Donald Trump has announced his intention to nominate Matt Gaetz, a hard-right congressman from Florida known for inflaming tensions within the House Republican conference, as attorney general.
Gaetz, a longtime Trump loyalist, gained attention last year after leading the successful charge to oust his fellow Republican Kevin McCarthy as House speaker. Gaetz and seven other House Republicans joined Democrats in voting to remove McCarthy last October, kicking off a weeks-long scramble to find a new speaker.
McCarthy held Gaetz personally responsible for his removal and even funded an unsuccessful primary challenge against his former colleague. McCarthy suggested Gaetz pushed for his ouster because of an ethics committee investigation into allegations that Gaetz paid for and engaged in sexual relations with an underage woman.
In February 2023, the justice department declined to bring charges of sex trafficking against Gaetz, who has denied wrongdoing since the allegations first came to light.
Even before McCarthy’s removal, Gaetz had cultivated a reputation as a rightwing firebrand who did not shy away from conflict with Democrats and fellow Republicans alike.
“Florida Man. Built for the Battle,” reads Gaetz’s bio on X, formerly Twitter.
Gaetz followed his father into politics more than two decades ago. After serving in the Florida statehouse, Gaetz was elected in 2016 to represent a ruby-red chunk of the Florida Panhandle.
Like Trump, to whom he is fiercely loyal, Gaetz is more interested in sparring with political foes than in the dry business of governance, according to his critics. On Capitol Hill, he has repeatedly disrupted House proceedings, including once barging into a secure facility where Democrats were holding a deposition hearing.
In 2018, he was condemned for inviting a Holocaust denier to Trump’s State of the Union address. A year later, he hired a speechwriter who had been fired by the Trump White House after speaking at a conference that attracts white nationalists.
Months after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Gaetz embarked on an “America First” tour with Marjorie Taylor Greene, the hard-right Georgia congresswoman, in which they amplified the former president’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 election.
After House Republicans’ worse than expected performance in the 2022 midterms, Gaetz capitalized on his conference’s wafer-thin majority to extract promises of rule changes from McCarthy, who had to endure 15 rounds of voting before becoming speaker in January 2023. Nine months later, Gaetz used those rule changes to force McCarthy out of the speaker’s chair.
More recently, Gaetz has served as an adviser to Trump as the former president successfully sought a second term. According to ABC News, Gaetz helped Trump prepare for his September debate against Kamala Harris by peppering him with questions about his potential vulnerabilities, including Trump’s multiple criminal indictments and his shifting stance on abortion access.
As attorney general, Gaetz would have a powerful perch to prosecute Trump’s political enemies, as the president-elect has promised to do. Gaetz may also attempt to purge the justice department of many longtime staffers, after Trump spread baseless claims that the federal government had been “weaponized” against him.
But before Gaetz can take on the role, he will need the approval of the Senate, where he may face a chilly reception. With Senate Republicans’ 53-seat majority, Gaetz could still be confirmed, but some early warning signs appeared immediately after Trump’s announcement.
Susan Collins, a Republican senator of Maine, told reporters on Capitol Hill that she was “shocked” by the news.
“That shows why the advice and consent process [of Senate confirmation] is so important,” Collins said, per Politico. “And I’m sure that there will be a lot of questions raised at his hearing.”