WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. attorney general, former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, met with a group of Republican Senators and Vice President-elect JD Vance on Wednesday.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, from South Carolina, told reporters what he said he told Gaetz during the closed meeting.
“No rubber stamps and no lynch mob. I’m not going to be part of a process that leaks information that shouldn’t be leaked,” Graham said. “I’m not going to legitimize the process to destroy the man because people don’t like his politics.”
After Gaetz’s meeting, Trump announced that former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker was his nominee for U.S. ambassador to NATO. He had announced Linda McMahon was his nominee to reform the U.S. Department of Education.
Gaetz, 42, was under investigation by the Justice Department over accusations of sex trafficking, but prosecutors decided not to file charges. A group of Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee members requested FBI records on the investigation Wednesday.
“This is what the Radical Left Lunatics do to people. They dirty them up, they destroy them, and then they spit them out,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They are trying that right now with some great American Patriots who are only trying to fix the mess that the Democrats have made of our Country. WE WILL WIN!!! MAGA.”
The meeting with the senators on Wednesday was before the House Ethics Committee’s members met to discuss whether or not to release a report about an investigation into the allegations.
A woman told the House Ethics Committee that she attended a party in 2017 when she was a 17-year-old girl and had sex with Gaetz in Florida.
The New York Times reported a leak of transcripts of depositions in Chris Dorworth’s civil defamation case that also involved a woman who testified to have witnessed the alleged statutory rape.
Gaetz, who resigned from his congressional seat after Trump announced his nomination, has denied the accusations.
House Speaker Mike Johnson argued that since Gaetz, of Hollywood, was no longer a Florida lawmaker the House Ethics Committee did not have jurisdiction.
Gaetz also recently met with the right-wing Freedom Caucus. Congress convenes on Jan. 3. Inauguration Day is on Jan. 20.
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