Politics
MAGA loyalist Matt Gaetz is Trump's pick for attorney general. Will he be confirmed?
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick of Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general sent a clear signal through Washington on Wednesday that Trump intends for his Justice Department to take a sharp-elbowed, hyper-partisan approach to law and order — one that is both unquestioningly loyal to Trump and openly antagonistic toward his political opponents, legal and political experts said.
That, after all, has long been the approach of Gaetz, a hard-right member of the House since 2016 who is deeply unpopular among his Democratic and Republican colleagues, but has won praise from Trump by being unflinchingly defensive of the former and future president and openly derisive of the various state and federal criminal cases against him.
“If anything shows Trump will make no effort at unity or conciliation, it is this pick,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law.
Matt Gaetz with Donald Trump outside the New York courtroom where Trump was convicted of 34 felonies in May.
(Mike Segar / Associated Press)
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday that Gaetz had submitted his resignation from Congress “effectively immediately,” in the hope that Florida officials can fill his House seat with another Republican by early January and the party’s thin majority in the chamber won’t be diminished as the next Trump administration gets underway.
Others noted that Gaetz’s departure from Congress also draws to a close an ongoing House ethics investigation against him.
Trump’s pick for the nation’s highest-ranking law enforcement official has been closely watched, given the stakes. Trump won the election despite being a convicted felon with multiple criminal cases pending against him, and after having promised to use the Justice Department to turn the tables and go after his political foes.
Gaetz, 42, has echoed Trump’s claims that the FBI and others within the Justice Department have been politically co-opted and weaponized in recent years to go after Republicans — including Gaetz himself, who was the subject of a federal sex trafficking investigation that ended with no charges last year.
The probe involved allegations that Gaetz had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid her to travel with him. The separate investigation by the House Ethics Committee, which will now be closed out, was considering whether Gaetz “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use” or “sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct,” among other things, the committee said in June.
Gaetz has denied all wrongdoing.
In announcing his selection, Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social that Gaetz had distinguished himself in the House in part by calling for reforms in the Justice Department, and as attorney general would “root out the systemic corruption” and return the department “to its true mission of fighting Crime, and upholding our Democracy and Constitution.”
“Few issues in America are more important than ending the partisan Weaponization of our Justice System,” Trump wrote. “Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department.”
Gaetz called Trump’s nomination “an honor.” He also wrote on X that if ending the “weaponized” Justice Department “means ABOLISHING every one of the three letter agencies, from the FBI to the ATF, I’m ready to get going!”
Gaetz has been on the far-right fringe of the Republican Party in Congress, one among a cohort of MAGA enthusiasts who have caused problems for the broader caucus on more than one occasion — including when they helped orchestrate the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield.
Then-Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) speaks to reporters hours after he was ousted as House speaker in 2023.
(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, another member of the MAGA cohort, hailed Gaetz as an “incredible choice” and a “total repudiation of four years of tyranny by a government entity run amok” under President Biden.
Others in Congress expressed shock — and dismay — at the news of Gaetz’s nomination. Many, from both sides of the political aisle, suggested Gaetz lacked the moral foundation needed to hold the position, and could face an uphill battle to winning confirmation in the Senate.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff, a chief Trump antagonist for years who was just elected to the Senate from California and will be sworn in next month, said Gaetz’s nomination “must be rejected” by his colleagues — especially given a recent decision by the Supreme Court that found that presidents enjoy sweeping criminal immunity for actions taken in their official capacity.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) during a hearing at the Capitol in 2022.
(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)
“First the Supreme Court granted a president immunity for weaponizing the Justice Department. Now Donald Trump wants to appoint Matt Gaetz as AG?” Schiff wrote on X. “Confirming him would mean affirming the worst potential abuses of DOJ.”
Several of Gaetz’s fellow Republicans also raised concerns, according to a host of reporting online Wednesday.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said Gaetz was not a “serious nomination” and that she looked forward to considering “somebody that is serious.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she was “shocked” by Gaetz’s nomination — which she saw as a reminder of why the Senate’s role in confirming presidential nominations for important cabinet positions is “so important.”
John Bolton, who served in every GOP administration since Ronald Reagan’s and was Trump’s national security advisor in 2018 and 2019, called Trump’s pick of Gaetz “the worst nomination for a Cabinet position in American history,” and one Republicans should oppose.
“This is something that falls well outside the scope of deference that should be given to a president in nominating members of the senior team,” Bolton said on “Meet the Press Now.” “Gaetz is not only totally incompetent for this job, he doesn’t have the character. He is a person of moral turpitude.”
How Gaetz’s nomination will be taken up by the Senate is unclear, but it will be an early test for newly elected Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota, another mainstream Republican. Trump in recent days has suggested that the Senate should give him unilateral power to appoint all of his nominees through recess appointments, which do not need Senate approval.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Rep. Michael Guest. (R-Miss.), left, and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) shown in June.
(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)
Trump’s pick for attorney general is widely viewed as one of his most important decisions.
Trump has spent much of the last eight years under criminal investigation by the Justice Department and other law enforcement agencies. He is a convicted felon awaiting sentencing in a New York case, and facing additional criminal charges in two federal cases and in Georgia.
Experts say he is eager to install a loyalist as attorney general who will not only fight to end any of those prosecutions that are still active by the time he takes office, but who will protect him against any new prosecutions moving forward and use the criminal justice system to go after Trump’s enemies, including political opponents and the prosecutors who charged him with crimes or pursued civil cases against him or his businesses.
Trump spoke extensively about such retribution on the campaign trail.
Mark Paoletta, a conservative attorney serving on Trump’s transition team, said Monday on X that Trump’s agenda included “stopping the lawfare and persecution of political opponents,” but also “holding accountable those who weaponized their government authority to abuse Americans.”
Trump has repeatedly expressed regret about not appointing people more loyal to him as attorney general during his first term, which was defined in part by the Justice Department’s investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
Trump had two attorneys general during his first term. The first was Jeff Sessions, an Alabama senator who served on Trump’s 2016 transition team.
Trump became infuriated with Sessions after he recused himself from overseeing the Russia probe, and his top deputy, Rod Rosenstein, appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to oversee the investigation with independence.
Mueller’s investigation found a slate of communications between Trump campaign officials and Russian agents, but not enough to justify criminal charges against Trump. Still, the probe mired the first half of Trump’s presidency in scandal. Trump ultimately fired Sessions.
Trump also soured on his next attorney general, Bill Barr, who backed Trump through the conclusion of the Mueller probe but broke with him over his baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Barr has said that when he told Trump that there was no evidence of election fraud, Trump became furious with him. Barr stepped down in December 2020, just before President Biden was inaugurated.
Barr later said Trump “never really had a good idea of, you know, the role of the Department of Justice [and] to some extent, you know, the president’s role.” Trump has blasted Barr as “gutless” and a “coward.”
Then-Atty. Gen. Bill Barr speaks to then-President Trump as Trump vetoes a bill in 2019.
(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)
While not etched in law, political tradition in this country since Watergate has been for the Justice Department to operate independently of the White House. Trump did not follow those guidelines.
In addition to pressuring the agency to pursue certain investigations and not others, and ridiculing his Justice Department leaders and Mueller, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey amid the Russia investigation. FBI directors usually serve a fixed 10-year term, and Comey’s dismissal was the first firing of one since 1993.
Trump and some other legal minds in his orbit have suggested Trump should go after those prosecutors who have targeted him and his companies — including Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has pursued criminal cases against Trump for his incitement of the Jan. 6 insurrection and his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort; and Letitia “Tish” James, the New York attorney general who won a massive fraud judgment against Trump for inflating his net worth to win preferable insurance and loan terms.
James recently held a news conference alongside New York Gov. Kathy Hochul in which they said they were ready to fight Trump’s agenda and abuses of power.
Trump has also suggested exacting retribution against several California officials, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, who recently held a press conference similar to Hochul’s; Schiff, who helped lead the resistance to Trump during his first term, including during both of Trump’s impeachments; and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has long been one of Trump’s most effective critics.
On Wednesday, experts said Gaetz, if confirmed, would be a ready partner in such efforts.
Chemerinsky, of Berkeley Law, said Trump “could not have picked anyone more far right or more a loyalist than Matt Gaetz,” and that there “is every reason to fear that he will be even less independent than Jeff Sessions or William Barr.”
Gaetz is married to Ginger Luckey Gaetz, the sister of major Trump donor Palmer Luckey of Newport Beach. Luckey, a Long Beach native, sold his virtual reality company to Facebook for $3 billion at the age of 21. He hosted major fundraisers for the president elect in the 2024 and 2020 elections.
Gaetz attended a Trump rally in the Coachella Valley earlier this year.
Times staff writer Noah Bierman, in Washington, contributed to this report.
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Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is leveling a stunning accusation at Vice President JD Vance amid the national furor over this week’s fatal shooting in Minnesota involving an ICE agent.
“I understand that Vice President Vance believes that shooting a young mother of three in the face three times is an acceptable America that he wants to live in, and I do not,” the four-term federal lawmaker from New York and progressive champion argued as she answered questions on Friday on Capitol Hill from Fox News and other news organizations.
Ocasio-Cortez spoke in the wake of Wednesday’s shooting death of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good after she confronted ICE agents from inside her car in Minneapolis.
RENEE NICOLE GOOD PART OF ‘ICE WATCH’ GROUP, DHS SOURCES SAY
Members of law enforcement work the scene following a suspected shooting by an ICE agent during federal operations on January 7, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
Video of the incident instantly went viral, and while Democrats have heavily criticized the shooting, the Trump administration is vocally defending the actions of the ICE agent.
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Vance, at a White House briefing on Thursday, charged that “this was an attack on federal law enforcement. This was an attack on law and order.”
“That woman was there to interfere with a legitimate law enforcement operation,” the vice president added. “The president stands with ICE, I stand with ICE, we stand with all of our law enforcement officers.”
And Vance claimed Good was “brainwashed” and suggested she was connected to a “broader, left-wing network.”
Federal sources told Fox News on Friday that Good, who was a mother of three, worked as a Minneapolis-based immigration activist serving as a member of “ICE Watch.”
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Ocasio-Cortez, in responding to Vance’s comments, said, “That is a fundamental difference between Vice President Vance and I. I do not believe that the American people should be assassinated in the street.”
But a spokesperson for the vice president, responding to Ocasio-Cortez’s accusation, told Fox News Digital, “On National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, AOC made it clear she thinks that radical leftists should be able to mow down ICE officials in broad daylight. She should be ashamed of herself. The Vice President stands with ICE and the brave men and women of law enforcement, and so do the American people.”
In Springfield, Ill., in 1838, a young Abraham Lincoln delivered a powerful speech decrying the “ravages of mob law” throughout the land. Lincoln warned, in eerily prescient fashion, that the spread of a then-ascendant “mobocratic spirit” threatened to sever the “attachment of the People” to their fellow countrymen and their nation. Lincoln’s opposition to anarchy of any kind was absolute and clarion: “There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.”
Unfortunately, it seems that every few years, Americans must be reminded anew of Lincoln’s wisdom. This week’s lethal Immigration and Customs Enforcement standoff in the Twin Cities is but the latest instance of a years-long baleful trend.
On Wednesday, a 37-year-old stay-at-home mom, Renee Nicole Good, was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. Her ex-husband said she and her partner encountered ICE agents after dropping off Good’s 6-year-old at school. The federal government has called Good’s encounter “an act of domestic terrorism” and said the agent shot in self-defense.
Suffice it to say Minnesota’s Democratic establishment does not see it this way.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey responded to the deployment of 2,000 immigration agents in the area and the deadly encounter by telling ICE to “get the f— out” of Minnesota, while Gov. Tim Walz called the shooting “totally predictable” and “totally avoidable.” Frey, who was also mayor during the mayhem after George Floyd’s murder by city police in 2020, has lent succor to the anti-ICE provocateurs, seemingly encouraging them to make Good a Floyd-like martyr. As for Walz, he’s right that this tragedy was eminently “avoidable” — but not only for the reasons he thinks. If the Biden-Harris administration hadn’t allowed unvetted immigrants to remain in the country without legal status and if Walz’s administration hadn’t moved too slowly in its investigations of hundreds of Minnesotans — of mixed immigration status — defrauding taxpayers to the tune of billions of dollars, ICE never would have embarked on this particular operation.
National Democrats took the rage even further. Following the fateful shooting, the Democratic Party’s official X feed promptly tweeted, without any morsel of nuance, that “ICE shot and killed a woman on camera.” This sort of irresponsible fear-mongering already may have prompted a crazed activist to shoot three detainees at an ICE facility in Dallas last September while targeting officers; similar dehumanizing rhetoric about the National Guard perhaps also played a role in November’s lethal shooting of a soldier in Washington, D.C.
Liberals and open-border activists play with fire when they so casually compare ICE, as Walz previously has, to a “modern-day Gestapo.” The fact is, ICE is not the Gestapo, Donald Trump is not Hitler, and Charlie Kirk was not a goose-stepping brownshirt. To pretend otherwise is to deprive words of meaning and to live in the theater of the absurd.
But as dangerous as this rhetoric is for officers and agents, it is the moral blackmail and “mobocratic spirit” of it all that is even more harmful to the rule of law.
The implicit threat of all “sanctuary” jurisdictions, whose resistance to aiding federal law enforcement smacks of John C. Calhoun-style antebellum “nullification,” is to tell the feds not to operate and enforce federal law in a certain area — or else. The result is crass lawlessness, Mafia-esque shakedown artistry and a fetid neo-confederate stench combined in one dystopian package.
The truth is that swaths of the activist left now engage in these sorts of threats as a matter of course. In 2020, the left’s months-long rioting following the death of Floyd led to upward of $2 billion in insurance claims. In 2021, they threatened the same rioting unless Derek Chauvin, the officer who infamously kneeled on Floyd’s neck, was found guilty of murder (which he was, twice). In 2022, following the unprecedented (and still unsolved) leak of the draft majority opinion in the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court case, abortion-rights activists protested outside many of the right-leaning justices’ homes, perhaps hoping to induce them to change their minds and flip their votes. And now, ICE agents throughout the country face threats of violence — egged on by local Democratic leaders — simply for enforcing federal law.
In “The Godfather,” Luca Brasi referred to this sort of thuggery as making someone an offer that he can’t refuse. We might also think of it as Lincoln’s dreaded “ravages of mob law.”
Regardless, a free republic cannot long endure like this. The rule of law cannot be held hostage to the histrionic temper tantrums of a radical ideological flank. The law must be enforced solemnly, without fear or favor. There can be no overarching blackmail lurking in the background — no Sword of Damocles hovering over the heads of a free people, ready to crash down on us all if a certain select few do not get their way.
The proper recourse for changing immigration law — or any federal law — is to lobby Congress to do so, or to make a case in federal court. The ginned-up martyrdom complex that leads some to take matters into their own hands is a recipe for personal and national ruination. There is nothing good down that road — only death, despair and mobocracy.
Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. X: @josh_hammer
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Ideas expressed in the piece
- Democrats and activist left are perpetuating a dangerous “mobocratic spirit” similar to the mob law that Lincoln warned against in 1838, which threatens the rule of law and national unity[1]
- The federal government’s characterization of the incident as self-defense by an ICE agent is appropriate, while local Democratic leaders are irresponsibly encouraging anti-ICE protesters to view Good as a martyr figure like George Floyd[1]
- Dehumanizing rhetoric comparing ICE to the Gestapo is reckless fear-mongering that has inspired actual violence, including a shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas and the fatal shooting of a National Guard soldier[1]
- The shooting was “avoidable” not because of ICE’s presence, but because the Biden-Harris administration allowed undocumented immigrants to remain in the country without legal status and state authorities moved too slowly investigating immigrant fraud[1]
- Sanctuary jurisdictions that resist federal law enforcement represent neo-confederate “nullification” and constitute crass lawlessness and Mafia-style extortion, effectively telling federal agents they cannot enforce the law or face consequences[1]
- The activist left employs threats of violence as systematic blackmail, evidenced by 2020 riots following Floyd’s death, threats surrounding the Chauvin trial, protests at justices’ homes during the abortion debate, and now threats against ICE agents[1]
- Changing immigration policy must occur through Congress or federal courts, not through mob rule and “ginned-up martyrdom complexes” that lead to personal and national ruination[1]
Different views on the topic
- Community members who knew Good rejected characterizations of her as a domestic terrorist, with her mother describing her as “one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” “extremely compassionate,” and someone “who has taken care of people all her life”[1]
- Vigil speakers and attendees portrayed Good as peacefully present to watch the situation and protect her neighbors, with an organizer stating “She was peaceful; she did the right thing” and “She died because she loved her neighbors”[1]
- A speaker identified only as Noah explicitly rejected the federal government’s domestic terrorism characterization, saying Good was present “to watch the terrorists,” not participate in terrorism[1]
- Neighbors described Good as a loving mother and warm family member who was an award-winning poet and positive community presence, suggesting her presence during the incident reflected civic concern rather than radicalism[1]
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President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he plans to meet with Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado in Washington next week.
During an appearance on Fox News’ “Hannity,” Trump was asked if he intends to meet with Machado after the U.S. struck Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro.
“Well, I understand she’s coming in next week sometime, and I look forward to saying hello to her,” Trump said.
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado waves a national flag during a protest called by the opposition on the eve of the presidential inauguration, in Caracas on January 9, 2025. (JUAN BARRETO/AFP via Getty Images)
This will be Trump’s first meeting with Machado, who the U.S. president stated “doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country” to lead.
According to reports, Trump’s refusal to support Machado was linked to her accepting the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, which Trump believed he deserved.
But Trump later told NBC News that while he believed Machado should not have won the award, her acceptance of the prize had “nothing to do with my decision” about the prospect of her leading Venezuela.
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