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Donald Trump has dispatched JD Vance to Washington to shore up support for Matt Gaetz, the president-elect’s choice for attorney-general who faces accusations about his alleged sexual misconduct and drug use.
Vance, the vice-president-elect, will act as a kind of “sherpa” for Gaetz and Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host Trump nominated for defence secretary, according to a person familiar with the mission.
Elon Musk, Trump’s billionaire confidant, has also rushed to defend Gaetz, posting on X that the former Florida congressman had three “critical assets” needed to run the Department of Justice — “a big brain, a spine of steel and an axe to grind”.
“He is the Judge Dredd America needs to clean up a corrupt system and put powerful bad actors in prison,” Musk added in a reference to a fictional comic book character who pursues criminals in a dystopian world. “Gaetz will be our Hammer of Justice.”
The persuasion effort from Trump’s transition team comes as the House of Representatives ethics committee prepares to vote on whether to release the findings of an investigation into drug and sex allegations against Gaetz.
US media also reported on Tuesday that a hacker had downloaded documents from another civil suit against the Florida congressman.
Trump sent shockwaves through Washington last week when he selected Gaetz, a 42-year-old conservative firebrand with little legal experience, as his nominee for attorney-general.
Gaetz was under investigation by the US Department of Justice for allegedly having a sexual relationship with an underage girl. While no charges were brought, he has separately been the subject of the House’s long-running investigation. Gaetz has denied the allegations of wrongdoing.
The House investigation ran aground last week when Gaetz resigned from Congress after being named Trump’s nominee for attorney-general. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a close Trump ally, has called for the ethics committee to keep its report secret.
Michael Guest, the Mississippi Republican who chairs the committee, said, however, that the committee would make its own decision about how to proceed. The committee’s top Democrat, Pennsylvania congresswoman Susan Wild, said the report “absolutely should be released to the public”.
Even if the report is kept officially under wraps, many in Washington expect it to be leaked by a member of Congress or staffer, or through other channels.
On Monday, a lawyer for two women who testified to the committee that Gaetz paid them for sex told several US news outlets that one of the women saw him have sex with an underage girl at a party in 2017. The lawyer, Joel Leppard, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Gaetz and Hegseth — who has also been investigated for an allegation of sexual assault and denies all wrongdoing — will both need a majority of US senators to confirm their appointments.
But the swirling allegations leave Gaetz, in particular, facing an uphill battle in the chamber, even though Republicans will hold a 53-47 majority and can confirm him with the support of 50 senators and Vance. Several Republican senators have publicly and privately raised concerns about his nomination for DoJ’s top job.
On top of Vance’s mission to Washington, Trump has begun calling Republican senators to urge them to support Gaetz.
North Dakota senator Kevin Cramer told Axios that he had recently spoken to Trump on the phone and called the president-elect a “pretty persuasive guy” who was “putting his own political capital” behind the nomination.
“He clearly wants Matt Gaetz,” Cramer said. “He believes Matt Gaetz is the one person who will have the fearlessness and ferociousness, really, to do what needs doing at the Department of Justice.”
Additional reporting by Stefania Palma in Washington
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