President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday announced Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz as his nominee to lead the Justice Department.
Gaetz has long been a loyal Trump ally and, as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, was one of the then-president’s most vocal supporters on Capitol Hill during his first administration.
“Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department,” Trump said Wednesday in a statement.
The Florida Republican has urged action on climate change and also introduced legislation to abolish EPA. If confirmed as attorney general, Gaetz would lead the department charged with defending Trump’s environmental and energy policies in court.
“Climate change is real,” Gaetz wrote in his 2020 autobiography, “Firebrand: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the MAGA Revolution.” There “is a scientific consensus that the Earth is getting warmer. There is a moral consensus that we should do something about it.”
What climate change “doesn’t demand is a socialist takeover,” he wrote. “Being smarter for our land and people doesn’t require surrender to AOC’s Green New Deal socialist Woketopia,” he said, referring to New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Gaetz introduced legislation as a first-term lawmaker to abolish EPA. “Today, the American people are drowning in rules and regulations promulgated by unelected bureaucrats,” Gaetz said at the time, calling EPA an “extraordinary offender.”
Gaetz also joined the House bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus. He said in 2017, “I think history will judge very harshly those who are climate deniers.”
The Justice Department in 2023 ended a sex trafficking investigation into Gaetz without charging him with any crimes. He had faced allegations that he was involved in the sex trafficking of a 17-year-old girl, which he denied. He still faces a House Ethics Committee investigation.
