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Trump nominee for top law enforcement position faces legal questions

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated longtime ally Republican Representative Matt Gaetz for the nation’s top law enforcement position, attorney general of the United States. As VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, Gaetz is expected to face a tough confirmation process.
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US House panel: No agreement on release of report on Trump’s attorney general nominee

The U.S. House of Representatives Ethics Committee failed Wednesday to reach agreement on whether to release findings from its nearly finished investigative report on former Republican Representative Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general. 

The panel’s chair, Republican Representative Michael Guest, emerged from a lengthy committee meeting, saying, “There was no agreement by the committee to release the report.” 

He declined further comment. The other nine committee members — four Republicans and five Democrats — also did not comment immediately. 

Gaetz was accused of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use before he was picked by Trump to become the country’s top law enforcement official in the new administration that takes office on January 20. 

Two news outlets, ABC News and The Washington Post, reported that the committee had obtained documents that showed Gaetz paid two women who appeared before the committee as witnesses a total of more than $10,000 between July 2017 and late January 2019. The women, who were over the age of 18 at the time of the payments, told the panel that some of the money was for sex. 

A Trump transition spokesman defended Gaetz in a statement. 

“The Justice Department received access to roughly every financial transaction Matt Gaetz ever undertook and came to the conclusion that he committed no crime. These leaks are meant to undermine the mandate from the people to reform the Justice Department,” with Gaetz at the head of the agency, the spokesman said. 

Several U.S. senators, Democrats and Republicans alike, are demanding that the report be released so they can consider the scope of Gaetz’s background as they undertake their constitutionally mandated role of confirming or rejecting a new president’s Cabinet nominees. 

Hours after Trump named him as a nominee, Gaetz, 42, resigned from Congress, even though he had just been reelected to a fifth term. His resignation ended the House Ethics Committee’s investigation, which had been nearing a conclusion. 

It remained uncertain whether the panel would divulge what conclusions lawmakers had reached. With the allegations hovering over him, Gaetz quickly became Trump’s most controversial selection for his Cabinet, although the president-elect has continued to support him and has been making calls to lawmakers to bolster his chances of confirmation. 

Gaetz was in the Capitol Wednesday to meet with some of the senators who will decide his fate. The Senate has not voted to reject a presidential nominee for a Cabinet position since 1989, with members of both political parties giving wide deference to new presidents to fill top-level jobs with appointees of their choosing. 

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he met with Gaetz and Vice President-elect JD Vance, still a sitting senator, and told them there would be “no rubber stamps, no lynch mobs” in the confirmation process. 

“These allegations will be dealt with in committee, but [Gaetz] deserves a chance to confront his accusers,” Graham told reporters. 

The Justice Department investigated the allegations against him but last year declined to bring any charges. 

Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee that will consider the Gaetz nomination asked the FBI to release the evidentiary file from its investigation. 

That material would include interviews with a woman who said she was paid to have sex with Gaetz when she was 17. Gaetz has denied the accusations. 

Representative Dean Phillips, a Democrat who previously served on the House Ethics Committee, said Gaetz’s situation — a former member of Congress nominated for one of the most powerful jobs in the U.S. government — is an argument in favor of releasing the report. 

“He’s not just gone [from the House]. He’s now been nominated for a very important position in this country, which is the chief legal officer, if you will, of the country. It would seem bizarre and incongruent with any ethical principle to not release it,” Phillips said. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who leads the narrow Republican majority in the House, has said he is opposed to the release of the as-yet unfinished report by the House Ethics Committee because Gaetz is no longer a member of Congress. But reports about wrongdoing by other former members of Congress have been released in a few instances in the past. 

Ultimately, the Senate, which Republicans will control by at least a 52-48 margin next year, will decide whether to confirm Gaetz, who has never worked at the Justice Department or served as a prosecutor at any level of government. 

But Gaetz, like other Trump nominees for top government jobs, has been a vocal supporter of the president and his Make America Great Again agenda. 

Gaetz, however, angered some fellow Republican lawmakers in the House in 2023 by spearheading the effort to oust then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who eventually was replaced by Johnson.
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Trump picks former acting attorney general as US envoy to NATO

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday named Matt Whitaker, a former acting attorney general from his first presidency, as the U.S. ambassador to NATO, the cornerstone Western military alliance whose member countries Trump has criticized for not spending enough money on defense.

In a statement, Trump described Whitaker, 55, as “a strong warrior and loyal patriot” who “will ensure the United States’ interests are advanced and defended” and “strengthen relationships with our NATO allies and stand firm in the face of threats to peace and stability.”

As with several of Trump’s choices for positions in his new administration, the nomination of Whitaker to the 32-country North Atlantic Treaty Organization based in Brussels is unusual in that his professional background does not match the job to which he is being named. Whitaker has a long career as a lawyer but is not steeped in foreign or military policy.

Whitaker, like numerous other Trump appointees, has been an ardent Trump loyalist. Whitaker has been a vocal critic of the two federal criminal cases brought against Trump that are now likely to be erased as he assumes power again on January 20.

During his first administration, Trump goaded other NATO countries that did not meet the alliance’s military spending goal: 2% of their national economic output. As he left office in 2021, six of the NATO countries were spending that much on defense. But 23 of the 32 do now as the threat of Russian aggression against nearby NATO countries mounted after Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which is not a NATO country but wants to join.

During his presidency, Trump assailed the countries who were not spending enough on defense, saying they were in arrears in their “dues” to NATO.

“NATO was busted until I came along,” Trump said at a political rally earlier this year. “I said, ‘Everybody’s going to pay.’”

Trump said that “one of the presidents of a big country” at one point asked him whether the U.S. would still defend the country if they were invaded by Russia even if they “don’t pay.”

“I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ They couldn’t believe the answer.”

“No, I would not protect you,” Trump recalled saying to that president. “In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.”

Under the NATO treaty, member nations are obligated to protect each other militarily if they are attacked. The obligation has been invoked only once in the 75-year history of the alliance that was formed in the aftermath of World War II. That was when other NATO countries joined the United States in fighting al-Qaida in Afghanistan after the terrorist group attacked the U.S. in 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people.

Whitaker, a former federal prosecutor in the Midwestern state of Iowa, served as acting attorney general between November 2018 and February 2019, as special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was ending.

Before then, Whitaker was chief of staff to Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, before being picked to replace his boss after Sessions was fired amid Trump’s lingering outrage over his decision to withdraw from the Russia investigation. Whitaker held the acting attorney general position for several months without Senate confirmation, until William Barr was confirmed as attorney general in February 2019.

Other appointments

Trump has been making new top appointments to his nascent administration on an almost daily basis.

Late Tuesday, he named Linda McMahon as his nominee to lead the Education Department, even though Trump and some Republican lawmakers want to abolish the agency and hand over most education policy decisions and much of the current federal funding to state and local control.

McMahon served as the head of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s previous term in office and is well known for her decadeslong role, along with her husband, in helping lead World Wrestling Entertainment.

“Linda will use her decades of leadership experience, and deep understanding of both education and business, to empower the next generation of American students and workers and make America number one in education in the world,” Trump said in a statement. “We will send education back to the states, and Linda will spearhead that effort.”

Also on Tuesday, Trump announced he’d nominate Wall Street financier Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary in his new administration.

Additionally, the president-elect picked Dr. Mehmet Oz, a longtime television show host, as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency that oversees the government’s two key health insurance programs for older Americans and impoverished people. Trump backed Oz’s failed attempt to win a Senate seat in Pennsylvania in 2022.
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Trump sentencing in hush money case remains uncertain

Back in May, former President Donald Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to suppress damaging information ahead of his 2016 election. His sentencing was delayed until after the election, but now that he is president-elect, what happens next is less clear. Tina Trinh reports.
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Trump plans to nominate billionaire Wall Street banker for commerce secretary

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump plans to nominate Wall Street financier Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary in his new administration, Trump announced on Tuesday. 

The 63-year-old billionaire has been co-chair of Trump’s transition team, helping to consider and vet numerous people to assume top-level government jobs after Trump takes office on January 20. Lutnick has been an outspoken Trump supporter in recent months. 

The CEO and chairman of the Cantor Fitzgerald global financial services firm, Lutnick was reported to be in contention to become Treasury secretary, another top job Trump has yet to fill. But Trump associates say Lutnick fell out of favor for the Treasury job amid conflicts with another leading candidate, investor Scott Bessent. 

If nominated to become commerce secretary and confirmed by the Senate, as would be likely, Lutnick could play a leading role in implementing the president’s economic and trade policies.  

Trump has proposed widespread increases in tariffs on imported goods, an effort to boost American manufacturing of the same products, but one that in the near term threatens to increase prices for American consumers and disrupt the global economy. 

The Commerce Department oversees an array of federal business policies, including on semiconductors, cybersecurity and patents, and helps promote new businesses and economic growth in the United States, the world’s biggest economy. 

Lutnick has donated to both Democrats and Republicans in the past. He also once appeared on Trump’s NBC reality TV show “The Apprentice” before Trump was first elected president in 2016. 

The Cantor Fitzgerald firm that Lutnick heads lost more employees — 658 out of 960 — than any other business in the September 11, 2001, al-Qaida terrorist attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. Another 46 contractors and visitors who were in the Cantor Fitzgerald offices that day were killed when the towers collapsed. 

Lutnick’s brother Gary was among those killed when hijackers flew commercial jetliners into the skyscrapers, hitting the North Tower just below where Cantor Fitzgerald occupied floors 101 to 105. Howard Lutnick would have been there as well but was taking his son Kyle to his first day of kindergarten. 

Back at the site, Howard Lutnick survived the collapse of the South Tower by taking cover under a nearby car. He later created the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund to assist families of victims of the attacks and natural disasters. 
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US House panel to consider releasing report on Trump’s attorney general nominee

The U.S. House of Representatives Ethics Committee is set to meet Wednesday to decide whether to release its investigative report on former Representative Matt Gaetz, who was accused of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use before he was picked by President-elect Donald Trump to be attorney general in his new administration.

Several U.S. senators, Democrats and Republicans alike, are demanding that the report be released so they can consider the scope of Gaetz’s background as they undertake their constitutionally mandated role of confirming or rejecting a new president’s Cabinet nominees.

Last Wednesday, Trump named Gaetz, 42, a Republican congressman from Florida for eight years, to become the country’s top law enforcement official. Hours later, Gaetz resigned from Congress, even though he had just been reelected to a fifth term. His resignation ended the House Ethics Committee’s investigation, which had been nearing a conclusion.

But it remained uncertain whether the panel would divulge what conclusions it had reached.

The committee, with five Democrats and five Republicans, had been looking into allegations that Gaetz had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and used drugs illicitly. Gaetz has denied the allegations. The Justice Department, which Gaetz hopes to lead, investigated the case but declined last year to bring any charges.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who leads the narrow Republican majority in the chamber, has contended that no ethics report should be made public because Gaetz is no longer a member of Congress. However, there have been instances where that has occurred in the past.

Johnson told CNN on Sunday that senators reviewing the Gaetz nomination as the country’s top law enforcement official will “have a vigorous review and vetting process,” but that they did not need to see the House Ethics Committee’s report. Some senators have suggested they could move to subpoena it if it is not turned over to them voluntarily.

Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin on Sunday told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the panel should share its report with the Senate.

“The Senate should have access to that,” Mullin said. “Should it be released to the public or not? That I guess will be part of the negotiations.”

Gaetz is one of several Trump appointees to his Cabinet who do not have the credentials normally seen in candidates for high-level government jobs.

Over the weekend, a lawyer for another Trump choice, Pete Hegseth, a 44-year-old Fox News host named to be defense secretary, revealed that Hegseth several years ago paid an undisclosed amount to a woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017 to avert the threat of what he viewed as a baseless lawsuit becoming public.

Trump has stood by his Cabinet nominees, refusing to withdraw their nominations. But the controversies surrounding Gaetz, Hegseth and others could threaten their confirmations by the Senate to be in Trump’s Cabinet.

The president-elect also has sought — with little success so far — to get the Senate, in Republican control come January when he takes office, to agree to recess at times so he could name and install his Cabinet members without the need for contentious and time-consuming confirmation hearings.
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US Senate Republicans ready for unified control in 2025 with new leadership

President-elect Donald Trump will come into office in January 2025 with unified control of the U.S. Congress. Republicans will hold majorities in both the Senate and House as the result of a mandate from American voters. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from Capitol Hill.
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Two Trump Cabinet nominees embroiled in sex controversies

Two of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s key nominations – Fox News host Pete Hegseth for defense secretary and former lawmaker Matt Gaetz as attorney general — have become embroiled in sex controversies that could threaten their Senate confirmations to serve in Trump’s Cabinet.  

Hegseth, 44, paid an undisclosed amount to a woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017 to avert the threat of what he viewed as a baseless claim becoming public, his lawyer, Tim Parlatore, told U.S. news media this weekend.

Gaetz, 42, resigned abruptly last week from the House of Representatives near the end of his fourth two-year term, just days before the House Ethics Committee was nearing conclusion of an investigation into whether he had had sex with a 17-year-old girl and engaged in illicit drug use. Some lawmakers have described Gaetz showing nude cellphone pictures of his sexual conquests in the House chamber.   

Gaetz has denied the allegations and federal authorities had earlier this year decided not to bring charges. 

Hegseth’s lawyer, Parlatore, described Hegseth’s hotel sexual encounter with the woman after a Republican women’s event in Monterey, California, in 2017 as consensual. Local police, after an investigation, did not file any charges.  

Parlatore told The Washington Post that Hegseth settled the woman’s claim a few years later because he believed the filing of her threatened lawsuit “would result in his immediate termination from Fox,” where he was the popular host of a weekend talk show.  

“He was falsely accused, and my position is that he was the victim of blackmail,” Parlatore told The Associated Press, calling it a case of “successful extortion.” The woman’s name has not been made public, and U.S. news media do not usually disclose the names of alleged sexual assault victims without their consent.  

Parlatore’s statements to news outlets came after a woman who said she is a friend of the accuser sent a detailed memo to the Trump transition several days ago detailing the Hegseth incident with his accuser. The accuser alleged that Hegseth had raped her after drinking at a hotel bar.

Trump so far has stood by Hegseth, an unconventional selection as the Pentagon chief.

Some Democratic and Republican lawmakers have raised concerns about Hegseth’s lack of a managerial background, either at the Defense Department or at a business. The Pentagon chief would oversee more than 2 million U.S. troops and a civilian work force of nearly 800,000 people.  

In addition, some critics have raised concerns about a large tattoo on Hegseth’s upper right chest, which he characterizes as a Christian symbol, a “Jerusalem cross,” but what his critics say is a white nationalist symbol. Hegseth told one interviewer that he was removed by superiors from a National Guard detail handling security for President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021 for fear that he was “an extremist” because of the tattoo.  

When the allegations against Hegseth first emerged, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung contended that Hegseth “has vigorously denied any and all accusations. 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.” 

Even though voters in his Florida district had just reelected him to a fifth term, Gaetz resigned from his office Wednesday, ending the investigation.    

Several U.S. senators, Republicans and Democrats alike, are seeking access to the House Ethics Committee findings in the Gaetz investigation as they carry out their constitutionally mandated “advice and consent” role in reviewing Cabinet nominees made by an incoming president.  

House Speaker Mike Johnson, the leader of the narrow Republican majority in the chamber, is balking at the release of what he told CNN’s “State of the Union” show was a report in “rough draft form.”  

Johnson contended that no ethics report should be made public because Gaetz is no longer a member of Congress, although there have been instances where that has occurred in the past.  

He said senators reviewing the Gaetz nomination as the country’s top law enforcement official will “have a vigorous review and vetting process” but that they did not need to see the House Ethics Committee’s report. Some senators have suggested they could move to subpoena it if it is not turned over to them voluntarily.  

Trump has also stood by Gaetz’s nomination, but the president-elect also has sought – with little success so far – to get the Senate, in Republican control come January when he takes office, to agree to recess at times so he can name and install his Cabinet members without the need for contentious and time-consuming confirmation hearings.
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Trump’s Cabinet picks will shake status quo, House speaker says

Some of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks are being described as “controversial” in both Democratic and Republican circles. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson reminded critics Sunday that the American people voted to shake up the status quo, and that’s what these new Cabinet officials, if confirmed, will be tasked with doing. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias has the story. Video editing by Henry Hernandez.
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