A bizarre twist has resurfaced in the meteoric rise of President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general selection, the bombastic Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz.
Gaetz brings his share of controversies and allegations — and promise — to the incoming Trump administration, but a strange story from the days of Gaetz’s tangle with erstwhile House leader Kevin McCarthy, as well as the priorities of a Gaetz-led Department of Justice may illuminate the row over his choice.
Much is at stake in the role: Attorney General Merrick Garland’s purview over the DOJ has been characterized by a cavalcade of rewards for friends and punishment for enemies, and Trump’s selection of a loyalist such as Gaetz shows a change in the weather.
Garland’s DOJ targeted observant traditional Roman Catholics and characterized them as "violent extremists," labeled parents who complained at school board meetings as terrorists, and oversaw the FBI raid on Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Garland is reported to have spied on January 6 participants’ defense counsel, a tactic he may have used as a prosecutor in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
Gaetz is sure to wreak havoc. Lawyers at the DOJ are reported to plan to quit should he be confirmed. The threat to the status quo from a choice like Gaetz is clear: it’s unlikely the weaponization of the DOJ against fed-up parents will continue—he has also called for an end to controversial domestic wiretapping; the Congressman has called for the pardoning of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden; and, he is said to be considering El-Salvador-style crackdowns on the most violent criminals.
Gaetz met this year with El Salvador’s popular president, Nayib Bukele, whose efforts have been wildly successful: murder fell 70% in the wake of Bukele’s crackdowns on cartels, turning El Salvador’s reputation around. Bukele praised Trump’s choice Wednesday.
In any event, since his nomination, Gaetz has found himself the center of a firestorm of incendiary remarks from lawmakers on Capitol Hill as well as media, each more salacious than the last. An astute operator, however, Gaetz has earned some surprising calls not to count him out.
Gaetz immediately resigned his seat in Congress, spurring pundits to game out potential chess moves in the background about whether Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis could then appoint him to fill Marco Rubio’s Senate seat, or that the resignation could derail the release of a House ethics report on Gaetz.
Gaetz helped unseat McCarthy as House speaker, with rumors swirling the fate of the ethics report on Gaetz would hang in the balance. Regardless, House Ethics Chair Michael Guest said yesterday the committee’s confidentiality would hold fast.
The twist: Gaetz’s family was, according to all appearances, blackmailed in a bizarre influence op. In the midst of sex and drug crime allegations against Gaetz, which the Congressman has vigorously denied, his family was apparently approached by a foreign diplomat offering help with the allegations via high-level contacts within Merrick Garland’s DOJ.
The catch: a request for $25 million to fund an operation in Iran to free a captured CIA operative. For all his successes, it’s clear subterranean forces aim to derail him — and potentially the priorities of a Gaetz DOJ.
Amid the flak from Gaetz’s colleagues, and the allegations and machinations chasing his mercurial and meteoric career, is the likelihood Trump will have successfully bargained for recess appointments from the Senate. In other words, Trump’s cabinet will be Trump’s cabinet.
