By MARY CLARE JALONICK
WASHINGTON (AP) — Just hours after Republican Sen. John Thune was elected as the incoming Senate majority leader on Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump presented him with one of his first tests — an announcement that he intends to nominate controversial Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general.
The Florida Republican is one of the more universally disliked members of Congress, including among GOP lawmakers after he led the effort to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year. He has spent his congressional career agitating against the Justice Department and has been under a House Ethics investigation probing whether he engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct. Gaetz denies the allegations.
Asked about the nomination as he left a Senate vote, Thune smiled and declined to answer. “That’s probably a good question for the chairman of the Judiciary Committee,” he said.
An hour earlier, the likely incoming chairman of the Judiciary panel, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, also deflected, saying he doesn’t know Gaetz but will look at the nomination. “Don’t ask me any other questions,” Grassley said.
It’s a familiar posture for Republican senators who have lived through the last eight years dodging questions about Trump and defending him, even after he tried to overturn his election defeat in 2020 and his supporters violently stormed the U.S. Capitol. But the stakes are even higher now that he has been decisively elected to a second term. Congressional Republicans have rallied intensely around him, betting their political futures on his success.
Two months before Trump even takes office, he is already challenging those congressional Republicans to defy him as he nominates potentially controversial figures to his Cabinet — including Gaetz, former Democratic House Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence and…
Read the full article here
