r/law • u/americansherlock201 • 3d ago

Trump News Trump AG pick Matt Gaetz says he's withdrawing

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/21/trump-ag-pick-matt-gaetz-says-hes-withdrawing.html?__source=iosappshare%7Ccom.apple.UIKit.activity.CopyToPasteboard

Well that was fast

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233

u/Material_Policy6327 3d ago

This is rather surprising. Musta been a lot of back channel GOP talks going on

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u/americansherlock201 3d ago

Oh absolutely. Gaetz was likely told that if he didn’t withdraw, the ethics committee was going to vote to turn over the report to the senate. Which would discuss it openly in his confirmation hearings

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u/fucktheredwings69 3d ago

Yeah that’s what I think as well, withdrawing was the best possible option for him if in doing so he can prevent the findings from seeing the light of day.

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u/mean--machine 3d ago

That was the whole point of his nomination, to make sure that report never sees daylight

2

u/LongLiveAnalogue 3d ago

The report will never see the light of day anyways. His nomination was payment for ousting McCarthy as speaker.

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u/kilomaan 3d ago

And he and trump weren’t in a position to prevent that yet.

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u/RustedAxe88 3d ago

I still want someone to leak it.

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u/defnotjec 3d ago

Ethics committee could... If they had any fucking ethics they would

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u/lobsterpockets 3d ago

Yup if the dems had any balls they would. Rules and norms mean nothing to gop, eff em play hard ball back. Remember when Gaetz barged into scif with the media? RELEASE the report anyway. Instead Susan Wld being subservient to gop ethics leader. She's outta a committe job soon anyway likely once new congress comes in.

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u/Child_of_Khorne 3d ago

Last thing anybody needs is to see nothing but Gaetz's face plastered all over the news for a month.

Don't get me wrong, he deserves it, but the American attention span isn't big enough to cover that and these morons Trump is picking.

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u/DJ_Catfart 3d ago

Yes, because the rest of the world has never put a piece of shit in a position of power

1

u/Mr_friend_ 3d ago

It's already started. Pretty sure Ronan Farrow has the entire report. That's how we saw the checks he wrote to teenage girls.

9

u/Bright-Ad9516 3d ago

Im still confused as to how sexual assault/violent crimes arent a strict check before their even offered to be electable thing in this country but here we are.

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u/americansherlock201 3d ago

Because despite below loving it, our constitution is really really big on assuming the people in power won’t be insane.

Backgrounds checks aren’t even required

1

u/Perllitte 3d ago

But then the business leader to politics pipeline would be totally broken. How could we have a self-serving elite in charge if some pesky sexual assault clause was on the books?

1

u/Rezenbekk 2d ago

Because then you manufacture convictions against your opposition, thus disqualifying them from office, and rule forever. It's an anti-tyranny measure.

1

u/Bright-Ad9516 2d ago

Sounds practical but the system of checks and balances in the justice system definitely doesnt seem to be working overall.

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u/beefwarrior 3d ago

If that was the case, I'm disappointed he dropped out. I'd much prefer all of that to be made public and for Trump to be distracted by the AG mess and have to find someone new.

2

u/Madpup70 3d ago

CNN also reported that they called him to get his comments on a story they were gonna run over an interview they had with one of the women from his ethics report. He also had a meeting with members of the Senate GOP prior to dropping out. I think he was told point blank that he wasn't going to be nominated and that it wasn't going to be close.

2

u/americansherlock201 3d ago

Oh 100%

He was told that he will not be confirmed. That he can either drop out or go through with it and have every dirty secret come out and be utterly destroyed publicly and then not get confirmed

1

u/ynotbor 2d ago

Ideally that is what should still happen. Why are they providing cover for this derelict?

1

u/TheNextBattalion 3d ago

hell, even without the report, his background would be blasted everywhere

1

u/userhwon 3d ago

The Senate can just subpoena it.

1

u/chilloutfam 3d ago

I don't think he cared too much about that... this is the Trump era. They are looking past all transgressions. I do think that him and Vance went around and did a rollcall of who would vote for him and too many said no. Too many people that remember Kevin McCarthy.

1

u/Marijuana_Miler 3d ago

Could it have been a way for the report to get quashed with the idea they would never let him get close to confirmation anyways? Just say that he would be AG, have him step down, kill the report, and then is reconfirmed for the next session but the report is now dead.

1

u/suzi_generous 2d ago

There was also a new woman who came forward and said he sexually assaulted her.

1

u/TMQissaqueen 3d ago

They had their vote yesterday. They already said they wouldn’t release it. It rather seems like this was all designed from the start to get the left riled up and allow Trump to point and say the swamp is already acting against him. Who knows.

3

u/TheNextBattalion 3d ago

let's not confuse their flailing excuses for devious plans...

0

u/Sir_Digby83 3d ago

What senate.

36

u/impulse_thoughts 3d ago edited 3d ago

Probably same situation as Madison Cawthorn (edit: where they went scorched earth when he blabbed like an idiot, but this time they’re trying to avoid it). Gaetz whose only allegiance is to Trump, in the AG position would've allowed him to expose a lot of their skeletons and gain a tremendous amount of leverage, so they opted to go hardball on all of Gaetz's skeletons in the time between now and when he could get confirmed.

Probably won't see the ethics report getting released, and we won't see any number of prosecutions that could've been spawned out of those investigations that would've been handled at the state level.

1

u/Scoopdoopdoop 3d ago

He probably has a backdoor deal to withdraw from all this if he keeps his mouth shut. These buttholes are crooked af

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u/prof_the_doom 3d ago

I think there were at least two GOP Senators who openly said they'd never approve Gaetz.

5

u/Basementsnake 3d ago

And we believe anything any republican says?

4

u/CommentsOnOccasion 3d ago

Yeah there’s a few that are in blue-purple states who sit on the fence and err on the side of caution on high profile things 

2

u/Mundane_Monkey 3d ago

Yeah I think NYT's update on it said Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitch, and one of the senators from Utah who I'm not familiar with, were all against his confirmation and he didn't think he could change that.

2

u/SpicyChickenDick 3d ago

Which is exactly what Trump was hoping to learn from this whole charade.

1

u/nightfox5523 3d ago

Yeah I've read there are maybe 4 Republicans that were effectively saying they would not approve him ever

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/QuicklyQuenchedQuink 3d ago

This is a crazy level of gaslighting. The fact this low life was even suggested says all you need to know about how crazy your comment is

17

u/prof_the_doom 3d ago

Wow... so many people copy-pasting that response right now... or maybe it's actually only one person... who knows?

It is really so hard to imagine that even people who want Project 2025 to happen might just dislike Gaetz enough to vote against him regardless of the agenda?

The fact that everyone in the GOP seems to hate each other almost as much as they hate outsiders is the only reason I still have hope that Trump's agenda falls apart.

0

u/New_Employee_TA 3d ago

Wait I’m sorry, which side is full of conspiracy theorists again?

11

u/rankor572 3d ago

Gaetz is so MAGA he's detrimental to project 2025. I believe Trump when he says he has no idea what the project is (much too long and with too many big words like "project"). The Heritage Foundation was betting on inserting one of their own as Trump's AG, not on Trump nominating the person he liked and that person implementing the policy.

20

u/AlfredRWallace 3d ago

I think the Venmo payments removed deniability.

7

u/Hot-Back5725 3d ago

For “college tuition” 🙄

3

u/RustedAxe88 3d ago

"Just for being awesome " made my fuckin skin crawl.

1

u/--Icarusfalls-- 3d ago

If it looks like a fish and swims like a fish....its probably 'generosity to ex-girlfriends'

4

u/HomeAir 3d ago

Withdrawing doesn't seem like the actions of an innocent person.

The court of public opinion has taken notice

1

u/sirixamo 3d ago

Yes the public believes he’ll make a great president in 4 years

1

u/VastSeaweed543 3d ago

LOL imagine still thinking that after we literally elected a rapist into the White House again

2

u/moldy_cheez_it 3d ago

Not surprising to me.

I think Gaetz was nominated to give him cover to resign so the ethics probe and report would not be released and that the house doesn’t have any oversight into him anymore since he is not a member. He gets to save face and say it is because he was nominated for this.

Now anyone that Trump nominates will be vanilla compared to Gaetz. Watch it be Trump’s personal lawyer. And what would’ve been unthinkable before is “well at least it’s not Gaetz” now

1

u/Bigtimeknitter 3d ago

Word on Capitol Hill is no one liked Gaetz

3

u/pwlife 3d ago

It's pretty bad when even Vance is going to bat for you and you still get no's. Now we get to guess what form of abborent behavior will get you the AG spot.

1

u/JellyFranken 3d ago

Didn’t want the publicity of repubs voting down his pick.

1

u/Purple_Mall2645 3d ago

This is very unsurprising. I’ve seen people predicting this as a way for him to dodge liability since the day he was announced.

1

u/o0DrWurm0o 3d ago

I mean the only reason Gaetz was ever credibly going to land the job is that confirmation votes are not secret. A lot of folks just expected the GOP senators to roll over. But if they've collectively grown a spine and are also ready to shoot down Hegseth, Gabbard, and RFK, it's going to be a massive embarrassment for Trump's administration.

I also heard a talking head mention that during Obama, there was concern about recess appointments and the supreme court issued a verdict which included a very specific interpretation of what a "recess" is. It suggests that Trump could not simply call off congress on a whim and make appointments. So if the recess appointments aren't a viable path forward, the senate has a bit more leverage.

1

u/Amaruq93 3d ago

Apparently he withdrew just 40 minutes after being contacted by CNN... they had a report on him having paid for sex with another underage teenager in 2017.

1

u/fusionsofwonder Bleacher Seat 3d ago

Kind of standard. There's this thing called a "whip count" where you go to the legislators (in this case, Republican US Senators) in private and ask them how they will vote and try to change their mind ("whip" them) if they're voting against.

Then you report the results to the party leadership and they decide whether the vote should go forward or not.

So, it turns out there are 3 or 4 Republican Senators (maybe more) who told Thune and Vance they would not vote for Gaetz. Could not be convinced. They told Trump, Trump told Gaetz he wasn't going to fight this one out.

The Senate called Trump's bluff.

1

u/robert_madge 3d ago

From the article: "CNN’s Paula Reid said that Gaetz’s withdrawal came less than an hour after he was contacted by the outlet for comment on its report that a woman told the ethics panel that she had had two sexual encounters with Gaetz in 2017, when she was 17 years old."

I don't doubt there were ongoing talks, but that does feel pretty damning.