USA's new top attorney - who's been investigated over under-age girl

It’s not hard to see why the Washington Establishment – Democrats and Republicans alike – are horrified that Donald Trump has nominated Matt Gaetz as his next Attorney General.

The 42-year-old, has proclaimed on his X/Twitter profile that he is a ‘Florida man. Built for the Battle’ – is seen by his enemies as a danger to democracy, having called the January 6 rioters who mounted an assault on the Capitol ‘peaceful patriots’ and ‘tourists’, and suggested that Joe Biden’s presidential victory in 2020 was ‘fraudulent’.

He has called women protesting for abortion rights ‘disgusting’, ‘overweight’ and ‘ugly’, and claimed that ‘illegal immigrants’ are ‘replacing American culture’.

However, the main reason Trump has chosen this firebrand MAGA supporter for this key role is because they share a contempt for a US justice system that has investigated both of them and which – so they claim – is politically motivated and corrupt.

The Department of Justice – which Gaetz may soon run – has investigated him for child sex trafficking, statutory rape and illegal drug use.

Last year, it finally decided not to charge him, but the House ethics committee continued to investigate him over claims that he paid for sexual misconduct with an underage girl at a 2017 ‘sex party’ and used illicit drugs, among other claims.

Gaetz has denied the accusations but the committee was expected to release a ‘highly critical’ report about him today which will now remain under wraps after Gaetz resigned as a Congressman on Wednesday. Federal investigators had reportedly been looking into allegations that he made trips to the Bahamas with women who were paid to travel for sex – an offence under federal law. 

In 2021, Gaetz married Ginger Luckey, 13 years his junior, having met her at a fundraiser at Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago.

In what he calls a ‘modern family’, he has also raised a young Cuban immigrant, Nestor Galban, now in his early 20s, as his own son. Gaetz met the boy when he was 12 years old, after he began dating Nestor’s older sister, and has said: ‘I can’t imagine loving him more even if he was my own flesh and blood.’ (The children’s mother had died of breast cancer.)

Gaetz, a former commercial litigation lawyer whose father was also a Republican politician and property tycoon in Florida, is easily the most controversial of Trump’s cabinet appointees to date – no mean feat.

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His nomination, say critics, illustrates the extent to which the President-elect is prepared to flout convention in his determination to surround himself in power with cronies who are both ferociously loyal and share his more extreme views.

Opponents fear that Trump and Gaetz are determined to destroy the Justice Department’s independence and make it more subservient to the White House.

The nomination was reportedly so contentious that Trump hatched the deal on his jet while his level-headed new chief-of-staff, Susie Wiles, was in another cabin.

Gaetz certainly has bold plans should he win, promising a crackdown on ‘government that has been turned against our people ... And if that means abolishing every one of the three letter agencies, from the FBI to the ATF [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives], I’m ready to get going!’ 

If Gaetz is confirmed in the role, Trump will have a powerful ally in prosecuting his many political enemies, as he has promised to do. Gaetz could also prove useful in helping the next president escape the various criminal cases in which he’s embroiled.

The US Senate needs to confirm his appointment but Trump has threatened to try and bypass it. Whether Gaetz takes the job or not, the president-elect has put down a marker over the sort of people he wants by his side in his next White House term.