JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz announced today that he is withdrawing from consideration to be the next attorney general. President-elect Donald Trump picked Gaetz for the job just last week. That is despite drug use and sex trafficking allegations against Gaetz and a House Ethics investigation into his conduct. Here's Republican Senator James Lankford.
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JAMES LANKFORD: We all said we're going let the process play out, so...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Did you have any...
LANKFORD: ...Just played out faster...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: ...Did you...
LANKFORD: ...Than we thought.
SUMMERS: NPR congressional correspondent Claudia Grisales and justice correspondent Ryan Lucas are here with more. Ryan, I want to start off with you here. Gaetz announced his decision to withdraw on a post on X. Tell us what he said.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Well, Gaetz was on Capitol Hill yesterday for meetings with Republican senators, several of whom have expressed reservations about Gaetz potentially leading the Justice Department. But in his post on X, Gaetz said those meetings with senators were excellent. He said that momentum for his bid for attorney general was strong. That's how he described it. But he also said that it was clear to him that his confirmation was, quote, "unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump-Vance transition."
Gaetz said there's no time to waste on what he called a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle over his confirmation. Trump's Justice Department has to be in place, he said, and ready on Day 1. And so Gaetz said that he was withdrawing his name from consideration for attorney general.
SUMMERS: All right - Claudia, over to you. As Ryan pointed out, Gaetz was on Capitol Hill just yesterday, having those meetings with senators. Things seemed to be moving ahead as planned. So tell us. What are you hearing from Senate Republicans now with this news?
CLAUDIA GRISALES, BYLINE: A whole range of reactions, but a lot of it is surprise, relief. Many senators did not want to vote on this nomination. Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi called it a, quote, "positive development." And I talked to Maine Senator Susan Collins earlier today before he dropped out. And she said out of all of the nominations for the President-elect, Gaetz was the most problematic. And here's Iowa senator Joni Ernst.
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JONI ERNST: I'm grateful that the president has plenty of time to find a new nominee.
GRISALES: And as one Republican source who was surprised at the news told me, there's a small Venn diagram of who Trump wants to see lead the Justice Department and who can survive a difficult vetting by the Senate.
SUMMERS: Right. Ryan, Gaetz's conduct has been under investigation for quite a while now, and President-elect Trump was aware of these allegations before he picked Gaetz. Did anything change in the very short time since he was nominated to make Gaetz's nomination suddenly just unable to proceed?
LUCAS: Well, it's a very good point that this was all pretty well-known. It was well-known that Gaetz had been the subject of a federal sex trafficking investigation by the Justice Department, an investigation that ended without any charges against Gaetz. It was also well-known that Gaetz was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.
But what Trump's decision to pick Gaetz for Attorney General did was bring all of that very much back into the spotlight. And in the past week, an attorney for two women who spoke to federal investigators and the Ethics Committee told me that one of his clients testified that she saw Gaetz have sex with a minor at a party in 2017. The woman also testified that Gaetz paid them for sex. Now, Gaetz - it has to be said - has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. But there were a lot of concerns that Gaetz didn't have the legal experience or the temperament to be the top law enforcement officer in the country and the individual essentially responsible for upholding the rule of law.
SUMMERS: Claudia, I want to talk for a moment about that House Ethics Committee report. What does this development mean for that report?
GRISALES: Well, some Republicans argue that's now a moot point. But there's still a lot of questions about Gaetz's next moves and how it could resurface this debate in a new way. To be clear, Democrats have already triggered an effort in the House to force a vote to release the report, a move some Republicans told me that they are quietly cheering. And if Gaetz decides to return to the House as a member - which, believe it or not is an option - it could revive the role Ethics has to play here all over again.
SUMMERS: Well, that's a big question a lot of people have. What are Gaetz's options from here?
GRISALES: Well, that's the big question now. To be clear, for days, Republican sources who questioned this nomination predicted this exact outcome to me since many were sure he wouldn't survive the Senate vetting process. They said Gaetz would drop out because he would become a distraction, in turn, become a hero for the hard right and then leverage all of this oxygen for his nomination into a possible run for Florida governor. His name has been tossed around for that quite a bit. But before then, he could return to his seat in January because that is a completely new term he was elected to, and that would force the Ethics probe to start again since he would be a sitting member again.
SUMMERS: Ryan, so, I mean, now what? The Gaetz pick seemed to really surprise even people close to Trump. Is there any roadmap for who he might pick next?
LUCAS: That's a tricky question. As you said, Trump's decision to pick Gaetz was a huge surprise. I think the question going forward is, does Trump decide to pick someone from a more traditional legal background - an institutionalist, someone with DOJ experience - or someone more in the Gaetz mold, someone seen as a Trump loyalist, someone perhaps ready to use the Justice Department to go after Trump's perceived political enemies the way that Trump talked about on the campaign trail?
SUMMERS: NPR's Ryan Lucas and Claudia Grisales. Thanks to both of you.
GRISALES: Thank you.
LUCAS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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