President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate anti-LGBTQ+ Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) to serve as U.S. attorney general and lead the Department of Justice (DOJ). Trump will expect Gaetz — who has been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for potential lobbying violations, illicit drug use, and connections to sex trafficking — to help end all federal legal investigations against Trump and use the DOJ to seek retribution against his political enemies.

“Matt is a deeply gifted and tenacious attorney,” Trump wrote in his announcement on Truth Social posted Wednesday, adding that he “has distinguished himself in Congress through his focus on achieving desperately needed reform at the Department of Justice. Few issues in America are more important than ending the partisan Weaponization of our Justice System. Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department.”

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Anti-LGBTQ+ Rep. Matt Gaetz under second investigation for allegedly sex trafficking a minor
Gaetz’s former friend, a confessed child sex trafficker, is helping investigators with their inquiry.

Replying to Trump’s announcement on X, Gaetz said it will be an “honor” to serve. Gaetz graduated with a Juris Doctor from the William & Mary Law School in 2007 and worked at the Florida-based legal firm of Keefe, Anchors & Gordon before being elected to Florida’s House of Representatives in 2010.

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If the Republican-led Senate confirms Gaetz, he will be expected to end the federal cases that remain against Trump. Trump currently faces federal charges related to stealing classified documents from the White House, trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and paying hush money to an adult entertainer who he allegedly had an affair with.

The next attorney general will also be expected to defend Trump’s agenda, including his proposals to eliminate the Department of Education, deport 11 million immigrants, and cut federal funding to schools that teach “critical race theory” and “transgender ideology,” as right-wingers call gender-inclusivity.

For years, Trump has called for his political opponents and critics to be prosecuted, locked up, deported and even executed. His targets have included President Joe Biden and his family, Vice President Kamala Harris, Former President Barack Obama, Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Special counsel Jack Smith, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, Former FBI Director James Comey, U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, members of the congressional committee about the January 6 Capitol riots, unspecified people engaged in election fraud, and various reporters, editors and publishers.

Gaetz has voted against the Equality Act, which would enshrine LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination protections in pre-existing federal civil rights law, as well as against the Respect for Marriage Act, which requires federal and state governments to recognize legal same-sex marriages. He opposes transgender athletes competing in sports and gender-affirming care for minors. He also helped rescind Florida’s ban on gay adoption when he was a state legislator.

Gaetz has referred to LGBTQ+ people as “degenerate” at least twice, saying that his school prayer bill will keep LGBTQ+ identities out of schools.  He has attacked the military for allowing transgender people to serve their country. He accused USAID, the federal agency that manages foreign aid and developmental assistance to other countries, of having a “perverse ideology” for supporting LGBTQ+ people in other countries. He also got the Air Force to shut down a drag event on a military base after he complained about it.

The allegations facing Gaetz

In 2020, the Secret Service received a tip that Gaetz was associated with a Florida county tax collector who was charged with making fake IDs to sex-traffic underage girls. The DOJ opened an investigation into Gaetz that same year, and investigators found that Gaetz would show his colleagues videos of naked and topless women on his phone as he bragged about how he was able to go to the parties held by the county tax collector, according to some witnesses.

In an attempt to get a pardon in 2020, the county tax collector wrote a letter to the Trump administration in which he confessed to paying women and girls for sex and said that he and Gaetz sexually abused a 17-year-old girl together but said that they thought she was 19. Around the same time, the DOJ was also investigating whether Gaetz paid for her to travel with him for an alleged sexual relationship with her when she was 17.

Gaetz denied the accusations and said that he was the victim of an extortion plot by an unnamed DOJ official. In strange media interviews, Gaetz claimed his father was “wearing a wire” to help officials catch the person extorting him, and he denied that there were photos of him with child prostitutes — no one accused him of that.

Gaetz’s close relationship with Joel Greenberg –  who pleaded guilty in 2021 following a DOJ probe into whether he had sex with an underage girl and introduced her to other “adult men” who also had sex with her while she was underage – put him under suspicion, as did the fact that Gaetz was the only member of Congress to vote against a bill that increased funding to fight human trafficking.

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CO), who was House Minority Leader at the time, said that he would not remove Gaetz from his committee assignments. CNN reported that Gaetz showed pictures of naked women to his colleagues on the House floor and bragged about having sex with them in 2021.

But by 2022, the DOJ investigation into Gaetz had concluded, and prosecutors recommended not charging Gaetz in the sex trafficking investigation due to a lack of credibility of two key witnesses.

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