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Republicans react to Trump tapping Matt Gaetz as AG
Former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz's nomination to be President-elect Donald Trump's attorney general is being met with lots of reaction from Republicans. LiveNOW's Andrew Craft discusses the reaction with 24sight News national politics reporter Tom LoBianco.
The congressional committee investigating Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, reportedly interviewed a woman who said Gaetz had sex with her when she was a 17-year-old high school student, according to ABC News.
Gaetz, a Florida Republican and staunch Trump defender, resigned from Congress Wednesday after Trump announced Gaetz’s nomination for attorney general. His resignation will put an end to a yearslong investigation into Gaetz by the House Ethics Committee. The committee was investigating whether Gaetz engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.
Committee members were expected to vote Friday on whether to release their findings, according to multiple reports, but it’s unclear whether that can happen now that Gaetz has left Congress and the committee no longer has jurisdiction to conduct the investigation.
John Clune, an attorney who represents an alleged victim of Gaetz, is pushing for the committee’s report to be made public "immediately."
"Mr. Gaetz's likely nomination as Attorney General is a perverse development in a truly dark series of events," Clune said on X. "She was a high school student and there were witnesses."
Republican senators say they, too, want to see the House Ethics Committee report. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Thursday he "absolutely" wants to see the committee’s findings.
"I don't want there to be any limitation at all on what the Senate could consider," Cornyn said.
The House Ethics Committee has been investigating Gaetz since 2021, but paused while the Justice Department ran its own Gaetz investigation tied to sex trafficking of young girls. The ethics committee restarted its work in May 2023, shortly after Gaetz announced that the Justice Department had ended its probe without bringing charges against him.
Gaetz has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
Gaetz told Fox News Digital in response to the new report, "These allegations are invented and would constitute false testimony to Congress. This false smear following a three-year criminal investigation should be viewed with great skepticism."
FILE - House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) arrives for a meeting of the Republican House caucus on Sept. 30, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
Gaetz faces GOP opposition
Gaetz has spent years enmeshed in scandals that threaten to derail his confirmation as the nation’s top federal law enforcement officer. He was already facing Republican opposition hours after the announcement was made Wednesday.
"I do not see him as a serious candidate," said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.
Another GOP senator was more blunt in an interview with Fox News Digital.
"He will never get confirmed," the Republican senator, granted anonymity to speak freely, told Fox News Digital.
Matt Gaetz sex trafficking investigation
The federal sex trafficking investigation that began under Attorney General Bill Barr during Trump’s first term focused on allegations that Gaetz and onetime political ally Joel Greenberg paid underage girls and escorts or offered them gifts in exchange for sex.
Greenberg, a fellow Republican who served as the tax collector in Florida’s Seminole County, admitted as part of a plea deal with prosecutors in 2021 that he paid women and an underage girl to have sex with him and other men. The men were not identified in court documents when he pleaded guilty. Greenberg was sentenced in late 2022 to 11 years in prison.
Federal investigators scrutinized a trip that Gaetz took to the Bahamas with a group of women and a doctor who donated to his campaign, and whether the women were paid or received gifts to have sex with the men, according to people familiar with the matter who were not allowed to publicly discuss the investigation. Prosecutors also investigated whether Gaetz and his associates tried to secure government jobs for some of the women, and scrutinized Gaetz’s connections to the medical marijuana sector, including whether his associates sought to influence legislation Gaetz sponsored, the people have said.