It is hard to know which of the myriad allegations swirling around Matt Gaetz finally put an end to the former Florida congressman’s short-lived bid to become Donald Trump’s attorney general. The 42-year-old, who Trump had nominated to become the nation’s top law enforcement official, has variously been accused of sex trafficking, having sex with an underage girl, taking illegal drugs, paying women to have sex with him, taking bribes, and misusing campaign funds.
In the hours before he withdrew himself from consideration for attorney general on 21 November, it emerged that the same woman who had alleged that Gaetz had sex with her when she was a minor had testified before the House of Representatives’ ethics committee about another sexual encounter they had, also while she was underage, which had involved another adult woman.
Gaetz denies all the allegations that have been made against him and has not been charged with any crimes. He resigned from the House on 13 November after Trump picked him to be his attorney general and before the House ethics committee could release the results of an investigation into his alleged misconduct. His congressional colleagues have raised previous concerns about his conduct and attitude towards women.
After touring the Senate with vice-president-elect JD Vance to promote his candidacy the day before, on 20 November, and meeting with multiple Republican senators, Gaetz announced his decision to stand aside. “It is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance transition,” he wrote on social media the next day – ironic given that the hard-right congressman has built a national profile by creating distractions and drawing attention to himself. (It may well have been a factor in Gaetz’s downfall that he had made enemies within the Republican Party when he led the movement to block Kevin McCarthy’s bid to be the speaker of the House last year, and, subsequently, to oust him.)
Trump apparently arrived at the idea of nominating Gaetz for attorney general impulsively during a flight. Unlike other contenders for the role, who bored him with their “vaunted legal theories and constitutional bullshit”, a Trump adviser told the Bulwark, “Gaetz was the only one who said, ‘yeah, I’ll go over there and start cuttin’ f***in’ heads.’”
It is possible that Gaetz’s nomination was never serious. There has been speculation that Trump deliberately put forward an outrageous candidate – knowing perfectly well that he was unlikely to be confirmed by the Senate – to distract from the controversy of his other alarming nominees. He has also chosen the patently unqualified Fox News host Pete Hegseth to be his defence secretary, for instance, and the former Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who is known for repeating pro-Kremlin talking points, for director of national intelligence. Then there’s the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr, who Trump picked to lead the department of health and human services.
Yet Trump’s choice of Gaetz should not have come as a shock. He made it clear throughout the election campaign that he was hell-bent on “retribution” and rooting out “the enemy within” when he returned to power. The president-elect believes he was unfairly constrained during his previous term by left-leaning institutions and the “deep state”, and he has no intention of making the same mistake again. This time, Trump wants a team around him that will be loyal to him above all else. He has never forgiven the then vice-president Mike Pence for putting the country above his fealty to him by certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. Gaetz’s stated promise to “start cuttin’ heads” seems to be more the style of government that Trump has in mind for his second term.
Nor would any of the lurid allegations against Gaetz have been considered disqualifying by Trump. The incoming president has been found liable for sexual assault. He has bragged about groping women and been convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to a porn star. He was also due to face federal trial for trying to overturn the results of the last election, and allegations of mishandling classified documents were going to appeal, if he had not regained control of the justice department in this election. If none of this behaviour prevented Trump from winning the presidency – with tens of millions of Americans voting for him regardless – why should we expect those serving under him to be held to a higher standard?
The sole glimmer of optimism in this tawdry saga is that there does still seem to be a limit to what Senate Republicans will tolerate. In spite of Trump’s dominance of the party, contemplating Matt Gaetz as attorney general seems to have proved a step too far. This does not mean they won’t confirm other scandalous appointments in the weeks to come, and fall into line behind his legislative agenda in the years ahead. But it shows that, for now at least, the party’s fealty to Donald Trump is not absolute.
[See also: Kevin Roberts’s fire-breathing American right]
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