President-elect Donald Trump’s pick of Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general sent a clear signal through Washington on Wednesday that Trump intends for his Justice Department to take a sharp-elbowed, hyper-partisan approach to law and order — one that is both unquestioningly loyal to Trump and openly antagonistic toward his political opponents, legal and political experts said.
That, after all, has long been the approach of Gaetz, a hard-right member of the House since 2016 who is deeply unpopular among his Democratic and Republican colleagues, but has won praise from Trump by being unflinchingly defensive of the former and future president and openly derisive of the various state and federal criminal cases against him.
“If anything shows Trump will make no effort at unity or conciliation, it is this pick,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday that Gaetz had submitted his resignation from Congress “effectively immediately,” in the hope that Florida officials can fill his House seat with another Republican by early January and the party’s thin majority in the chamber won’t be diminished as the next Trump administration gets underway.
Others noted that Gaetz’s departure from Congress also draws to a close an ongoing House ethics investigation against him.
Trump’s pick for the nation’s highest-ranking law enforcement official has been closely watched, given the stakes. Trump won the election despite being a convicted felon with multiple criminal cases pending against him, and after having promised to use the Justice Department to turn the tables and go after his political foes.
Gaetz, 42, has echoed Trump’s claims that the FBI and others within the Justice Department have been politically co-opted and weaponized in recent years to go after Republicans — including Gaetz himself, who was the subject of a federal sex trafficking investigation that ended with no charges last year.
The probe involved allegations that Gaetz had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid her to travel with him. The separate investigation by the House Ethics Committee, which will now be closed out, was considering whether Gaetz “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use” or “sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct,” among other things, the committee said in June.
Gaetz has denied all wrongdoing.
In announcing his selection, Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social that Gaetz had distinguished himself in the House in part by calling for reforms in the Justice Department, and as attorney general would “root out the systemic corruption” and return the department “to its true mission of fighting Crime, and upholding our Democracy and Constitution.”
“Few issues in America are more important than ending the partisan Weaponization of our Justice System,” Trump wrote. “Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department.”
Gaetz called Trump’s nomination “an honor.” He also wrote on X that if ending the “weaponized” Justice Department “means ABOLISHING every one of the three letter agencies, from the FBI to the ATF, I’m ready to get going!”
Gaetz has been on the far-right fringe of the Republican Party in Congress, one among a cohort of MAGA enthusiasts who have caused problems for the broader caucus on more than one occasion — including when they helped orchestrate the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, another member of the MAGA cohort, hailed Gaetz as an “incredible choice” and a “total repudiation of four years of tyranny by a government entity run amok” under President Biden.
Others in Congress expressed shock — and dismay — at the news of Gaetz’s nomination. Many, from both sides of the political aisle, suggested Gaetz lacked the moral foundation needed to hold the position, and could face an uphill battle to winning confirmation in the Senate.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff, a chief Trump antagonist for years who was just elected to the Senate from California and will be sworn in next month, said Gaetz’s nomination “must be rejected” by his colleagues — especially given a recent decision by the Supreme Court that found that presidents enjoy sweeping criminal immunity for actions taken in their official capacity.
“First the Supreme Court granted a president immunity for weaponizing the Justice Department. Now Donald Trump wants to appoint Matt Gaetz as AG?” Schiff wrote on X. “Confirming him would mean affirming the worst potential abuses of DOJ.”
Several of Gaetz’s fellow Republicans also raised concerns, according to a host of reporting online Wednesday.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said Gaetz was not a “serious nomination” and that she looked forward to considering “somebody that is serious.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she was “shocked” by Gaetz’s nomination — which she saw as a reminder of why the Senate’s role in confirming presidential nominations for important cabinet positions is “so important.”
John Bolton, who served in every GOP administration since Ronald Reagan’s and was Trump’s national security advisor in 2018 and 2019, called Trump’s pick of Gaetz “the worst nomination for a Cabinet position in American history,” and one Republicans should oppose.
“This is something that falls well outside the scope of deference that should be given to a president in nominating members of the senior team,” Bolton said on “Meet the Press Now.” “Gaetz is not only totally incompetent for this job, he doesn’t have the character. He is a person of moral turpitude.”
How Gaetz’s nomination will be taken up by the Senate is unclear, but it will be an early test for newly elected Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota, another mainstream Republican. Trump in recent days has suggested that the Senate should give him unilateral power to appoint all of his nominees through recess appointments, which do not need Senate approval.
Trump’s pick for attorney general is widely viewed as one of his most important decisions.
Trump has spent much of the last eight years under criminal investigation by the Justice Department and other law enforcement agencies. He is a convicted felon awaiting sentencing in a New York case, and facing additional criminal charges in two federal cases and in Georgia.
Experts say he is eager to install a loyalist as attorney general who will not only fight to end any of those prosecutions that are still active by the time he takes office, but who will protect him against any new prosecutions moving forward and use the criminal justice system to go after Trump’s enemies, including political opponents and the prosecutors who charged him with crimes or pursued civil cases against him or his businesses.
Trump spoke extensively about such retribution on the campaign trail.
Mark Paoletta, a conservative attorney serving on Trump’s transition team, said Monday on X that Trump’s agenda included “stopping the lawfare and persecution of political opponents,” but also “holding accountable those who weaponized their government authority to abuse Americans.”
Trump has repeatedly expressed regret about not appointing people more loyal to him as attorney general during his first term, which was defined in part by the Justice Department’s investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
Trump had two attorneys general during his first term. The first was Jeff Sessions, an Alabama senator who served on Trump’s 2016 transition team.
Trump became infuriated with Sessions after he recused himself from overseeing the Russia probe, and his top deputy, Rod Rosenstein, appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to oversee the investigation with independence.
Mueller’s investigation found a slate of communications between Trump campaign officials and Russian agents, but not enough to justify criminal charges against Trump. Still, the probe mired the first half of Trump’s presidency in scandal. Trump ultimately fired Sessions.
Trump also soured on his next attorney general, Bill Barr, who backed Trump through the conclusion of the Mueller probe but broke with him over his baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Barr has said that when he told Trump that there was no evidence of election fraud, Trump became furious with him. Barr stepped down in December 2020, just before President Biden was inaugurated.
Barr later said Trump “never really had a good idea of, you know, the role of the Department of Justice [and] to some extent, you know, the president’s role.” Trump has blasted Barr as “gutless” and a “coward.”
While not etched in law, political tradition in this country since Watergate has been for the Justice Department to operate independently of the White House. Trump did not follow those guidelines.
In addition to pressuring the agency to pursue certain investigations and not others, and ridiculing his Justice Department leaders and Mueller, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey amid the Russia investigation. FBI directors usually serve a fixed 10-year term, and Comey’s dismissal was the first firing of one since 1993.
Trump and some other legal minds in his orbit have suggested Trump should go after those prosecutors who have targeted him and his companies — including Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has pursued criminal cases against Trump for his incitement of the Jan. 6 insurrection and his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort; and Letitia “Tish” James, the New York attorney general who won a massive fraud judgment against Trump for inflating his net worth to win preferable insurance and loan terms.
James recently held a news conference alongside New York Gov. Kathy Hochul in which they said they were ready to fight Trump’s agenda and abuses of power.
Trump has also suggested exacting retribution against several California officials, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, who recently held a press conference similar to Hochul’s; Schiff, who helped lead the resistance to Trump during his first term, including during both of Trump’s impeachments; and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has long been one of Trump’s most effective critics.
On Wednesday, experts said Gaetz, if confirmed, would be a ready partner in such efforts.
Chemerinsky, of Berkeley Law, said Trump “could not have picked anyone more far right or more a loyalist than Matt Gaetz,” and that there “is every reason to fear that he will be even less independent than Jeff Sessions or William Barr.”
Gaetz is married to Ginger Luckey Gaetz, the sister of major Trump donor Palmer Luckey of Newport Beach. Luckey, a Long Beach native, sold his virtual reality company to Facebook for $3 billion at the age of 21. He hosted major fundraisers for the president elect in the 2024 and 2020 elections.
Gaetz attended a Trump rally in the Coachella Valley earlier this year.
Times staff writer Noah Bierman, in Washington, contributed to this report.