Some senators are concerned about Gaetz’s support for marijuana legalization while others doubt his ability to tame a complex bureaucracy.
In the days since President-elect Donald Trump tapped Matt Gaetz as his preferred pick to lead the Justice Department in his second term, most of the conversation on Capitol Hill surrounding the Florida politician’s nomination has focused on the Ethics Committee investigation surrounding allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, which he has repeatedly denied. But behind closed doors, Senate Republicans’ concerns about Gaetz’s nomination extend well beyond those ethics concerns.
In conversations with National Review on Capitol Hill this week, Senate Republican skeptics of Gaetz also voiced worries about the Florida politician’s temperament and character, now a little more than a year after he engineered former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ouster, which ushered in a three-week period of chaos in the lower chamber before members could settle on a consensus replacement. Others cited policy-related concerns — such as Gaetz’s support for marijuana legalization — as a potential confirmation liability for the Republican attorney general nominee.
“For me, it’s character,” one GOP senator told NR on Tuesday, adding: “I’ll tell you right now, he doesn’t have the votes on the floor.”
These closed-door concerns come as Gaetz and Trump work to shore up support for his confirmation. Immediately after President-elect Donald Trump announced his plans to tap Gaetz as his attorney general, the controversial Florida lawmaker kicked off his own personal lobbying effort in earnest.
“He called me the night of his appointment,” Senator John Kennedy (R., La.) told National Review Monday evening, the same day Gaetz resigned from his seat in the U.S. House. “I congratulated him. He asked me if he’d get a fair shake, and I said, ‘Absolutely.’ Added Kennedy: “I’m not going to make a decision on these nominees on the basis of rumor or innuendo, I’m going to make a decision on the basis of facts.”
Gaetz’s decision last week to resign from the U.S. House means that the House Ethics Committee must drop its probe into allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, which the Justice Department also investigated but declined to bring criminal charges.
Even some Senate Republicans who are open to supporting Gaetz for attorney general privately acknowledge that the ex-congressman has an uphill climb ahead getting through the Judiciary Committee with a simple majority vote, let alone getting confirmed by a simple majority vote in the Senate, even with the party’s new 53-seat majority.
At least one Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee has privately expressed to a colleague a willingness to vote Gaetz through the committee just so that Republican members of the panel don’t take all of the blame for blocking the nomination, a source familiar tells NR.
Given how recently he was announced, the whip count in support of Gaetz’s nomination remains unclear. The usual suspects — centrist GOP Senators Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) and Susan Collins (R., Maine) — were quick to publicly express their shock and concern about his candidacy the day Trump tapped him, and many others acknowledge publicly in conversations with reporters that the math looks tough for him.
Some U.S. senators are bringing their concerns about the Florida ex-congressman’s nomination to the president-elect directly, as well as to his advisers, a source familiar with the matter confirms to NR.
But the pressure to push him through could prove steep, with one pro-Gaetz senator musing privately to National Review that some on-the-fence senators are probably secretly hoping Gaetz will withdraw so that they don’t have to deal with the wrath that will ensue from the president and his supporters as a result of a “no” vote.
President-elect Donald Trump is making calls to senators on Gaetz’s behalf, even as he reportedly acknowledges privately to allies that his preferred pick for attorney general has slim chances of getting across the finish line, according to the New York Times.
The House Ethics Committee is scheduled to meet Wednesday to discuss the Ethics report, which it can publish with a simple majority vote. House Speaker Mike Johnson has urged the Ethics Committee against releasing the report, saying that doing so would create a “terrible precedent.” But given Democratic members of the House Ethics Committee are united in their call to publish their findings, it will take just one Republican member of the committee to trigger the report’s release. And even Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, with John Cornyn (R., Texas) telling reporters that it’s in the GOP’s best interest to “protect the president against information or surprises coming out later that he and his team weren’t aware of.”
Most Republicans on Capitol Hill were shocked by the news that Trump had tapped Gaetz as his pick for attorney general. “I was surprised,” Representative Scott Franklin (R., Fla.) told NR last week, joking that anyone on Capitol Hill who thinks they can predict all of Trump’s next moves “is mistaken.”
Representative Greg Steube (R., Fla.) says that when he has discussed potential attorney general picks with Trump in the past, he has encouraged him to tap “somebody strong and courageous” who can withstand tough treatment from the mainstream media. “He certainly picked somebody that can do that,” Steube said of Trump’s decision to run with Gaetz. “I don’t know if he’ll be able to get through the confirmation process. So, I guess we just have to sit back and see.”