Matt Gaetz was Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general for eight days. The former Florida congressman’s historically short stint as a presidential pick came to an end on Thursday when he bowed out of consideration, claiming he no longer wanted the frenzy over the sexual misconduct allegations against him to distract from “the critical work of the Trump/Vance administration.”
Gaetz has long been under scrutiny for allegedly having sex with a 17-year-old girl at a party in 2017. The Justice Department investigated him over that and sex-trafficking allegations, but ultimately declined to bring charges. The House Ethics Committee also investigated Gaetz over the allegations, and was poised to release its findings before Gaetz resigned from Congress last week. The committee’s report was reportedly damning, and there’s plenty to suggest that what is publicly known about Gaetz’s alleged indiscretions is only the tip of the iceberg. CNN reported on Thursday that Gaetz gave up his bid for attorney general less than an hour after the network informed him they were releasing a report about how he allegedly had multiple sexual encounters with the then-minor.
Trump’s allies seemed well aware there could be more to Gaetz than meets the public’s eye, and were worried it could have become a problem if Gaetz took the reins of America’s justice system.
The recent drip-drip-drip of new revelations about Gaetz’s alleged sexual activities in 2017 — along with the promise of whatever bombshells lay within the ethics committee’s still-unreleased report — inspired an undercurrent throughout Washington, D.C., of chatter, opposition research, and firsthand accounts from members of Congress. The rumblings, according to Republican and Democratic sources, led to concern within the career halls of the Justice Department — as well as among some GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill and even in certain corners of Trump’s orbit — that there was just too much secret, non-public personal baggage to Gaetz’s name that could be used against him.
As one Trump adviser put it, if Gaetz had become attorney general, he would likely would have been “the single most blackmail-able person to ever serve as attorney general of the United States … and that’s not a risk you want to take when the whole job is going after criminals.”
The concern around Gaetz doesn’t mean he’s banished from Trump’s world. The president-elect lauded him publicly after he withdrew his name from consideration on Thursday, and two sources within Trump’s orbit tell Rolling Stone that they are pushing internally for Gaetz to get a cushy White House job in the incoming Trump administration that would not require Senate confirmation.
There is some chance Gaetz could return to the U.S. Capitol — he only resigned from the Congress currently in session, and in November was elected to represent Florida’s 1st District in the session that will convene in January.
But Gaetz indicated in his resignation letter that he did not intend to take the oath of office for the next Congress. He might not want to, anyway, given that it would mean he would once again be open to congressional scrutiny over his alleged sexual misconduct, drug use, and other indiscretions. Leaving the Hill to join the Trump administration might make more sense.
Gaetz is somehow only one of several Trump administration picks to be connected to sexual misconduct. The media’s attention — as well as that of Senate Republicans — is now likely to shift to Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host who Trump wants to run the Pentagon.
Hegseth was on Capitol Hill on Thursday working to calm nerves over his near-total lack of qualifications to serve as Secretary of Defense, as well as a sexual assault allegation leveled against him by a woman who told police he raped her at a Monterey, California, hotel in 2017. Hegseth has denied the account, claiming the encounter was consensual.