President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida to serve as his attorney general.
“Few issues in America are more important than ending the partisan Weaponization of our Justice System,” Trump wrote Wednesday in a post on his Truth Social platform. “Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department.”
Gaetz, a Trump loyalist and conservative representative from Florida, said in an X post on the heels of the announcement that it would “be an honor to serve” in the role. He will be subject to Senate approval once formally nominated by Trump.
The selection sets up the potential for a provocative confirmation process. If confirmed, Gaetz would take over the nation’s top law enforcement agency – the same one that pursued a yearslong sex-crimes investigation into the congressman. The Justice Department ultimately decided last year not to pursue criminal charges against him.
The role of attorney general will be crucial to Trump’s vision for his second term, and will help enforce the president-elect’s policy on immigration, reproductive health and political retribution.
Trump has claimed that he wants to gut the justice system as part of an effort to break down legal restrictions and traditional protections against political interference, CNN has reported.
Gaetz has long accused the Justice Department of being weaponized under President Joe Biden against conservatives including Trump and has called for abolishing the DOJ and FBI barring significant changes.
A member of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Gaetz has accused the FBI of going “far beyond” what the law allows in surveillance, calling for limits on its authorities.
“We either get this government back on our side, or we defund and get rid of, abolish the FBI, the CDC, ATF, DOJ, every last one of them if they do not come to heel,” Gaetz said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2023.
Gaetz has also criticized the rank-and-file personnel at the Justice Department.
“You can’t just have the same career people who have grown up in a system that has fallen victim to political capture,” he said in an interview this summer, adding that outsiders — including from state attorney general’s offices —should be brought into the department.
The congressman remains under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for sexual misconduct, with the bipartisan committee saying in a rare statement in June that some of the allegations against Gaetz “merit continued review.”
Being probed are allegations that Gaetz may have “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct,” the committee said at the time.
Gaetz has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, including ever having sex with a minor or paying for sex.
House Ethics Chair Michael Guest said that the ethics investigation into Gaetz will end if he resigns his congressional seat to serve as attorney general, as the panel only has jurisdiction over a member when they are serving in Congress.
“If he were to be appointed, then he would have to resign his position in the House so the ethics investigation at that point would cease, just like with any other member, we only have jurisdiction being the ethics committee, as long as a person is a member of Congress,” Guest, a Mississippi Republican, told CNN.
Guest declined to comment on the status of the probe into Gaetz but said he was surprised to learn Trump had selected him for the role.
“You know, like most members, I was surprised. His name was not someone that I had heard come up previously. But you know, like with any other Cabinet-level selection, there’ll be a confirmation process, and so if any of the senators have questions about his or any other Cabinet members’ ability to serve, those questions will be figured out during that confirmation process,” he said.
Despite being surprised by the pick, Guest said he wasn’t questioning Trump.
“You know, I’m not going to question the president on his selections, whether it be attorney general or any other Cabinet-level position,” he added.
Trump’s announcement came as House Republicans were meeting behind closed doors to hold their leadership elections.
Lawmakers expressed surprise as they trickled out of their conference meeting and learned of the selection.
“I got really no good comment,” Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said.
Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, the chair of the House Appropriations, told reporters, “I know nothing about it.”
Top Senate Republicans, meanwhile, expressed uncertainty over whether they would back the Florida congressman for the role.
“Mr. Gaetz and I have jousted on certain issues between the House and the Senate. That happens? I haven’t looked at his full body of work and his credentials here, I’ll give him an honest look. … There’s obviously been a lot of disagreements between members of the Senate and Mr. Gaetz,” Sen. Thom Tillis, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told CNN, referring to Gaetz’s role in ousting former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
“It’s just a matter of how he works in relationships to actually – you got to have the credentials – but then you got to have the relationships,” the North Carolina Republican said.
Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn, the senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in response to the development, “We’ll do our job as as the Senate, do our advise-and-consent function. So, we’ll take that one day at a time.”
Asked about Gaetz being investigated by House Ethics for sexual misconduct, Cornyn told CNN: “I’m sure that will come up” in the hearings.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
Source: edition.cnn.com
