Matt Gaetz withdraws as Trump’s attorney general candidate over sex scandals

Matt Gaetz announced this Thursday that he is withdrawing his name from consideration as President-elect Donald Trump’s candidate for attorney general of the United States. “Although the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition,” the former Republican congressman from Florida indicated through the social network X. Gaetz’s candidacy has been eroded by its sexual scandals with minors. This same Thursday, accusations against him had emerged that he had sexual relations on a second occasion with a minor.

“There is no time to waste in an unnecessarily prolonged brawl in Washington, therefore, I will withdraw my name from consideration to serve as attorney general,” he added.

Trump has thanked Gaetz for his withdrawal. “I greatly appreciate Matt Gaetz’s recent efforts to get approved to be attorney general. He was doing very well, but at the same time, he didn’t want to be a distraction to the Administration, for which he has a lot of respect. “Matt has a wonderful future, and I can’t wait to see all the great things he will do!” the president-elect tweeted on Truth Social.

The congressman resigned from his seat in the House of Representatives as soon as Trump proposed his name to be the next attorney general of the United States, in a maneuver to prevent the House Ethics Commission from releasing a report with the findings of an investigation. about him. This Wednesday, that committee met, but without reaching an agreement to publish the report.

This investigation includes, as it has emerged, the statement of a woman who claims that she had sexual relations with the deputy in exchange for money when she was 17 years old and that of another woman who has sworn that she witnessed the encounter. The trail of payments for sex made by the then congressman also appears.

The woman who claims she had sex when she was a minor with then-Representative Matt Gaetz told the House Ethics Committee that she had two sexual encounters with him at a party in 2017, sources familiar with her have told CNN. testimony. The woman, who was 17 at the time, testified that the second sexual encounter, which had not been previously reported, included another adult woman. The woman also testified about both sexual encounters in a civil deposition as part of a related lawsuit.

Gaetz has been re-elected as a congressman in the November 5 elections. It remains to be seen if he takes up his seat in January, when the new legislature begins and if, in that case, the investigation into his conduct is made public, also in relation to drug use and possible diversion of funds.

Several of Trump’s appointments are a kind of insult to the system and, in particular, to Republican representatives and senators, but none was as controversial as Gaetz’s, where a lack of technical preparation and professional experience was combined with a moral character inappropriate for the post. It was the one that aroused the greatest rejection, even among Republicans. The president-elect himself and the one who will be his vice president, JD Vance, have been trying to convince senators to support it, but many of them considered that it was not an appropriate proposal.

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