Matt Gaetz Withdraws From Attorney General Nomination Amid Ethics Cloud
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) is withdrawing his name from consideration to be the next U.S. attorney general amid allegations that he attended sex parties with minors.
He announced his decision on social media Thursday after holding meetings with some of the senators whose support he would have needed to be confirmed.
“While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition,” Gaetz wrote.
“There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General. Trump’s DOJ must be in place and ready on Day 1,” the post read.
Gaetz spent just over one week as President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Justice Department, despite having once been the subject of a Justice Department investigation involving alleged sex trafficking. Federal prosecutors declined to file charges against him last year. Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing.
A separate investigation by the House Ethics Committee had been winding down when Trump nominated Gaetz, with members debating whether to release a report on their findings. They deadlocked on the decision Wednesday.
The Florida congressman resigned his seat in Congress last week on the heels of his nomination. He had just been elected to another two-year term representing Florida’s western panhandle. But Gaetz only resigned from the current Congress, not the one he was just elected to, meaning he could return to office in January. Gaetz hasn’t made any announcement yet about his future plans.
Trump said on his Truth Social platform that he respected Gaetz’s decision to take himself out of the running.
“I greatly appreciate the recent efforts of Matt Gaetz in seeking approval to be Attorney General. He was doing very well but, at the same time, did not want to be a distraction for the Administration, for which he has much respect,” Trump wrote.
“Matt has a wonderful future, and I look forward to watching all of the great things he will do!” he added.
Gaetz’s announcement came just minutes before CNN published a new bombshell report that a woman who says she had sex with Gaetz in 2017 when she was 17 had told the House Ethics Committee she was part of two incidents involving Gaetz.
While one alleged sexual encounter with the woman had previously been reported, the second alleged encounter was new information for the public. The woman told the committee it occurred at the same 2017 party and involved Gaetz, the 17-year-old and an adult woman.
On Wednesday evening, The New York Times revealed a document obtained from the Justice Department investigation into Gaetz that purported to show payments he made to a variety of women and underage girls.
Gaetz’s decision to drop out of contention for AG did not seem to shock Republican senators who would be voting on his long-shot nomination.
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“I think that was appropriate,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said shortly after the news broke.
The objection to Gaetz as attorney general mostly centered on the sexual misconduct probes. But Gaetz, who worked for a small private law firm for less than a decade before joining Congress in 2017, also has a thin legal résumé. Most nominees for the role have experience as distinguished judges and prosecutors.
Legal expert Norm Eisen, a Barack Obama-appointed ambassador to the Czech Republic and a co-founder of the nonpartisan States United Democracy Center, told HuffPost that Gaetz was the “single most unqualified nominee for the position in the history of our nation.” Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democratic former attorney who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, has said pretty much the same thing.
That’s in sharp contrast to Trump, who has called Gaetz a “deeply gifted and tenacious attorney.”
