Gaetz Begins Lobbying Lawmakers, Hoping He Hasn’t Burned All the Bridges

The congressman and his team are trying to convince Senators to overlook a potentially damning ethics report and his history of political histrionics.

House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) arrives for a meeting of the Republican House caucus on September 30, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images)

MATT GAETZ EARNED A REPUTATION IN CONGRESS as an acid-tongued, anti-establishment knife fighter who didn’t come to Washington to make friends.

But now Gaetz wants to become the next attorney general of the United States. And he is doing something he rarely has since breaking out on the national scene: trying to make nice with fellow lawmakers, mainly the U.S. senators—the ultimate bastion of the political establishment—who are tasked with confirming him to the post. 

Gaetz and his allies started working the Hill in the hours after his nomination was announced by President Donald Trump, with two objectives in mind. The first: Convince lawmakers that he has the temperament for the top law enforcement job in the nation. The second: Get them to disbelieve accusations that he had sex with a 17-year-old in 2017—or to treat it as not meaningful enough to tank his nomination. 

Gaetz has denied the allegations for years. A two-year federal probe into the matter resulted in no charges being filed. But a House Ethics Committee investigation has reputedly assembled a damning report of his alleged misconduct. 

While the report may not be released now because Gaetz abruptly resigned his congressional seat Wednesday, its mere assembly has rocked Capitol Hill, with lawmakers calling for its publication and aides and operatives musing about its potential leaking. It’s impacting the private effort by Team Trump to whip votes in the congressman’s favor. 

In private conversations with senators, Gaetz has been reiterating his denials and, sources say, he’s getting an assist from Vice President-elect JD Vance. The Ohio senator, who remains a member of the chamber until the new Congress is sworn in, has been lobbying skeptical senators—some of whom said they were “shocked” that Donald Trump nominated Gaetz to lead the very department that once investigated him. Vance is a close Gaetz ally after the congressman lobbied Trump to endorse his 2022 Senate bid and paid numerous visits to Ohio to help him get elected.

Though Trump has made a slew of controversial picks (the latest being Thursday’s nomination of anti-vaccine activist Robert Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services), Gaetz stands out as a singularly polarizing figure because of the investigations into his conduct, the accusations against him, and his strained personal relationship with fellow Republican members of Congress he has torched, including allies of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, whose ouster he masterminded.

“We have 53 senators and we might not have 50 votes to confirm right now. It’s really up in the air,” said a member of Trump’s team briefed on its preliminary vote-counting. “Gaetz can be a real asshole. But he can be a great guy. The senators need to see the great guy and kind of hear the asshole apologize and tell them why all this stuff about sex crimes isn’t true.”

The push to confirm Gaetz is the latest test of his ability to survive crises that would have ruined any other politician. It also will provide an early indication of Trump’s ability to bend the Senate to his will. The president-elect has quickly moved to force votes on high-profile nominees that no other person in his position would have dared put forward. And as a fallback, he is pressuring incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune into giving him the right to bypass the Senate to make temporary appointments.

Doing so would get Trump’s cabinet in place. But it could come at a political cost if it perceived that the president is jamming through highly-controversial nominees. On Thursday, ABC reported that the woman at the center of the sex-crimes case had told House investigators that Gaetz had paid to have sex with her in 2017 when she was a minor. Gaetz was also allegedly implicated in paying other women for sex, which he has denied, and in illicit drug use.

The succession of nominations and reporting left Republican senators in an uncomfortable spot. Some, including those on the Senate Judiciary Committee—which would first vote on Gaetz’s nomination—said they wanted to see the House ethics report into Gaetz.

“I wanna see everything,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told reporters.

“We have a constitutional role to play of providing advice and consent,” he said. “That’s our role. The president’s role is to make the nomination. But we need to have a complete vetting of the nominees. Not only so we know that the nominee is qualified, but also to protect the president. I’m sure it’s not in his best interest to have any surprises.”

But other Republican Senate Judiciary Committee members like Missouri’s Josh Hawley indicated they would defer to Trump.

“I am presuming to vote yes on all the president’s nominees—those he has put forward and those he hasn’t. He’s the leader of my party,” Hawley said. “He just won decisively, and I think he’s earned the presumption of support, so I certainly intend to give him that. We’ll obviously work through the process with each nominee as they come forward, but my presumption is that I’ll vote for folks.”

Republican Senate Judiciary member, Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, deflected questions about Gaetz by literally pulling out a photo of transgender and nonbinary appointees made by President Joe Biden.

“These are kind of some of the people that President Biden got confirmed, OK?” Johnson told reporters as he showed them a picture of Rachel Levine, an assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services, and Sam Brinton, a former deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Nuclear Energy.

“I’m wondering if you guys asked the same kind of questions of the Democrat senators,” he said.

Johnson was correct that reporters never asked about Brinton. That’s because Brinton never vied for a Senate-confirmed role, making headlines only later after being fired for stealing luggage at airports. Levine, a transgender woman, was confirmed 52-48 in March of 2021 on a party line vote. Levine was never accused of a crime.

So far, there has been overwhelming deference to Trump’s nominations. Those Republicans skeptical of Gaetz’s ability to pass the confirmation muster seem to be doing so without taking a personal stand on his nomination. While more opposition could emerge as the advice and consent process is conducted, very few Republican senators appeared initially eager to cross a president they believe has a massive mandate to select his cabinet.

Senate Democrats, for their part, said they would oppose unqualified nominees like Gaetz, but argued that the task of actually stopping their confirmations would fall to Republicans. 

“The Republicans own everything,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) told The Bulwark. “If they have concerns about any of the Trump nominees, they should do something.” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) cast Gaetz’s nomination as a test from Trump “to see whether Republican senators have a gag reflex or not.” And Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) suggested Gaetz would have a tough path to a confirmation vote: “I think he’s pushing a big rock up a steep hill.”

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GAETZ’S TROUBLES BEGAN IN 2020, when his friend at the time, then-Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg, was arrested in a scheme where he falsely smeared a political opponent as a pedophile. It led to a spiraling criminal investigation that resulted in multiple charges for ID theft, fraud, and having a sex with the 17-year-old at the center of this case in 2017.

When Gaetz refused to help Greenberg get a pardon from Trump, Greenberg implicated Gaetz in the alleged sex trafficking, as did his alleged victim. At the time, she was falsely representing herself as 18 years old on a social-media dating site where she was essentially engaging in prostitution with Greenberg and other men, according to the judge in the case and court records.

Greenberg ultimately pleaded guilty to his crimes, and federal prosecutors, after two years of investigating, did not bring any criminal charges against Gaetz because of credibility problems of his two accusers and a lack of sufficient corroborating evidence to implicate, according to attorneys involved in the case. 

With the close of the federal investigation, the House ethics probe cranked up, leading Gaetz to accuse the investigators of engaging in a “Soviet” investigation because he had denounced members for corruption.

Insiders say the report is filled with lurid and damning information about Gaetz’s alleged and unseemly conduct. A civil lawyer for the alleged victim in the sex crimes case, John Clune, wrote Thursday on X that, “Mr. Gaetz’s likely nomination as Attorney General is a perverse development in a truly dark series of events. We would support the House Ethics Committee immediately releasing their report. She was a high school student and there were witnesses.”

Republican senators were less enthusiastic about discussing the report. Asked if he needed to see the House report before considering Gaetz’s nomination, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said he would “leave that to the House.”

A reporter noted that wasn’t the question. Graham said nothing more, raising his hand and walking away.

With reporting by Andrew Egger