incredibly silent about Lazzaro's story ever since the news broke about a month ago, but that won't make the bad news disappear. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Anton Lazzaro, the prominent Republican donor from the state of Minnesota who was indicted last month on charges including sex trafficking, was sued this week by one of his former victims and her family, alleging that Lazzaro had offered them hush money payments so that they wouldn't go forward with the story and ultimately lead to Lazzaro, you know, getting arrested. And by the way, for a guy that's given hundreds of thousands of dollars based on what I've seen to the Republican party, uh, the amount he offered this, this young woman and her family was rather insulting, a thousand dollars, a thousand dollars. That's what he thought her silence was worth. After months of repeatedly sex trafficking this same girl, said, I'll give you a thousand dollars. Go away, sign a nondisclosure. Luckily the family did not in fact sign that non-disclosure.

Now of course, this is all alleged, at this point. Lazzaro has not been convicted. He has been indicted and charged. But this other hush money thing, this is all alleged in this lawsuit. He has not been, you know, found guilty of this. So just want to make that clear. But let me read this. Lazzaro was charged in August with five counts of sex trafficking of minors. One count of attempted sex trafficking of a minor. One count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors and three counts of obstruction. St. Thomas University student Gisela Medina, 19, the former chairwoman of the school's Republican party chapter also faces criminal charges for allegedly recruiting girls for Lazzaro. So Lazzaro is a big time Republican donor. You've got the former chair of a college Republican group, allegedly grooming girls, bringing them to Lazzaro for him to turn around and sex traffic. That is what is being alleged in these indictments.

And as I've said before, Lazzaro is no stranger to Republican politics, not just as a donor, but this guy actually served as an alternate elector for Donald Trump for the state of Minnesota. He has pictures of himself with Donald Trump, with Mike Pence. Who else did he have photos with, Marco Rubio as well. Marco Rubio. That's weird. Florida senator, donor from Minnesota. Yeah. Odd, right, little Marco? But here's the thing. All of these individuals are totally silent, especially after this week where we get this new information that he may have been trying to hush these women with thousand dollar payments. Where are the Republican voices speaking out on this? Now I know the Minnesota Republican party chair, oh, what's her name, Jennifer Carnahan, actually re, resigned because of this scandal. And she insists, I knew nothing about it. But your party was taking all of this perverts money, of course.

So she resigned last month. Where's everybody else? Where are all of these other Republican voices of the people who were in pictures with him, people who were in contact with him, where are they? Where is Q, right? They're the ones who think that the government's being run by a cabal of pedophiles. Okay, well, you have this guy who's now accused of sex trafficking minors. And you, you guys are totally silent. Like isn't this your jam, your bread and butter? No, of course not, not when it involves Republicans. If this had been a Democrat, of course, obviously this would have confirmed all those crazy Q conspiracies.