Scandal-plagued former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz reportedly told senators skeptical of his fitness to become attorney general that he would not seek retaliation against Donald Trump’s enemies — at least in his first week on the job .
“Look, I’m not going there to press charges [the former Wyoming congresswoman] Liz Cheney, has storm troopers burst through MSNBC studio door and arrest [the retired public health official] Anthony Fauci in my first week,” Gaetz told senators, according to the Bulwark, a never-Trump conservative site.
Some senators, the Stronghold said, discovered an “ominous disclaimer.” The site also noted Gaetz adding that he wanted to “break the cycle of weaponization of the Justice Department — a reference to Republican claims that federal charges against Trump for election subversion and retention of classified information were politically driven.
Related: The House Ethics Committee is deadlocked on whether to release the Matt Gaetz report
Gaetz met with senators on Capitol Hill on Wednesday and was joined by JD Vance, the vice president-elect and junior senator from Ohio. Confirmation hearings for Gaetz were expected in the new year. Attention has therefore focused on Republicans who may be less vulnerable than most to Trump’s threats and could therefore try to block Gaetz before or during hearings. Chief among them are Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, relative moderates, and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former leader who is heading for retirement and is widely seen as an institutionalist who disdains Trump at least to some extent .
John Cornyn of Texas, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, made headlines by predicting that confirmation hearings for Gaetz would be like “Kavanaugh on steroids” — a reference to 2018 hearings in which Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s second choice to the Supreme Court , angry sexual denial denied. allegations of assault.
Gaetz, 42, is a far-right Trump loyalist and committed controversial activist with little legal experience. Trump nominated Gaetz to lead the Justice Department even though he was recently investigated over allegations that he paid for sex with women under the age of consent.
While that investigation was dropped and Gaetz vehemently denies wrongdoing, Washington remains abuzz about a House Ethics Committee report on the matter — and other controversies — that was set to be released before Gaetz resigned to seek confirmation as attorney general.
On Wednesday, the House of Representatives Ethics Committee adopted party-political positions, 5-5, in a vote on whether to release the Gaetz report. Mike Johnson, the Republican chairman, has said he opposes such a move. Sean Casten, a Democrat from Illinois, has requested a vote to secure publication.
“Ethics has the power to get things right five minutes ago,” Casten told the Washington Post, adding: “What I know right now is that we cannot trust the ethics committee to do the ethically correct thing.” do.”
There is precedent for the publication of an ethics report on a former member of the House of Representatives: in 1987 and in the case of William H. Boner, a Tennessee Republican accused of corruption.
Casten’s resolution may not be resolved until after the Thanksgiving recess, but Gaetz seems guaranteed to stay in the news. As Politico reported, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have requested FBI files from the Justice Department’s investigation into Gaetz. Outside Congress, a lawyer said this week that Gaetz paid his client for sex in 2017, when the client was 17 years old and in a state, Florida, where prostitution is illegal.
Joel Leppard, who represents two women who say Gaetz paid them for sex, told NBC: “They want the American people to know the truth and to tell the truth.” The second woman who says she was paid to have sex with Gaetz was 19 at the time, Leppard said.
On Wednesday, ABC News first reported that the ethics committee had obtained records showing Gaetz paid more than $10,000 to two women who testified before the panel, with some of the payments related to sex.
In response, a Trump spokesperson pointed to the Justice Department’s halted investigation and said, “These leaks are designed to undermine the people’s mandate to reform the Justice Department.”
Gaetz continues to deny wrongdoing. On Thursday, Bulwark said Mike Lee of Utah, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a Trump ally who was himself touted for attorney general, said Gaetz told him, “There’s none there.”
But the accusations go further. Last June, the House of Representatives Ethics Committee said it was investigating claims that Gaetz “may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illegal drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the floor of the House of Representatives, abused made from government identification information, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted bribes, improper gratuities, or impermissible gifts.”
Parts of that statement echoed a now-famous quote from Markwayne Mullin, a former House Republican turned Oklahoma senator who told CNN last October: “There’s a reason why no one in the [Republican] conference came and defended [Gaetz]because we had all seen the videos he showed on the House floor… of the girls he had slept with. He would brag about how he would crush ED [erectile dysfunction] medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night.
“This is clearly before he got married.”
