Donald Trump decided to nominate Matt Gaetz as attorney general last Wednesday, during a flight home from Washington, where the president-elect had visited Joe Biden at the White House. The pick proved as surprising as it was controversial. Just eight days later, after a week of relentless hullabaloo, Gaetz withdrew from contention.
It was a Washington farce for the ages. But how did it happen?
Gaetz, now 42, made his name as a far-right Florida congressman, a pro-Trump publicity hound and gadfly who in October 2023 made history by bringing down a House speaker: Kevin McCarthy, the first ever ejected by his own party.
The seeds of Gaetz’s own downfall were to be found in that extraordinary episode.
Ostensibly, Gaetz moved against McCarthy in order to install a speaker more amenable to rightwing threats to shut down the federal government over arguments about funding, and less likely to seek Democrats’ help in avoiding such outcomes.
But McCarthy never believed that. He insisted Gaetz moved against him in order to block release of a House ethics committee report into allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other offenses.
Gaetz vehemently denied – and still denies – wrongdoing but, nonetheless, when Trump nominated him for attorney general, he promptly resigned his seat in the House. According to precedent, that blocked release of the ethics report.
The report duly became the hottest property in Washington, reporters chasing it, Democrats and some skeptical Republicans eager to find out what it contained. It promised sensational reading.
Gaetz was initially investigated by the US justice department, in relation to the actions of Joel Greenberg, a Florida tax collector who in 2021 pleaded guilty to sex trafficking of a minor and agreed to cooperate in the investigation of Gaetz.
Eventually, the justice department dropped that investigation. But the House ethics committee had been investigating Gaetz too, and in June it outlined the scope of its work: it was investigating claims the congressman “may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift”.
Trump’s nomination of Gaetz was controversial for other reasons. There was Gaetz’s loud support for Trump supporters convicted in relation to the January 6 attack on Congress, and his promises to seek revenge against Trump’s political opponents. There was his almost complete lack of legal experience and expertise, having graduated from law school but practiced only briefly before entering politics.
But in Washington, the ethics committee report remained the holy grail.
Details began to leak, ABC News first to report that the committee had obtained records showing Gaetz paid more than $10,000 to two women who testified before the panel, with some of the payments being for sex.
A lawyer for two women spoke to the media, saying one had been 17 – under the age of consent – when she was paid for sex with Gaetz.
The Trump camp repeatedly pointed to the justice department’s decision to drop its investigation of allegations against Gaetz, without official reason but amid reports of concerns about witness credibility.
On Wednesday, the House committee considered whether to release the report. The session ended in deadlock, five Democrats for release, five Republicans against it. In the House at large, Democrats introduced motions calling for a full vote to force the issue.
Controversy switched to the Senate. As Democrats said they had asked the FBI for its files on Gaetz, the congressman himself climbed Capitol Hill, in the company of JD Vance, to meet the vice-president-elect’s erstwhile Senate colleagues and seek to convince them that Gaetz should be confirmed.
It did not go well. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, relative Republican moderates already used to saying no to Trump, at least some of the time, were not supportive.
Gaetz found sympathy from others. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close Trump ally, said he would “urge all of my Senate colleagues, particularly Republicans, not to join the lynch mob and give the process a chance to move forward”. But plenty of other Republicans cast doubt on Gaetz’s chances of being confirmed.
John Cornyn of Texas, a member of the judiciary committee, said any hearings for Gaetz would be like “Kavanaugh on steroids” – a reference to the tempestuous hearings in 2018 in which Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s second pick for the supreme court, angrily rejected accusations of sexual assault. In Kavanaugh’s case, the Capitol Hill circus proved controversial but survivable.
But Gaetz would not be given a chance to pull off a similar escape. On Thursday, on social media, he said: “There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as attorney general.”
CNN subsequently reported that the woman who says she had sex with him when she was a minor told the ethics committee she had another sexual encounter with Gaetz, which also involved another adult woman.
“After being asked for comment for this story,” the CNN report said, “Gaetz announced he was backing out as President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general nominee.”
However, a source familiar with Gaetz’s nomination process told the Guardian that privately confirmed opposition from four senators – enough to sink the nomination if no Democrats defected – was what pushed Gaetz to decide to withdraw, before the call from CNN.
Murkowski and Collins were opposed. So was John Curtis, the senator-elect from Utah who will succeed Mitt Romney, another Trump critic, in the new year. The fourth voice set against Gaetz was an influential one: Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former Republican leader now beginning life back in the rank and file.
In his announcement, Gaetz proclaimed his support for “the most successful president in history” and said he would “forever be honored” that Trump nominated him for attorney general.
Elsewhere in Washington, it seemed safe to bet, politicians and reporters alike were reflecting on an extraordinary episode of near-unsurpassable Washington dishonor.
