The Senate Should Reject Matt Gaetz

National Review Online

Friday, November 15, 2024

 

Donald Trump nominated Representative Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.), an unqualified toady, to the nation’s top law-enforcement office. And, in the blink of an eye, Gaetz resigned from the House to, apparently, force the shutdown of an ethics investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, obstruction, and other unsavory conduct — misconduct allegations over which Gaetz narrowly escaped being indicted by the same Justice Department Trump would have him lead.

 

To be sure, Gaetz was not charged. He has denied any wrongdoing. And allegations, even colorable ones, are not evidence. Nevertheless, the standards of fitness for an office of high public trust — and it doesn’t get much higher than attorney general — are considerably loftier than whether one manages to evade criminal prosecution. This puzzling nomination should be swiftly rejected by the Senate for the most basic of reasons: Gaetz is unfit.

 

We understand President-elect Trump’s instincts here. During his first term in office, his own Justice Department failed to rein in Obama-era holdovers, mainly at the FBI, who publicly intimated that he was a clandestine agent of Russia based on bogus evidence supplied by Trump’s political opponents. The result was a two-year special counsel investigation that addled the administration, with many Trump officials forced to retain counsel at prohibitive expense — to say nothing of the anxiety. Then, once Trump left office after the tumult of the Capitol riot, the incumbent Democratic administration indicted him twice (while other Democratic state prosecutors piled on with criminal charges and financially ruinous civil suits). It is true enough that Trump brought a lot of his troubles on himself. We cannot ignore, however, that the cases brought against him, in the main, were selective, were politically timed (in violation of explicit DOJ rules) in an effort to wound his candidacy, and stretched legal statutes to the breaking point.

 

Trump is thus highly resentful and suspicious of politicized law enforcement. Nor does he trust seasoned lawyers and former prosecutors, whom he views as establishment Republicans and DOJ institutionalists. He wants a loyalist.

 

Trump should have no trouble finding a skilled lawyer who is appropriately loyal and scrupulously lawful. Matt Gaetz is the wrong loyalist.

 

Gaetz has no relevant experience. Fresh out of law school, he worked at a small Florida firm before diving into electoral politics. He has barely practiced law and has never been a prosecutor at the state or federal level.

 

That would not necessarily be disqualifying if Gaetz had exhibited high levels of legal acumen and judgment during his 14 years in the state and federal legislatures (Gaetz was elected to Congress in 2016). The opposite, however, is the case.

 

Gaetz was a principal supporter of Trump’s disgraceful “stop the steal” scheme to reverse his loss to President Biden in the 2020 election. He was among the Republican lawmakers who shamed themselves by joining the absurd lawsuit in which Texas sought to overturn the electoral votes of states that voted for Biden — a suit roundly rejected by the Supreme Court, including all three justices named to the Court by Trump. Gaetz also supported the specious legal theory that the vice president had constitutional authority to invalidate state-certified electoral votes — which would, had it been adopted, empower Vice President Harris to prevent ratification of the victory Trump just won.

 

Through it all, Gaetz peddled conspiracy theories that the Capitol riot had been covertly led by left-wing radicals rather than Trump supporters. When that didn’t fly, he decided the violence, in which scores of police were injured, might have been an inside job orchestrated by the FBI.

 

In doing so, Gaetz flashed the same self-absorbed provocateur streak that has made him a figure of ridicule and loathing among his Capitol Hill colleagues on both sides of the aisle. His most famous antic, of course, was the reckless, vengeful motion to oust then-speaker Kevin McCarthy from his post, plunging the House into weeks of chaos.

 

The president-elect may hate how the Justice Department has been run over the last several years, but he must not lose sight of its vital institutional role in bolstering law and order, to which Trump proclaimed his commitment on the campaign trail. The Justice Department and the FBI need reform. That is going to require firm, experienced, widely respected leadership; while Trump is right to be wary of the partisan cudgel Democratic administrations have made of DOJ, there can be no enduring reform without legislation. The president needs a savvy AG who can work with the opposition without being rolled by the opposition.

 

There may be useful things Matt Gaetz can do in a Trump administration. Being attorney general is not one of them. Gaetz is so wrong for the job that it will call into question the president-elect’s intentions after a resounding election victory in which many Trump-skeptical Americans were convinced to take a chance on returning him to power.

 

Trump should withdraw the nomination — and Gaetz himself should withdraw if he truly wants to avoid an intense public examination of the subject matter of the ethics investigation. Otherwise, the Senate must do its constitutional duty and deny consent to an unworthy nominee.