Free Republic

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Matt Gaetz as his nominee for attorney general, putting forward a firebrand who has tussled with Jewish groups, embraced an antisemitic conspiracy theory and associated with a Holocaust denier. As attorney general, Gaetz would head the government department responsible for investigating and prosecuting hate crimes, including antisemitism... If he is confirmed to the role by the Senate, he would succeed Merrick Garland, a former federal judge who is Jewish... In 2018, the Republican Jewish Coalition and the Anti-Defamation League both criticized Gaetz, then in his first term, for inviting a Holocaust denier as his guest...

The last eight years at the Department of Justice have been a disaster for the rule of law. The sprawling intelligence and law enforcement agency ran the Russia collusion hoax, hamstringing President Donald Trump during his entire first term in office. It interfered in the 2020 election by falsely telling social media companies that a laptop with incriminating information about the Biden family business was Russian disinformation, and telling them to censor speech and debate about the topic. Under President Joe Biden, the department ran two norm-obliterating politicized prosecutions against Trump in an effort to silence, bankrupt, imprison, and defeat...

Multiple current and former senior Justice Department and FBI officials have begun reaching out to lawyers in anticipation of being criminally investigated by the Trump administration, according to three people with knowledge of their deliberations. Following Trump’s decisive election victory, many Justice Department officials and career staffers were already nervous about the possibility that they would be targeted by Trump loyalists, particularly members of Congress. But the selection of former Rep. Matt Gaetz, a firebrand Trump ally who was the subject of a recent FBI investigation, to lead the department has sharply increased the sense of alarm, the sources said....

Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump Kevin McCarthy on Matt Gaetz: “I'll give you the truth why I'm not speaker. It's because one person, a member of Congress, wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old…”

Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday denied a report that claimed embattled Rep. Matt Gaetz sought a blanket pardon from his White House — for himself and unidentified congressional allies amid a federal probe of underage sex trafficking allegations. “Congressman Matt Gaetz has never asked me for a pardon,” the 45th commander-in-chief said in the emailed statement, “It must also be remembered that he has totally denied the accusations against him.” The New York Times reported Tuesday that Gaetz (R-Fla.) allegedly pushed a pardon