Florida's Matt Gaetz resigns House seat after Trump taps him for attorney general

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida to serve as U.S. attorney general, a surprising and highly controversial pick that could set up a confirmation battle in the Senate.

At a Wednesday evening press conference, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that Gaetz had resigned from Congress “effective immediately” in order to begin the process of filling his House seat. The job of setting a special election to replace Gaetz in the House falls to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who’s currently on a trade mission in Italy.

Johnson said he plans to talk to the Florida governor “first thing in the morning” on Thursday.

A far-right firebrand, Gaetz spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election and falsely blamed antifa activists for the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

He opposed efforts to investigate ties between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Russian government and criticized Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for allowing the probe to continue.

Last year, Gaetz’s congressional office said that a Justice Department investigation into his alleged involvement in sex trafficking and obstruction of justice had ended without charges. The investigation revolved around questions of whether Gaetz was involved with a 17-year-old girl years earlier, and his relationship with convicted former Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg. Several of Gaetz’s associates testified before a federal grand jury in Orlando as part of that case.

Prosecutors ultimately declined to bring charges against the congressman, who has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. But a bipartisan investigation in the House Ethics Committee into his activities continued. In June, the committee issued a statement that the allegations against him “merit continued review” and noted that new allegations had emerged that warranted investigation.

Gaetz’s resignation on Wednesday came ahead of an expected vote by the House Ethics Committee on Friday to release a report on its investigation into Gaetz, according to PunchBowl News. With Gaetz’s resignation, the committee will no longer have jurisdiction over him.

Announcing the pick, Trump called Gaetz a “deeply gifted and tenacious attorney who will “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,” Trump wrote.

“Matt will root out the systemic corruption at DOJ, and return the Department to its true mission of fighting Crime, and upholding our Democracy and Constitution,” he added. “We must have Honesty, Integrity, and Transparency at DOJ.”

Gaetz is the latest in a growing list of Floridians who have been named to prestigious roles in Trump’s incoming administration. The president-elect has already tapped longtime Florida GOP operative Susie Wiles as his White House chief of staff, U.S. Rep. Michael Waltz as his national security adviser and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio as his secretary of state.

The flurry of announcements will likely reshape Florida’s political landscape, and questions are swirling as to who will be interested in running for the vacancies left open by Gaetz and Waltz, and who DeSantis will appoint to Rubio’s Senate seat.

At least one Republican, state Rep. Michelle Salzman of Pensacola, has expressed interest in possibly running for Gaetz’s North Florida seat. DeSantis will need to call a special election before the clock can start ticking on that race.

Gaetz, the son of a former Florida state Senate president, has little real experience in the legal profession. He graduated from William & Mary Law School in 2007 and was admitted to the Florida Bar in 2008 before winning a state House seat in a 2010 special election. He remained in Tallahassee until his election to the U.S. House in 2016.

In 2019, the Florida Bar investigated Gaetz after he sent a tweet about Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, but the Republican firebrand was ultimately cleared.

Among his colleagues in Washington, Gaetz has a reputation as a hard-right agitator.

Last year, after then-U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy pushed a stopgap spending bill through Congress with the help of a coalition of Democrats, Gaetz moved to oust McCarthy from the speakership with the help of fellow right-wing lawmakers.

That effort was ultimately successful but set off a weeks-long battle to replace McCarthy that many Republicans saw as an embarrassing public display of internal turmoil.

While Gaetz has irritated many of his Republican colleagues in Congress, he has remained close to Trump, who has repeatedly expressed a desire to install loyalists into the most prominent roles in U.S. government. Gaetz, one of Capitol Hill’s most vocal critics of the Justice Department and the FBI, fits that mold perfectly.

Trump has already expressed regrets about some of his appointees during his first four years in the White House. At a Univision town hall with Latino voters last month in Doral, Trump said that during his first term, some members of his administration fell short of his expectations. That would not happen again, he said.

“I know the good ones, the bad ones, the smart ones, the dumb ones, the ones that don’t have courage,” Trump said. “You think you never really know about courage until you’re tested. But I know the people very well. I know who I want, who I don’t want.”

While votes in several districts across the country are still being tallied, Republicans appear likely to maintain control of the House with a slim majority. Trump has already tapped other House Republicans for jobs in his administration, leaving GOP leaders eager to fill their seats.

Still, it could be months before a special election can be held to replace Gaetz.

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(Miami Herald staff writer Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.)

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