WASHINGTON — JD Vance is set to be the No. 2 in the White House, but the vice president-elect told supporters on Saturday that the second-most important person in the incoming administration won’t be him, but rather the attorney general.
On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump named Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who resigned his seat in the House that same day, as his choice to become the nation’s top law enforcement official. Gaetz’s now-former House colleagues from the Northwest expressed skepticism and some support for the nomination on Thursday.
If confirmed by the newly Republican-controlled Senate, Gaetz would lead the Department of Justice, the same agency that had investigated him for sex trafficking of minors. Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing and said last year that the investigation ended without charges, after his longtime associate pleaded guilty in 2021 to charges related to paying an underage girl to have sex.
The Republican-controlled House Ethics Committee has been conducting its own probe into those allegations. Gaetz’s resignation after Trump nominated him as attorney general effectively ended that investigation, but the ethics panel reportedly planned to vote Friday on whether to release its report.
Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho Falls, reacted with an incredulous expletive when reporters asked him Wednesday if he thought Gaetz was qualified to run the Justice Department. In a more circumspect statement on Thursday, Simpson called for the Ethics Committee to release its report before the Senate moves ahead with confirming Gaetz.
“President Trump has done an excellent job appointing selections for his next Cabinet and key administration posts,” Simpson said. “However, the nomination of Congressman Matt Gaetz as Attorney General is concerning.”
Rep. Russ Fulcher, a Republican who represents North Idaho and areas west of Boise, was more supportive of Trump’s choice in a brief interview at the Capitol on Thursday, saying that “the biggest surprise about Matt is that people are surprised.”
“I mean, the DOJ has been after Trump ever since Trump’s been Trump,” Fulcher said, referring to federal indictments of the president-elect related to mishandling classified documents and his role in the Capitol riot in 2021. “It’s not a shock that he might want to take a wrecking ball to the DOJ, so that’s probably what’s driving the Matt Gaetz thing.”
Rep. Adam Smith, a Democrat from Bellevue who appeared in 2023 on the podcast Gaetz recorded in his House office, echoed part of Fulcher’s sentiment. He said Trump choosing the provocative former congressman makes perfect sense based on what the president-elect has said he wants to do, even if Gaetz lacks any of the traditional qualifications to become the nation’s top law enforcement official.
“The only thing that surprises me about the whole process is the surprise,” Smith said. “Trump said very, very clearly what he was going to do for four years.”
Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said Trump has made it clear that he doesn’t respect any government institution if he can’t fully control it.
“He wants to be in a position to do as much damage to the institutions of this country as humanly possible,” Smith said. “And the second thing that he wants is someone that is 100% loyal and will do absolutely whatever he says whenever he says it. And if you think of it with those two priorities, then his picks make perfect sense.”
Trump hasn’t wasted time naming his picks to staff his White House and lead federal agencies, announcing several nominees in the week after Election Day.
Some of his choices, such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida as secretary of state, have raised fewer red flags among the Senate Republicans who will need to confirm them, but the president-elect and his allies have pressured new Senate GOP Leader John Thune of South Dakota to use a procedural move to appoint more controversial picks without a majority of senators when Congress is in recess.
Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Montana Republican who went through Senate confirmation to serve as secretary of the interior in Trump’s first administration, cautioned that the so-called recess appointment process is “a tougher wicket than people think,” because senators could vote on amendments before confirmation. One such amendment, Zinke suggested in a brief interview, could require all pending investigations of a nominee to be completed.
Fulcher said he was “elated” by the choices of Rubio and Rep. Mike Waltz, another Florida Republican, as national security adviser, calling them both “perfect” for their respective jobs.
Other nominees have elicited more skepticism, including Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who recently became a Republican and a Trump campaign surrogate, as director of national intelligence. On Thursday, after the lawmakers spoke to The Spokesman-Review, Trump announced another former Democrat, vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
Asked about the nominations of Gaetz, Gabbard and others, Rep. Dan Newhouse sighed.
“Well, what can I say about that?” Newhouse said. “The president has the privilege of surrounding himself with whoever he wants to.”
