While the once and future president, Donald Trump, has been on a roll with his announced picks for his new administration, this latest one has caused some consternation and heartburn. Matt Gaetz has been announced as Trump’s choice for Attorney General.

Trump made the announcement on Truth Social, which quickly got reposted elsewhere, including by Gaetz himself.

It will be an honor to serve as President Trump’s Attorney General! pic.twitter.com/dg0iQ0bA6Y

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) November 13, 2024

At the same time, Trump announced that Tulsi Gabbard would be his choice for Director of National Intelligence. It says a lot about Matt Gaetz that the focus was all on him, and not on the former Congresswoman who ran for president on the Democrat ticket in 2019.

Now, the argument has been made that since the Gaetz pick is making all the right people mad, it must be a good one. But it is possible for two things to be true at the same time. Matt Gaetz may make all the right people mad, but he’s made plenty of the wrong people mad at different times, too. It was Gaetz, after all, who ended up triggering the entire Speaker of the House vacancy debacle that led to the ouster of Kevin McCarthy, and the eventual (after multiple candidates) selection of Mike Johnson. While people had legitimate issues with McCarthy, it is undeniable that Matt Gaetz was the one whose personal grudge against the former Speaker led to the mess we saw in October 2023. Was it worth it in the long run? Has Johnson governed so differently than McCarthy? Matt Gaetz did not make any friends with his shenanigans last year. On the other hand, he has been completely loyal to Donald Trump. Is that enough to make him Attorney General, over a whole lot of other equally loyal and less annoying options?

And yes, the hysteria on the part of the left is quite fun to watch. Department of Justice staffers are freaking out, according to POLITICO.

Many rank-and-file Justice Department staffers — who were already dreading what Trump might do at DOJ — were flabbergasted by the Gaetz announcement. “This is completely wild. It’s so out of bounds, it’s just shocking,” said one career DOJ lawyer, who was granted anonymity out of concerns about retaliation. “He’s there for one purpose: to enact retribution. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have a grand vision about the future of the department. I can’t imagine how this isn’t going to scare people even more.”

In the weeks leading up to the election and days since, Gaetz had not been seen as a contender for attorney general. The choice suggests that Trump may have passed over some of the conventional-wisdom candidates, like Utah Sen. Mike Lee (a former federal prosecutor and a Supreme Court clerk) and business-friendly former regulator Jay Clayton.

“I thought the worst we could get was Paxton,” the career DOJ lawyer said, referring to another reputed contender for the top job, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

However, perhaps there was another angle?

The Gaetz pick is so nuts I can actually almost believe that it is some sort of 12-dimensional chess to convince the entire DOJ staff to resign

— Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) November 13, 2024

For his part, Gaetz not only accepted the offer, but shockingly, resigned from his House seat as well. Speaker Johnson made THAT surprise announcement on Wednesday evening.

Gaetz gave House GOP leaders his resignation notice on the same day President-elect Donald Trump tapped him to be his attorney general, Johnson said.

“I think out of deference to us, he issued his resignation letter effective immediately,” 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.”

The speaker pointed out that Florida state law gave the governor “about an eight-week period” to fill a House vacancy and that by doing so, “we may be able to fill that seat as early as Jan. 3.”

Johnson said he’s already in contact with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on the matter.

However, there may be ulterior motives to Matt Gaetz abruptly resigning his House seat. Apparently, the House Ethics Committee was about to meet on Friday to vote on releasing the report that they had written – about Gaetz. Remember that ethics investigation?

But the larger impact of the resignation is that the House Ethics Committee investigation into Gaetz, which was in its final stages, will be effectively dead. The panel will have no jurisdiction to investigate Gaetz since he is no longer a member of Congress, and its findings may never see the light of day — a major boon for Gaetz as he prepares to face an already-skeptical Senate.

“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. “So if Matt Gaetz were to be appointed as the attorney general, the Ethics investigation that is currently ongoing would cease at that point.”

The Ethics Committee was scheduled to meet on Friday to vote on whether or not to release the report about Gaetz, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to The Hill. Punchbowl News first reported on the planned meeting. The panel was still slated to meet Friday as of Wednesday evening, the source said.

While the Ethics Committee’s investigation into Gaetz has ceased because of his departure from Congress, the panel could still vote to release the report post-resignation. While such a move is rare, there is some precedent: In 1987, the committee released its report into former Rep. William Boner (D-Tenn.) after he resigned from the House.

The House Ethics Committee was investigating whether Gaetz engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, among other allegations. The congressional probe into Gaetz was opened in 2021, shortly 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.

Matt Gaetz denied that he’d done anything wrong, but is there hard evidence?

The Venmo payments, if the committee does indeed have them, will be damning. And a good reason for Gaetz to resign — but not a good one for him to be AG. https://t.co/KLCuCw24oy

— Sunny (@sunnyright) November 14, 2024

If that report is not released, you can bet that the Senate is going to be digging through the whole thing to uncover whatever was previously discovered by the House Ethics Committee. Is this why Congressman Thomas Massie was simply saying that Gaetz would be a recess appointment?

NEW: Reporter asks Rep. Thomas Massie about Trump's nomination of Matt Gaetz for Attorney General.

Reporter: Will he be confirmed by the Senate?

Massie: "Doesn't need to… we recess. He’s the Attorney General. Suck it up."pic.twitter.com/C9djSuw2D6

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 13, 2024

Now, it is true that Matt Gaetz could be made Attorney General by recess appointment, but that means he would only be in the job for two years, tops – according to the Congressional Research Service.

A recess appointment expires at the sine die adjournment of the Senate’s “next session.” Where the President has made a recess appointment between sessions of the same or successive Congresses, this appointment has expired at the end of the session that next convened. Where he has made the appointment during an intrasession recess, however, the duration of the appointment has included the rest of the session in progress plus the full length of the session that followed. At any point in a year, as a result, by making a recess appointment during an intrasession recess, a President could fill a position not just for the rest of that year, but until near the end of the following year. In practice, this has meant that a recess appointment could last for almost two years.

What happens in two years? The job that Matt Gaetz really wants will open up: Governor of Florida. Ron DeSantis will be term-limited out, and Gaetz wants that job, even though he claimed a year ago that he wasn’t going to run in 2026. He’s already resigned from the House. He could spend a year, at least, as Attorney General without ever being formally confirmed by the Senate. And then come 2025, his profile has been raised nationally enough to run for governor of his home state in 2026. It’s a big gamble, but Matt Gaetz has already proven that he’s a “jump first, figure out the details later” kind of politician.

My recommendation to Donald Trump? Have a backup candidate in mind, just in case.

Featured photo: Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) in June 2020 via Gage Skidmore on Flickr, cropped, CC BY-SA 2.0