Matt Gaetz Drops AG Nom—and May Accidentally Screw Himself in Process

Matt Gaetz rescinded his nomination to become Donald Trump’s attorney general on Thursday, writing in a statement that he believed his confirmation would become a “distraction” from Trump’s second administration.

“I had excellent meetings with Senators yesterday,” Gaetz wrote on X. “I appreciate their thoughtful feedback—and the incredible support of so many. While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition.

“There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General. Trump’s DOJ must be in place and ready on Day 1,” Gaetz continued. “I remain fully committed to see that Donald J. Trump is the most successful President in history. I will forever be honored that President Trump nominated me to lead the Department of Justice and I’m certain he will Save America.”

Trump nominated the remarkably unpopular Florida politico to become the country’s attorney general last week, a decision that would have effectively handed the keys to the Justice Department to a man facing sex trafficking allegations.

But Gaetz’s confirmation seemed increasingly unlikely in the days since his nomination. He faced immense opposition from inside his own party at a time when any of Trump’s nominees for his upcoming Cabinet can only afford to lose three Republican votes during their Senate confirmation process.

By Friday, estimates from inside the upper chamber predicted that Gaetz could face anywhere from 12 Republican “no” votes to upward of 30, reported The Wall Street Journal.

Gaetz resigned from Congress last week after his nomination was announced, abruptly crushing a House Ethics Committee probe investigating reports that Gaetz had sex with an underage girl.

He reportedly pulled his nomination Thursday just minutes after CNN reached out to the ex-lawmaker for comment on a bombshell revelation that the Ethics Committee had been notified of a second sexual encounter between Gaetz and the same 17-year-old.

In a statement following Gaetz’s withdrawal, Trump said he had “much respect” for the Florida politician for minimizing the distraction and predicted Gaetz would have a “wonderful future.”

Gaetz’s withdrawal from consideration for attorney general now leaves him completely out of power. He could attempt to run in his district’s special election to recoup his lost seat in the House, though it’s unclear if doing so would reignite the Ethics investigation into his alleged misconduct.

This story has been updated.

The Republican-led House Oversight Committee announced plans Thursday to form a new subcommittee to work alongside the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the meme-based advisory group led by right-wing propaganda czar Elon Musk and failed presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

The subcommittee will be headed by the person least interested in actually governing in all of Congress: Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a source familiar told Fox News Digital.

The proposed House subcommittee is expected to investigate government spending and organization in federal agencies, posturing as if it will slash bureaucratic “red tape” while actually making it much harder for the government to get anything done at all.

Ramaswamy confirmed to Fox News Digital that he had met with House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer and Greene to discuss the new subcommittee.

“Looking forward to working together with Congress,” Ramaswamy wrote in a post on X Wednesday. “Proper oversight of agencies & public transparency are critical.”

Musk and Ramaswamy published an op-ed about their plans for the department on Wednesday, outlining their scheme to slash the federal budget and the essential services it provides—such as public broadcasting, Planned Parenthood, and Medicare and Medicaid—with the hopes of cutting government spending by $2 trillion by July 2026 to make life more expensive and miserable for every single U.S. citizen, while private companies and billionaires get rich selling those products that were once provided by the government.

Nancy Mace’s thinly veiled transphobia is getting old fast—just ask Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“What Nancy Mace, and what Speaker Johnson are doing, [is] endangering all women and girls. Because if you ask them, ‘What is your plan on how to enforce this?’ they won’t come up with an answer,” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters after being asked about Mace’s string of targeted anti-transgender resolutions against Delaware’s Representative-elect Sarah McBride, the first ever openly trans woman in Congress.

“The idea that Nancy Mace wants little girls and women to drop trow … because she wants to suspect and point fingers at who she thinks is trans is disgusting,” Ocasio-Cortez continued. “They’re doing this so that Nancy Mace can make a buck, and send a text, and fundraise off an email. They’re not doing this to protect people.”

Mace, a GOP representative from South Carolina, introduced a resolution on Tuesday that would forbid trans women from using the restroom that aligns with their gender identity in the U.S. Capitol Building. The only trans elected official in the Capitol Building is Representative-elect Sarah McBride.

“Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say. I mean, this is a biological man,” Mace said. She added that McBride “does not belong in women’s spaces, women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, period, full stop.”

Mace has continued to shame and harass McBride online. She posted a video of her taping a sign reading “biological” right over a “men’s” bathroom sign in the Capitol building. Early Wednesday morning she posted a video stating that she’d be filing another resolution to “ban biological men from women’s spaces on all federal property all across the country.”

Mace was thus empowered after House Speaker Mike Johnson officially stated that transgender women would be banned from women’s restrooms throughout the Capitol complex. But as Representative Ocasio-Cortez noted, it is very unclear how Johnson plans to enforce this ruling.

Democratic Representative Mark Pocan was also swift to react to Johnson’s decision. “As Chair of the Equality Caucus, I requested a meeting with Speaker Johnson to discuss his bathroom ban and open his eyes to the reality that this policy is cruel, completely unenforceable, and opens the door for abuse, harassment, and discrimination in the halls of Congress,” he wrote on Bluesky.

For her part, McBride has recognized that Mace is out for attention and endeavored to not feed her trollery. “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families,” she said in a statement, “I will follow the rules as outlined by speaker Johnson, even if I disagree with them.”

Mace, who is no stranger to spectacle, has made a habit of doing weird, attention-seeking gender cosplay on Capitol Hill. Last October, she wore a shirt bearing a large scarlet letter A after she joined the infamous Matt Gaetz in voting to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy in a sort of MAGA House mutiny. It was not immediately apparent what the famous Nathaniel Hawthorne character had to do with the speakership fiasco. (Just as confusingly, Mace seems to not be worried about Gaetz lurking around Capitol Hill’s washrooms.) Suffice it to say, her most recent hateful charade, made under the guise of “protecting women,” will likely only result in more women getting hurt.

CNN reports that Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent turned conservative media B-lister, is up for consideration to run the agency for which he once worked. Bongino, who has periodically faced various social media sanctions for posting incendiary content over the years, is on Trump’s Secret Service short list, along with the former head of his personal detail, Robert Engel, and the head of his current Secret Service detail, Sean Curran. Engel was with Trump on January 6, 2021, and testified to the House January 6 committee about Trump’s speech at the Ellipse that day.

Bongino has run for Congress three times, twice in Maryland and once in Florida; he lost all three times. After failing to launch a political career, he went into punditry, becoming a commentator on right-wing talk radio and social media. He quickly became known as a leading election denialist, January 6 insurrectionist defender, and Covid-19 conspiracist.

Bongino would go on to host his own show on Fox News from 2021 to 2023, and today hosts The Dan Bongino Show on Rumble. He was critical of ousted Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle in the wake of the July assassination attempt against Trump, calling her “utterly unqualified” and accusing her of “putting politics ahead of presidential protection.”

That may well have endeared him to the president-elect, who has a personal stake in who takes over the agency in charge of protecting himself and his family. Trump also was a guest on Bongino’s podcast in October—an encounter that could hardly be called a hard-hitting interview, with multiple compliments exchanged.

It’s no secret that Trump watches a lot of television and seems to be favoring a “central casting” approach to his second-term appointments. Among those peppered throughout his agency picks are former Fox News host Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense, daytime talk show host Dr. Mehmet Oz as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and his pick for secretary of transportation—former congressman, Fox News host, and reality TV star Sean Duffy. Should Bongino get the nod to head the Secret Service, he will fit right in with all of those personalities.

That said, heading up the Secret Service is not the best platform for maintaining one’s media infamy—unless, of course, Bongino warps the role to suit his personal needs and desires. The job, which normally has a low media profile, could very likely become part of Trump’s media circus in the hands of someone whose first priority is maintaining their own high profile or remaining a fixture on right-wing media. For someone like Trump who loves high TV ratings, that’s probably just what he wants. Whether that suits the numerous other people under Secret Service protection remains to be seen.

South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace’s bathroom crusade is nothing more than a shallow stunt for attention, at least according to the lawmaker’s former communications director.

Mace has spent the majority of her week advancing a bill with the aim of banning one person from using toilets on Capitol Hill—Representative-elect Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender person to be elected to Congress.

Hill alum Natalie Johnson torched her old boss for what she saw as a transparent media grab, posting on X that the attacks on McBride were little more than Mace’s “ploy to get on Fox.”

In response to a Mace team message that read, “I don’t want to see your junk in my bathroom,” Johnson said, “I don’t want to see your botched, cheap hooker-inspired boob job on my television. Can we introduce a bill to bar that?”

”Tweeting 262 times about a bill that applies to like .00000001% of Congress in 36 hours is definitely about protecting women. It’s certainly not just a ploy for media attention,” Johnson posted in a separate tweet.

The Republican communications strategist then argued that a real effort to protect women would involve preventing Matt Gaetz—who up until last week was being investigated by the House Ethics Committee for alleged sexual misconduct with a minor—from being confirmed as Donald Trump’s attorney general.

“‘Protecting women’ in Congress would be introducing a bill to bar Matt Gaetz, a sexual predator with an affinity for underage girls, from ever walking those halls again, rather than dropping a messaging bill that’s sole goal is getting on TV,” Johnson wrote.

The attention-seeking congresswoman openly acknowledged that the stunt was a direct attack on McBride, telling reporters on Monday that it was “that and more.”

“Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say. I mean, this is a biological man,” Mace said, adding that the newly elected Delaware congresswoman “does not belong in women’s spaces, women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, period, full stop.”

In another interview, Mace claimed that the mere thought of a trans woman walking into a women’s locker room “feels like assault.”

But the whole charade appears especially hollow in light of the fact that Mace and McBride both have private bathrooms in their offices. The only people that the bill will actually hurt will be the nonelected trans employees of the U.S. Capitol complex, who apparently have—until now—been using the bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity with no issue.

Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s so-called “border czar” in charge of executing his massive deportation plans, made an eerie threat to double the number of ICE agents in sanctuary cities.

During an appearance on Newsmax Wednesday, Homan issued a warning to sanctuary cities, where local policies limit coordination and information-sharing with federal immigration authorities about noncitizens, allowing them to be able to report crimes, acquire homes and jobs, and participate in society without fear of being deported.

“They don’t have to help us, but they need to get the hell out of the way cuz we’re comin’, we’re gonna do it. Which means if I gotta send twice as many resources to that sanctuary city, twice as many agents, that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” Homan said.

“And I’ve been saying for the last several days that they need to study the law,” he said. “They can not help, but don’t impede us, and don’t cross certain lines.”

Homan also promised “consequences” for anyone who tried to conceal undocumented immigrants, and said that the government’s efforts to round up human beings for detainment and deportation would begin with “the worst of the worst first.”

Homan and House Speaker Mike Johnson have emphasized that Trump’s deportation plan will focus on “criminals” to start with, targeting the millions of criminals they imagine roam the streets of the country’s sanctuary cities. Trump and Homan have both said they expect the U.S. military to assist in executing their sweeping raids—promising to flood these Democratic cities with law enforcement.

During his campaign, Trump promised to end U.S. sanctuary cities even in places where they don’t currently exist.

Homan made a similar threat against these cities on Fox & Friends earlier this week, saying that if sanctuary cities “don’t want to help us, get the hell out of the way. We’re going to do it. If I got to send twice as many … resources to that city, that’s what we’re going to do.”

A woman identified as “Jane Doe” told police that she was assaulted by Pete Hegseth, a Fox News anchor nominated by Donald Trump to serve as secretary of defense, at a Republican women’s conference in 2017.

News of the accusations first surfaced last week, but the full 22-page police report was obtained by Mediaite on Wednesday, revealing the horrific extent of Hegseth’s alleged actions.

Police were only made aware of the assault after Doe, 30, submitted herself to a hospital for a rape exam some four days after the alleged attack.

Doe told police that she first spoke with Hegseth, a speaker at the convention in Monterey, California, on the final night of the conference, when she said she saw him flirting with and placing his hand on the legs of women who were drinking in a suite. She said that witnessing this compelled her to tell Hegseth that she “did not appreciate how he treated women,” according to the report.

Two different women reported the same eyewitness accounts to police, claiming they also saw Hegseth placing his hands on women. One woman who worked at the conference said she called Doe over to act as a buffer between Hegseth and the other women.

After the bar closed, Doe and Hegseth had an argument outside by the hotel pool, in which Doe reprimanded Hegseth for being loud and belligerent, according to the report. A staffer reported that around 1:30 a.m., the hotel received multiple complaints about a couple fighting by the pool. When he attempted to speak with them, Hegseth “began to curse” and complained that he had “freedom of speech,” according to the report. The report notes that Doe explained they were Republicans and apologized for Hegseth’s behavior to the staff member. The staff member believed that Hegseth was very drunk, though Hegseth denied that in his interview with police, insisting that he was instead “buzzed.”

After the pool, Doe said her memory became fuzzy. She had been drinking and believed that someone had slipped something in her drink, according to the report. The next thing she remembered, she told police, was being in an unknown room, where Hegseth took her phone and used his body to block the door to the exit when she tried to leave. She told police she said no “a lot,” but in the next moment, she was on a bed or a couch with Hegseth above her. She recalled his dog tags “hovering over her face.” He ejaculated on her stomach, threw her a towel, and told Doe to “clean it up,” according to her recollection.

Doe did not remember how she got back to her own room that night. In a second call with police, she told them that she has suffered from nightmares and memory loss since that night. Another person told police Doe would “cry secretly” and “out of the blue.”

Hegseth, through his attorney, repeatedly denied the accusations, claiming that the sex was consensual.

“This police report confirms what I have said all along that the incident was fully investigated and police found the allegations to be false, which is why no charges were filed,” Tim Parlatore, Hegseth’s attorney, told Mediaite in a statement.

In a statement to The Washington Post on Saturday, Parlatore said that Hegseth had paid his accuser in exchange for her signing a nondisclosure agreement in order to stop her from filing a lawsuit and to protect his position at Fox News.

A friend of Doe’s reportedly shared details of the attack to Trump’s transition team in a memo last week. In a statement, Trump Communications Director Steven Cheung told NPR that Trump had every intention of keeping Hegseth on board for the upcoming administration.

“Mr. Hegseth has vigorously denied any and all accusations, and no charges were filed,” Cheung told NPR. “We look forward to his confirmation as United States Secretary of Defense so he can get started on Day One to Make America Safe and Great Again.”

Some Republicans might actually support a House resolution to release the Ethics report on Matt Gaetz’s alleged sexual misconduct.

After the House Ethics Committee did not agree to release the report Wednesday, Democratic Representatives Steve Cohen and Sean Casten both introduced motions to force a House vote on releasing the report.

It seems that some Republicans actually are in favor of releasing the report, which details a yearslong investigation into Gaetz for alleged sexual misconduct, even though doing so could sink his nomination to be the next attorney general and possibly go against Donald Trump’s wishes.

CNN’s Manu Raju asked Wisconsin Representative Derrick Van Orden, a Republican, whether he would vote to release the report.

“I think it’s very important that everybody has as much knowledge as possible so they can make an informed decision,” Van Orden said.

“That sounds like yes,” Raju responded.

“That’s a yes,” Van Orden said. “So if the rumors are true about Gaetz’s conduct then there should be referrals to other agencies. And if they’re not true then there’s a whole lotta people who owe him an apology.”

Nebraska Representative Don Bacon, also a Republican, said he thought the report should at the very least be passed on to the Senate, even if the House Ethics Committee did not vote to release it.

“The Senate deserves to have it, so they can make a good decision,” he told Politico.

The House will have to vote on the motions within two days of their being introduced.

Republican senators are once again falling in line to support a man they’ve publicly and privately disavowed. But instead of Donald Trump, this time it’s Matt Gaetz. 

Gaetz was on Capitol Hill with Senator JD Vance today trying to corral congressional support for his jeopardized attorney general nomination. The former Florida representative and MAGA Republican is surrounded by ongoing investigations from the House Ethics Committee and the Justice Department regarding allegations that he trafficked and had sex with a minor at a sex party in 2017. Gaetz attempted to end the probe by resigning from Congress right before the House Ethics Committee was set to release its finding. The House Ethics Committee voted on Wednesday to complete the investigation but has not decided whether to release it. 

It has also been reported that the House Ethics Committee has proof of Gaetz paying over $10,000 to two women between July 2017 and January 2019—women who later served as witnesses in the House and Justice Department probes against Gaetz.

Now Republicans are bending over backward to get ahead of the release, making incredibly flimsy excuses to defend the embattled representative. 

“I just don’t think you can deal with allegations in the past as though they’re fact,” Senator Kevin Cramer told Politico in a striking quote. Cramer has also called similar past allegations against Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh “absurd.” He also noted that Donald Trump was  a “victim of lawfare” and was tried “unjustly” like Gaetz is being now.

“I support all of Trump’s Cabinet picks. That’s a whole part of the process—there’ll be a Senate confirmation, public hearings,” said Representative Nancy Mace, who is currently leading hateful efforts to stop the single transgender congressional representative from using the bathroom. “The DOJ decided not to pursue charges against our colleague. And so, there’s the media—you guys want to make him guilty, hook, line, and sinker, or be judged during an execution of a guy who’s never been charged with a crime.”

Gaetz is one of three Trump nominees to be accused directly of or accused of enabling sexual assault. And the president-elect himself has been accused of it countless times over decades, with a jury in a civil suit finding that he did in fact sexually assault E. Jean Carroll. It’s abundantly clear that this is no longer a morally disqualifying act for Republicans.

Donald Trump has nominated a Christian nationalist with ties to Project 2025 to lead the Office of Management and Budget. CBS News reported Wednesday that Trump has chosen Russ Vought to lead the office for a second time. During Trump’s first term, Vought also served as OMB director. Since then, Vought was part of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 team, writing a chapter about the “Executive Office of the President.”

It’s yet another reminder that Trump is extensively involved with the conservative manifesto, despite his repeated denials during the 2024 campaign. Vought bragged on camera to two undercover climate journalists over the summer about his ties to Trump and his love of “Christian nation-ism.”

Vought told the journalists that his organization, the Center for Renewing America, was already drafting executive orders and policy memos for Trump to use immediately after taking office, making the wild claim that the group planned to to create “shadow” agencies to solidify the “Judeo-Christian worldview value system.”

If Vought is confirmed, he’ll be tasked with putting together the president’s proposed government budget, giving him extensive influence to carry out his far-right agenda. Vought was rumored to be considered for a Cabinet position, having already gone through the Trump team’s (very flawed) vetting system. His appointment follows fellow Project 2025 alumnus Brandon Carr’s nomination as chair of the Federal Communications Commission.

The Project 2025 manifesto was frequently attacked by Democrats and other Trump opponents during the 2024 campaign, leading to Trump saying he had nothing to do with it. But Carr’s and Vought’s appointments, plus Trump’s plans to copy many of Project 2025’s proposals, suggest these denials were just for show.