Just hours after his first nominee withdrew, President-elect Donald Trump announced a new choice for attorney general, Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general and one of the lawyers on Trump’s legal team in his first impeachment trial.
Bondi was a prosecutor for more than 18 years and was Florida’s first female attorney general. She is also a longtime Trump ally and an official at the America First Policy Institute. In his statement, Trump praised Bondi’s work “to stop the trafficking of deadly drugs, and reduce the tragedy of Fentanyl Overdose Deaths.”
Trump’s first choice, former Republican U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz, withdrew his name Thursday from consideration as attorney general as he faced widespread scrutiny of his alleged sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.
Gaetz, a four-term archconservative congressman from Florida, said in a social media statement that he felt he had strong momentum toward Senate confirmation as the country's top law enforcement officer.
But, he said, "It is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work" of Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance's taking the reins of running the U.S. government at their inauguration on January 20.
Trump had maintained his support for Gaetz even as some Senate Republicans voiced doubt that he could win majority support for confirmation as attorney general.
With Republicans holding at most a 53-47 edge in the Senate next year, and unified Democratic opposition to Gaetz, it would have taken only four Republicans to vote against Gaetz to doom his nomination.
Trump said on his social media site that Gaetz "was doing very well but, at the same time, did not want to be a distraction for the administration, for which he has much respect. Matt has a wonderful future, and I look forward to watching all of the great things he will do!"
His transition spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, said the president-elect "remains committed to choosing a leader for the Department of Justice who will strongly defend the Constitution and end the weaponization of our justice system."
Gaetz's withdrawal capped a whirlwind eight-day period in which Trump shocked many of his own Republican colleagues in Congress by naming him to oversee the Justice Department, even though he has never been a prosecutor at any level of government and had drawn the ire of some House Republican congressional colleagues a year ago by spearheading the effort to oust former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Gaetz resigned his congressional seat within hours of Trump's naming him as his pick for attorney general, even though Gaetz had just been elected to a fifth two-year term.
The Justice Department last year ended a three-year investigation of the sex and drug allegations against Gaetz without filing charges. The House Ethics Committee was also investigating him and had nearly finished its probe but abruptly ended it when Gaetz vacated his congressional seat.
On Wednesday, the five Republicans on the House panel blocked its five Democrats from releasing the committee's findings on Gaetz. Numerous senators, Republicans and Democrats alike, had called for release of the report as they prepared to undertake their constitutionally mandated advice and consent role in reviewing Cabinet nominees offered by an incoming president.
Several news outlets reported Wednesday that the House panel 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 age 18 at the time of the payments, told the panel that some of the money was for sex.
The Washington Post reported earlier this week that one of the women told the House panel that she witnessed Gaetz having sex with a 17-year-old at a drug-fueled party in 2017.
A Trump transition spokesperson had defended Gaetz before he ended his uphill nomination fight on Thursday.
"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.
Gaetz has denied all wrongdoing throughout the Justice Department and House committee investigations.
He began to meet with senators Wednesday to shore up his support but then quickly abandoned the effort.
Gaetz fit the mold of several of Trump's appointments to his Cabinet — outspokenly loyal to the president-elect, even if they lack the professional credentials suited to the high-level jobs to which he was naming them.
Several other Trump appointees also are facing intense scrutiny, including defense secretary pick Pete Hegseth, a Fox News talk show host and decorated military veteran; Health and Human Services chief pick Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic; and director of national intelligence pick Tulsi Gabbard, a Democratic-congresswoman-turned-Republican supporter of Trump.
But recent U.S. political history stands in their favor. The Senate has not voted against a presidential Cabinet nominee since 1989, with members of both political parties giving wide deference to new presidents to fill top-level jobs with appointees of their choosing.
