President-elect Donald Trump has nominated far-right Florida Congressmember Matt Gaetz to serve as his attorney general. The selection of Gaetz, a staunch Trump loyalist, appears to signify Trump’s intent to weaponize the Department of Justice to target political enemies. Gaetz has “no appreciable law enforcement experience,” says Noah Bookbinder, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which has sued the federal government for access to a DOJ investigation into allegations that Gaetz was involved in the sex trafficking of an underage girl. That investigation was not made public, and no federal charges were filed, but the House Ethics Committee launched its own inquiry into Gaetz, the status of which is now up in the air after Gaetz resigned on Wednesday. If approved as attorney general, Gaetz is likely to “take an ax to the nonpartisan functioning of the Justice Department,” warns Zack Beauchamp, a senior correspondent at Vox. “His chief qualification … is his willingness to do whatever Donald Trump needs to be done.” We also discuss the status of various other legal issues swirling around Trump and his supporters, including the Justice Department probes into Trump, the potential pardoning of January 6 insurrectionists and if Trump will abuse the presidential power of recess appointments when he takes office.
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman.
Many lawmakers on Capitol Hill are expressing shock at President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Florida Congressmember Matt Gaetz to be attorney general. Gaetz is a far-right Trump loyalist who led the effort to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year and has defended participants in the January 6th insurrection. The nomination of Florida Congressman Gaetz is widely seen as part of Trump’s plans to weaponize the Department of Justice to target political enemies.
But his confirmation in the Senate is not guaranteed. Gaetz was recently under a federal sex trafficking investigation involving an underage girl. While federal charges were never filed, the House Ethics Committee has also been looking into Gaetz’s actions. The committee was scheduled to release what was expected to be a “highly damaging” report about Gaetz as soon as Friday. But on Wednesday, following his nomination, Gaetz resigned as congressmember from the House, likely putting an end to the probe.
The House Ethics Committee had previously said it was investigating whether Gaetz, quote, “may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift, in violation of House Rules, laws, or other standards of conduct,” unquote.
Four years ago, Gaetz sought a preemptive pardon from Trump.
This is Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma speaking to CNN last year, shortly after Gaetz helped oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
SEN. MARKWAYNE MULLIN: You’ve got to think about this guy. This is a guy that didn’t have — that the media didn’t give the time of day to after he was accused of sleeping with an underage girl. And there’s a reason why no one in the conference came and defended him, because we had all seen the videos he was showing on the House floor, that all of us had walked away, of the girls that he had slept with. He would brag about how he would crush ED medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night. This is obviously before he got married. And so, when that accusation came out, no one defended him, and then no one on the media would give him the time of the day. All of a sudden he found fame because he opposed the speaker of the House?
AMY GOODMAN: That was Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin speaking about Congressman Matt Gaetz last year.
We’re joined now by two guests. Zack Beauchamp is a senior correspondent at Vox covering the crisis of global democracy, the author of The Reactionary Spirit: How America’s Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World. Noah Bookbinder is the president of the D.C. watchdog nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, known as CREW. He formerly prosecuted public corruption cases for the Department of Justice.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Noah Bookbinder, let’s begin with you. First talk about how important the attorney general is, and especially for our global audience, to explain what it means to run the Department of Justice, and then to talk about who Matt Gaetz is.
NOAH BOOKBINDER: Sure. So, the attorney general is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. The attorney general runs the Department of Justice, which brings all federal prosecutions in the United States but also handles vast amounts of civil litigation, environmental litigation, civil rights litigation. The Department of Justice sets legal policy for the executive branch of the government. It’s hard to overstate what an important position the attorney general is, both in the actual management of the justice system in the United States and in setting the tone for how justice works in the United States.
Now, I don’t think anybody should be shocked when Donald Trump does exactly the kind of thing that Donald Trump said he would do and the kinds of things that he’s done in the past. So, in some ways, this is not a shocking nomination. Matt Gaetz is a loyalist to Donald Trump. He is a firebrand in the spirit of Donald Trump. But he is somebody who has no appreciable law enforcement experience. He has downplayed the January 6th attacks on the Capitol and actually promoted conspiracy theories about them. And he’s been the subject of legal and ethical investigations himself. So he is certainly not the kind of person you want setting the tone for the justice system in the United States, not the kind of person you want making decisions about how the Department of Justice is going to work.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, Noah, if you can explain the sex trafficking allegations that Matt Gaetz has been dealing with for years? You have this reportedly very damaging report, though no criminal charges were brought, that the Department of Justice was going to release. And by him resigning yesterday, the report apparently doesn’t come out — unless it’s leaked.
NOAH BOOKBINDER: Well, so, on that last point first, it is true that the House Ethics........