If he is confirmed as President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general, former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz will replace Merrick Garland, a onetime Supreme Court nominee who served two prior stints in the Justice Department, worked as a corporate litigator, and served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for more than two decades, including seven years as chief judge. Garland’s predecessor, William Barr, likewise had previously worked for the Justice Department, including as attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration, in addition to earlier legal work at the CIA and in private practice.
Going down the list of attorneys general before Barr, you will see people with extensive legal experience, including former prosecutors, Justice Department officials, judges, and state attorneys general. Gaetz, by contrast, is a 42-year-old graduate of William & Mary Law School who briefly worked for a law firm in Fort Walton Beach before entering state politics in 2010, two years after he was admitted to the Florida bar. He served in Florida’s legislature for six years before he was elected to represent the state’s 1st Congressional District in 2016.
Gaetz’s skimpy legal background is not the only reason many people, including Republican colleagues as well as Democrats, were dismayed by Trump’s choice. As Reason‘s C.J. Ciaramella noted, Rep. Mike Simpson (R–Idaho) “summed up the general reaction” on Capitol Hill with this response to news of the nomination: “Are you shittin’ me?” When asked what he thought about Gaetz as attorney general, Sen. John Cornyn (R–Texas) was a bit more diplomatic, saying, “I’m trying to absorb all of this.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R–Alaska) said Gaetz is “not a serious candidate.” The New York Times describes him as “one of the most reviled members of his conference.”
To be sure, politicians can be “reviled” for good or bad reasons. A legislator who shakes things up by standing on principle and resisting business as usual in Congress, which is how Gaetz is apt to portray himself, is bound to antagonize the establishment. But in Gaetz’s case, the main source of intraparty hostility is the perception that he is a lightweight showboat who is desperate for attention, fond of political stunts, inclined toward intemperate rhetoric, vindictive, and eager to start fires just to see stuff burn.
In these respects, Gaetz resembles Trump, whom he has vociferously defended for years. As Trump sees it, Gaetz’s loyalty is his main qualification to run the Justice Department. But it raises obvious concerns for anyone who worries that Trump will act on his often expressed desire to punish his political opponents once he is back in power. Intalling a sycophant at the top of the Justice Department would go a long way toward helping him deliver on those threats.
Gaetz’s allegiance to Trump, of course, hardly counts as a strike against him in the current Republican Party. In any case, his tendency to irritate his fellow Republicans predates his connection to the former and future president, and it seems to reflect obnoxious personality traits rather than controversial policy positions.
As a state representative in 2015, Gaetz opposed a “revenge porn” bill that made it a first-degree misdemeanor to post sexually explicit photos on a website without the subject’s consent. Understandably, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Tom Goodson (R–Titusville), was not happy about that. But there was an additional element to their dispute.
“There is personal animosity between Goodson, a 64-year-old road contractor with a drawl who sometimes becomes tongue-tied during debates, and Gaetz, a 33-year-old lawyer with a sharp wit but an often-condescending manner,” Florida Trend reported. “During a session on the House floor last year, Gaetz peppered Goodson with questions about an arcane piece of legislation dealing with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. The interrogation appeared to be an attempt to make Goodson appear unprepared or foolish.” During that exchange, a microphone caught Goodson calling Gaetz an “asshole.”
That assessment would later be echoed by Republicans who worked alongside Gaetz in Congress. His style was exemplified by his decision to wear a gas mask during a House debate about COVID-19 spending in early March 2020. There were sound reasons to question the government’s response to the pandemic, including state and local restrictions as well as the eventual approval of $6.2 trillion in federal spending that was rife with fraud and waste. But according to Gaetz himself, he was not mocking the government’s response.
When Washington Post reporter Philip Rucker said Gaetz had “made light of [the] coronavirus by wearing a gas mask,” the congressman implausibly insisted that his stunt had been misunderstood. “Made light?!?!” he wrote on Twitter. “I was quite serious. The threat to Congress is real, as I explained, based on travel and habits like selfies and handshakes.” Gaetz, in short, got the attention he wanted without making any substantive point, let alone accomplishing anything meaningful.
That is how Gaetz’s critics characterized his ultimately successful battle to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R–Calif.) as House speaker. While Gaetz said he was taking a stand for fiscal restraint, McCarthy said Gaetz was taking revenge for an ethics investigation he blamed on the speaker.
Although only Gaetz knows his true motivation, it seems clear that government shutdowns of the sort he faulted McCarthy for avoiding through a deal with Democrats “don’t meaningfully reduce the size or cost of government,” as Reason‘s Eric Boem noted last year. Nor has McCarthy’s replacement by Rep. Mike Johnson (R–La.) yielded any improvement in the gap between revenue and spending, which increased from $1.7 trillion in fiscal year 2023 to more than $1.8 trillion in fiscal year 2024 as outlays rose from $6.1 trillion to $6.8 trillion.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), a fiscal conservative who did not support McCarthy’s removal, thought Johnson should be fired. “We are steering everything toward what [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer wants,” Massie said in April. “If the country likes Chuck Schumer, then the country should like what Speaker Johnson has accomplished in the House.”
Whatever you make of McCarthy’s ouster, Gaetz’s recklessness was on full display in his defenses of Trump. On the night before former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee in February 2019, Gaetz directed a tweet at him: “Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot…”
When Democrats accused Gaetz of trying to intimidate Cohen, Gaetz defended the tweet. “This isn’t witness tampering,” he said. “This is witness testing. I don’t threaten anybody.” He later reconsidered that response, deleting the tweet and apologizing to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.). “While it is important 2 create context around the testimony of liars like Michael Cohen, it was NOT my intent to threaten, as some believe I did,” he wrote. “I’m deleting the tweet & I should have chosen words that better showed my intent. I’m sorry.”
After the 2020 election, Gaetz joined 138 other House Republicans in objecting to electoral votes for Joe Biden. When Trump supporters enraged at Biden’s supposedly phony victory invaded the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Gaetz sought to blame leftist provocateurs for the riot. “Some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters,” he said on the House floor the next day. “They were masquerading as Trump supporters and, in fact, were members of the violent terrorist group antifa.”
Soon afterward, Gaetz went on TV to criticize Rep. Liz Cheney (R–Wyo.) and other Republicans who had condemned Trump’s behavior before and during the riot. Gaetz is “putting people in jeopardy,” McCarthy complained in a phone call with other Republican leaders. “And he doesn’t need to be doing this. We saw what people would do in the Capitol, you know, and these people came prepared with rope, with everything else.”
A week after the riot, Gaetz was still embracing Trump’s stolen-election fantasy, saying, “President Trump is fighting to EXPOSE election fraud and ensure there’s integrity in every US election moving forward.” Months later, he traveled the country with another Trump loyalist, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.), arguing that “audits” would validate the former president’s baseless claims of systematic election fraud.
Gaetz has described himself as a “libertarian populist,” and his policy positions are the mixed bag you might expect based on that confusing label. “I believe you can fundamentally agree that the government is bad at doing stuff but also understand that we cannot bend big government to the will of big business so easily through legal bribes we call campaign donations,” he told Vanity Fair in 2020. “I’m a different kind of Republican, and I think we are in a time of political realignment made possible by the Trump presidency.”
Gaetz identified himself with “the pro-science wing of the Republican Party,” meaning he acknowledges that “nobody chooses to be gay” and that “the earth is warming,” although he expressed a preference for a “pro-innovation” response to climate change rather than an approach that “has the government controlling everything.” His deference to science, he said, also led him to the conclusion that “the federal government has lied to our country for a generation about marijuana.”
As a state legislator in 2015, Gaetz supported the repeal of Florida’s ban on adoptions by same-sex couples. But he criticized Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court ruling recognizing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, saying the issue should be left to the states. Consistent with that position, Gaetz opposed repealing the Defense of Marriage Act as a member of Congress in 2022.
In 2018, Gaetz was one of 182 House Republicans who supported the Trump-backed FIRST STEP Act, a package of sentencing and prison reforms. He had much less GOP company in 2020, when he cosponsored a bill that would have repealed the federal ban on marijuana, which passed the House with support from just five Republicans.
Gaetz has long been a staunch advocate of the right to armed self-defense. As a state legislator, he supported open carry and fought attempts to revise or repeal Florida’s “stand your ground” law. Marion Hammer, former president of the National Rifle Association, described him as “one of the most pro-gun members to have ever served in the Florida Legislature.”
Gaetz has expressed his opposition to abortion in characteristically inflammatory and insulting terms. “Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions?” he wondered in a 2022 speech. “Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.”
While some of Gaetz’s positions will appeal to libertarians, his reputation in the House and his lack of relevant experience are apt to give senators pause. And that’s without considering the allegations of sexual misconduct, drug use, and financial irregularities.
In 2022, federal prosecutors decided not to pursue charges against Gaetz after looking into claims involving sex with a 17-year-old and transportation of women allegedly paid for sex. The main reason, The Washington Post reported, was that prosecutors had doubts about the credibility of the witnesses on which they would have to rely.
Gaetz has always denied the sexual allegations. But an investigation by the House Ethics Committee covered some of the same ground, along with allegations that Gaetz used illegal drugs, “misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, accepted impermissible gifts under House rules, and shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor,” The New York Times reports.
According to the Times, the committee was about to release “a highly critical report” about Gaetz when he gave up his seat in anticipation of his new job. Although the committee no longer has any authority over Gaetz, the Times says, “it was not immediately clear whether it would still release its findings.”
One of Gaetz’s Republican detractors, Rep. Max Miller (R–Ohio), said he was happy to see him go. Most House Republicans “are giddy about it,” Miller told the Times. “Get him out of here.” He added that he is looking forward to Gaetz’s confirmation hearing. “I’m surprised that Matt would do this to himself,” he said. “I want to go get a big bag of popcorn and pull up a front-row seat to that show.”
