Former Republican Representative Matt Gaetz is withdrawing his name from consideration as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general.
“I had excellent meetings with Senators yesterday. I appreciate their thoughtful feedback – and the incredible support of so many. While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition,” Gaetz wrote on social media platform X.
The U.S. House of Representatives Ethics Committee failed Wednesday to reach agreement on whether to release findings from its nearly finished investigative report on Gaetz.
The panel’s chair, Republican Representative Michael Guest, emerged from a lengthy committee meeting, saying, “There was no agreement by the committee to release the report.” He declined further comment.
Gaetz was accused of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use before he was picked by Trump to become the country’s top law enforcement official in the administration that takes office on January 20.
ABC News and The Washington Post reported that the committee had obtained documents that showed Gaetz paid two women who appeared before the committee as witnesses a total of more than $10,000 between July 2017 and late January 2019. The women, who were over the age of 18 at the time of the payments, told the panel that some of the money was for sex.
A Trump transition spokesperson defended Gaetz in a statement.
“The Justice Department received access to roughly every financial transaction Matt Gaetz ever undertook and came to the conclusion that he committed no crime. These leaks are meant to undermine the mandate from the people to reform the Justice Department,” with Gaetz at the head of the agency, the spokesperson said.
Several U.S. senators, Democrats and Republicans alike, were demanding that the report be released so they could consider the scope of Gaetz’s background as they undertook their constitutionally mandated role of confirming or rejecting a new president’s Cabinet nominees.
Hours after Trump named him as a nominee, Gaetz, 42, resigned from Congress, even though he had just been reelected to a fifth term. His resignation ended the House Ethics Committee’s investigation, which had been nearing a conclusion.
Gaetz was in the Capitol on Wednesday to meet with some of the senators who would have voted on his nomination.
The Senate has not voted to reject a presidential nominee for a Cabinet position since 1989, with members of both political parties giving wide deference to new presidents to fill top-level jobs with appointees of their choosing.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he met with Gaetz and Vice President-elect JD Vance, still a sitting senator, and told them there would be “no rubber stamps, no lynch mobs” in the confirmation process.
“These allegations will be dealt with in committee, but [Gaetz] deserves a chance to confront his accusers,” Graham told reporters.
The Justice Department investigated the allegations against him but last year declined to bring any charges.
Gaetz, like other Trump nominees for top government jobs, has been a vocal supporter of the president and his Make America Great Again agenda.
Gaetz, however, angered some fellow Republican lawmakers in the House in 2023 by spearheading the effort to oust then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
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