Former President Donald Trump said Wednesday that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) did not request a pardon from him. “Congressman Matt Gaetz has never asked me for a pardon,” Trump said in a statement. “It must be remembered that he has totally denied the accusations against him,” he added. Citing two anonymous sources, the New York Times claimed in a recent report that Gaetz asked the White House for preemptive pardons for himself and others. A spokesperson for Gaetz said that the sources were conflating Gaetz’s public call last year for Trump to pardon a slew of people. “Entry-level political operatives have conflated a pardon call from Representative Gaetz—where he called for President Trump to pardon ‘everyone from himself, to his administration, to Joe Exotic’—with these false and increasingly bizarre, partisan allegations against him,” the spokesman said. “Those comments have been on the record for some time, and President Trump even …