Trump nominates 42-year-old Matt Gaetz as U.S. Attorney General

President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he plans to nominate longtime House ally Matt Gaetz (R-Florida's 1st District) to serve as U.S. attorney general in his new administration.

Trump announced the move on his social media platform, describing Gates as "a deeply gifted and tenacious lawyer ... who has served Congress with distinction by focusing on achieving much-needed reforms at the Department of Justice."

"No issue in America is more serious than ending the current use of the Justice System as a weapon in partisan competition," Trump wrote on Wednesday. "Matt will root out the long-standing systemic corruption in the Department of Justice and return the United States Department of Justice to its true mission of fighting crime and preserving our Democracy and Constitution."

In response to Trump's post, Gates said: "It will be a great honor to serve as President Trump's Attorney General!" According to NBC News, Gates joined Trump and billionaire Elon Musk on Wednesday for the president-elect's first visit back to Washington, D.C., which was also the first time Trump set foot in the White House since leaving office three years ago.

Trump once appointed two former Attorney Generals, Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, both of whom eventually became judicial tools to persecute him. The former Sessions allowed an investigation into allegations that Trump and Russia colluded to interfere in the 2016 election, and the latter Barr refuted Trump's claim that voter fraud was rampant in 2020.

Gates is also very savvy and influential in changing the upper echelons of the House of Representatives. He successfully led the movement to oust then-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy in October 2023. The move marked the first time in history that a Speaker of the House was ousted, and ultimately led to the promotion of Louisiana Republican Rep. Mike Johnson to Speaker.

After becoming one of the founding members of the "Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government" last year, Gates called for the defunding and dismantling of federal agencies that "do not yield."

"We either get government back on our side, or we defund, get rid of, abolish the FBI, the CDC, ATF, the Department of Justice, every single agency," Gates said at last year's Conservative Political Action Conference.

The 42-year-old will take over a federal agency with more than 100,000 employees and a large number of investigative and law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, DEA, U.S. Marshals Service, BWS, CDC, ATF, ATAF, DOJ and others.

Gates, a graduate of William & Mary College of Law and the son of a former Florida Senate president, won his return to the state Senate on Nov. 5. He served in the Florida House of Representatives before being elected to Congress in 2016. In Washington, he helped secure $240 million in the House budget this year for military operations in the Panhandle, as well as $191 million for new construction at the Department of Defense.

"Our Department of Justice must be run with honesty, integrity, and transparency," Trump wrote in the post. "Under Matt's leadership, all Americans will once again be proud of the United States Department of Justice."