Matt Gaetz resigns from Congress after Trump's Attorney General nod

Republican congressman from Florida Matt Gaetz resigned from the US House of Representatives, shortly after he was named by President-elect Donald Trump as the next US Attorney General. US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson announced Gaetz’s resignation on Wednesday and said that it will be “effective immediately”.

The resignation, which came hours after Gaetz’s AG nod, was described by Johnson as a way to “speed up the process of filling the House Republican’s seat”. The House speaker made it clear that the party would not like to be one member down in the narrow majority the GOP has acquired for next year.

Johnson stated that Gaetz’s decision to resign early “caught us by surprise a little bit.” The speaker of the house went on to call Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Wednesday to discuss plans to fill the vacant seat. It is pertinent to note that the Florida state law allows DeSantis to set the timeline for replacing House members through special elections.

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“I think, out of deference to us, he issued his resignation letter effective immediately, of Congress,” Johnson said. “That caught us by surprise a little bit, but I asked him what the reasoning was and he said, well, you can’t have too many absences, so under Florida state law there’s about an eight-week period to select and fill a vacant seat,” he added.

The Speaker of the House insisted that the party is hopeful that the seat could be filled by January 3, when the new Congress is sworn in.

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The bigger issue with Gaetz’s immediate resignation

However, one of the major impacts of Gaetz’s resignation is the fact that the House Ethics Committee investigation into Gaetz, which was in its final stages, will now come to a dead end. It is important to note that the panel will no longer have jurisdiction to investigate Gaetz since he is no longer a member of Congress. Hence, the findings of the committee will never see the light of the day.

“Once a member is no longer a member of Congress, then Ethics has no jurisdiction,” House Ethics Committee Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) told reporters on Wednesday after Gaetz received the attorney general nod, The Hill reported. “So if Matt Gaetz were to be appointed as the attorney general, the Ethics investigation that is currently ongoing would cease at that point.”

Gaetz is also facing an investigation from the House Ethics Committee after it was alleged that he “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favours to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.”

The congressional probe opened in 2021 after news reports emerged that the Department of Justice (DOJ) was reportedly investigating whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl. The Florida lawmaker has denied all wrongdoings.

After the DOJ declined to charge him for the crimes, Gaetz went on to state that he would “no longer voluntarily participate” in the “nosy” Ethics probe and would not comply with its subpoena, accusing the panel of asking him for a list of adult women with whom he’d had sex over the last seven years. On Wednesday, Johnson announced that he was not sure if the Ethics Committee would release a report on Gaetz given its lack of jurisdiction now that he is no longer in Congress.

With inputs from agencies.