Editor’s Note: On November 21, 2024, Gaetz withdrew from his nomination for Attorney General. GPAHE is posting this profile given that he may well be appointed to another position in the Administration, or another political post.
Summary: Former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz’s nomination by Trump for Attorney General is under fire for multiple allegations that he paid women for sex, including a 17-year-old, before resigning from the House of Representatives when he received his nomination. Until he left the House, he had been under investigation by its Ethics Committee for “allegations of misconduct” including “sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.” The problems with Gaetz go even wider than these disturbing allegations. Gaetz has allied himself with an alarming number of white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and Holocaust deniers. He recently employed as a speechwriter a man fired by Trump in 2018 for white nationalist ties. He has a history of denigrating women and poor people, spewing Christian Nationalist rhetoric, and pushing anti-LGBTQ+ vitriol and policies. And he has spread the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which has inspired multiple terrorist attacks against Jews, Muslims, Black people and Latinos across the world, and has viciously attacked civil rights organizations.
In His Own Words:
“[Reminiscing about the first Trump administration] We prospered. We were richer. Inflation was low, and there were two genders.”
–Republican National Convention, 2024
“More space for prayer for students in schools is probably better than creating more space for, you know, the next pansexual poetry hour in Portland.”
–Comment on a prayer in schools bill, November 2023
“God’s reach does not stop at the schoolhouse gates. Our country’s education policy forbids students and faculty from praying while endlessly promoting degenerate LGBT and anti-White propaganda.”
–Statement introducing a prayer in schools bill, August 2023
“Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions? Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.”
–TPUSA Student Action Summit, 2022
“@TuckerCarlson is CORRECT about Replacement Theory as he explains what is happening to America. The ADL [Anti-Defamation League] is a racist organization.”
–Twitter, September 5, 2021
“This evening, I will vote AGAINST the ridiculous hate speech bill called the Antisemitism Awareness Act…Antisemitism is wrong, but this legislation is written without regard for the Constitution, common sense, or even the common understanding of the meaning of words. The Gospel itself would meet the definition of antisemitism under the terms of this bill!”
–Gaetz claiming that Christian scripture that dictates that Jews are responsible for Jesus’s death would be viewed as antisemitic, May 2024
“Yesterday I saw a lady at Publix use her ’Access’ welfare card. Her back was covered in tattoos. RT if u support entitlement reform.”
–Twitter, October 2, 2013
Ties to Antisemites and Extremists
Over the years, Gaetz has aligned himself with several extremist figures, a shocking number of whom are Holocaust deniers or antisemites that he has appeared alongside at conferences and invited to official events.
In 2018, Gaetz invited Holocaust denier and white nationalist Chuck Johnson, a far-right internet influencer, to the State of the Union address. Johnson also co-founded a fundraising website called WeSearchr, which allowed neo-Nazis like Andrew Anglin to raise funds. Despite finding out about Johnson’s hateful views, Gaetz still decided to host Johnson at the State of Union.
In 2019, Gaetz hired Darren Beattie as a special advisor for speechwriting. In 2018, Beattie had been forced out of a White House position after he spoke at the 2016 H.L. Mencken Club Conference, which was attended by several white nationalists, including Peter Brimelow, John Derbyshire, and Robert Weissberg. A Trump aide said in 2018 that Beattie was let go “over ties to a white nationalist event.” (The White House later brought Beattie back in 2020, appointing him to a new role to help oversee memorials commemorating the Holocaust, a move that was widely condemned.)
In 2022, Gaetz was invited to speak at AFPAC 2022, a conference organized by Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes’ America First organization. Fuentes and his group of young followers, dubbed “Groypers,” are a transnational antisemitic and white nationalist movement composed of racists, Holocaust deniers, and conspiracy theorists, all connected through their shared hatred for Jews. Gaetz spoke alongside Fuentes, antisemite Vincent James Foxx, who was present at the January 6 Capitol insurrection, Stew Peters, an antisemitic conspiracy theorist who posts calls for political violence online, and Joe Arpaio, a rabidly anti-immigrant former Arizona sheriff who was found guilty of defying a court order not to racially profile Latinos during patrols in 2011.
In 2023, Gaetz spoke at “AmFest,” hosted by Turning Point USA (TPUSA), an organization run by far-right activist Charlie Kirk and described as the “MAGA youth wing” of the conservative movement. Gaetz spoke alongside extremists like Candace Owens, who once called Judaism a “pedophile-centric religion,” amongst several other antisemitic comments, including Holocaust denial. Owens attempted, and failed to obtain a visa to enter Australia while planning a speaking tour in the country in October 2024. Australia’s Immigration Minister, Tony Burke, said “Australia’s national interest is best served when Candace Owens is somewhere else.”
Roger Stone, former political advisor to Trump and Richard Nixon, was another speaker at the conference who once enlisted the white supremacist Proud Boys as his personal security. Prominent election-deniers Mike Lindell and Steve Bannon, who in November 2024 finished serving four months in prison for defying a congressional subpoena, also spoke at the conference. Gaetz previously spoke at TPUSA’s AMP Fest in 2019, which was attended by Tea Party member Amy Kremer, who moderated a Facebook group called “Stop the Steal,” which was quickly deactivated by Facebook after members made threats to kill liberals and called for civil war.
In 2024, Gaetz spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) alongside Tim Ballard, who resigned from his position as head of Operation Underground Railroad, which claimed to combat human trafficking, after sexual assault allegations were made against him. Also speaking was Jack Posobiec, a MAGA influencer who has a history of spreading antisemitism and endorsing the white supremacist 14 words slogan.
MAGA Man
Gaetz is the son of prominent Florida politician Don Gaetz, and was raised in Fort Walton Beach. After graduating from William & Mary Law School, he briefly worked in private practice before running for state representative. He served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2010 until 2016, and received national attention for vigorously defending Florida’s “stand-your-ground law.”
Gaetz sponsored and passed some of the most conservative legislation in Florida’s history. His legislation fined local governments $5 million if they imposed any restrictions on guns, banned insurance policies created through Obamacare from offering abortion coverage, and expedited death row cases so executions could be carried out more quickly. In regards to executions, Gaetz was proud that his legislation helped put Florida on pace to execute seven convicts in 2013, the second-highest yearly total in state history. “Only God can judge, but we sure can set up the meeting,” Gaetz said at the time.
Gaetz’s tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served from 2019 until his nomination for U.S. Attorney General in November 2024, has been driven by his Christian Nationalist views, which center his version of Christianity as the guiding force behind legislation. For example, he sponsored the “Protect Prayers in School Act of 2023.” The bill affirmed the United States as “a nation under God,” ensured the Declaration of Independence as being “blessed by the Supreme Judge of the world,” stipulated that American laws “are derived from Laws of Nature and Nature’s God,” and promised to never “render the United States a secular country.”
Gaetz escalated his rhetoric about the bill, making it clear that his goal was to allow “God’s reach” to extend beyond “the schoolhouse gates,” since the United States’ education policy supposedly “forbids students and faculty from praying while endlessly promoting degenerate LGBT and anti-White propaganda.” Far-right extremists worldwide use the term “anti-white” to imply that efforts at racial equity are aimed at discriminating against white people.
Gaetz has sponsored and co-sponsored bills in the House of Representatives which seek to limit the fundamental rights of certain Americans, particularly women and the LGBTQ+ community, while opposing bills which would expand protections for vulnerable communities. Gaetz opposed the Equality Act in 2021, which defines and includes sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity among the prohibited categories of discrimination. Similarly, he opposed the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022, which was designed to protect same-sex and interracial marriages.
In 2023, Gaetz co-sponsored the “Protect Children’s Innocence Act,” which would make it a Class C felony to provide any gender-affirming care to a minor, entailing a prison sentence of ten to 25 years. In an attack on reproductive rights, he co-sponsored the Heartbeat Protection Act of 2021, which would create a national ban on abortions.
Some of his other bill sponsorships are anti-immigrant, such as the Return Excessive Migrants and Asylees to International Neighbors in Mexico Act of 2024 and the End Birthright Citizenship Fraud Act of 2023, the latter of which would “limit birthright citizenship to certain individuals, whereas currently, nearly all individuals born in the United States are U.S. citizens and U.S. nationals at birth.” The bill aimed to strip the Constitution’s provisions on citizenship.
Rabidly anti-LGBTQ+
His disdain for the LGBTQ+ community and women is painfully obvious. Invited to speak at the TPUSA Student Action Summit 2022, Gaetz targeted women’s reproductive rights through callus and misogynistic attacks against women’s rights activists, saying “Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions? Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.” As recently as the 2024 Republican National Convention, Gaetz nostalgically harkened back to Trump’s first administration, reminiscing about how “We prospered. We were richer. Inflation was low, and there were two genders.” When discussing the National Prayer in Schools Act he introduced, he justified the bill by claiming “more space for prayer for students in schools is probably better than creating more space for, you know, the next pansexual poetry hour in Portland.”
In line with his framing of racial equity policies as “anti-white” is Gaetz’s endorsement of the violently racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, whose believers have been responsible for several mass casualty attacks, including at mosques in New Zealand, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, synagogue, an El Paso Walmart, a Buffalo, N.Y., grocery store, and others. Using invasion language common to the “Great Replacement,” Gaetz has accused President Biden of “aiding and abetting the invasion of our nation by thugs, Islamic extremists and Chinese spies.”
In a 2021 tweet responding to then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s promotion of the conspiracy and the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) condemnation of it, Gaetz said “@TuckerCarlson is CORRECT about Replacement Theory as he explains what is happening to America. The ADL is a racist organization.” He repeated the latter phrase against the ADL again the next year in response to criticism he received for speaking at Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes’ 2022 America First Political Action Conference. Aside from Gaetz’s repeated attacks on the ADL, his criticism of the Antisemitism Awareness Act (AAA) was itself antisemitic. Gaetz opposed the AAA on the basis that it would supposedly label the Bible as antisemitic, since, according to him, “the Bible is clear” that Jews killed Jesus.
While attending court to support Trump in his May 2024, New York hush money trial, Gaetz posted, “Standing back and standing by, Mr. President,” a phrase that is popular among the white supremacist Proud Boys, many of whose leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy for their roles in the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. The phrase “stand back and stand by” was made infamous by Trump in a 2020 campaign debate when he was asked, and refused, to condemn white supremacists. After the question, he named the Proud Boys and asked them to “stand back and stand by.”
Legal Morass
If confirmed, Gaetz would enter the position of Attorney General with a long history of legal troubles. The House Ethics Committee, until Gaetz’s resignation after the election, was investigating him on suspicion of having “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.” In November 2024, it was revealed that a woman testified to the Ethics Committee that Gaetz had sex with a 17 year old. Gaetz’s connection to his close associate, Joel Greenberg, is also notable. Greenberg pleaded guilty to six federal crimes in 2022, including sex trafficking, stalking, wire fraud and identity theft, and was sentenced to 11 years in prison. The DOJ announced in February 2023, that it was not pursuing prosecution in its sex trafficking probe into Gaetz.
Gaetz seems to garner little respect from his peers in the legal field. He earned his law degree from William & Mary Law School in 2007, and in 2021, hundreds of students and alumni from the school signed a petition for Gaetz’s resignation from Congress after he voted against certifying the 2020 election results. An excerpt from the petition letter reads:
“William & Mary Law teaches its students to be citizen lawyers: leaders in our community and passionate advocates for equality and social justice. Rep. Gaetz is the antithesis of a citizen lawyer and he cannot be trusted with the laws of our nation.”
