CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig explained why Donald Trump’s intention to nominate Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general is not only “crazy,” but “dangerous.”
“I wish there was a gentler way to say it, but there’s no use mincing words,” Honig said Wednesday on The Situation Room, before detailing how Gaetz fails to meet the bar when it comes to his qualifications and his independence—“the two fundamental qualities that you need in an attorney general.”
“Matt Gaetz has never worked a day in his life as a prosecutor,” Honig said.
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“He has no idea what it means to stand in a court and say, ‘Representing the United States.’ He has no idea what it means to indict someone and to potentially take their individual liberty away. He’s only practiced law for a few years at the very local level. We’ve had [attorneys general] before who have never been prosecutors, but they’ve all had serious positions in the Justice Department in non-prosecutorial roles. Matt Gaetz is completely unknown to this profession.”
Gaetz, who earned a law degree in 2007 from William & Mary Law School, would later enter private practice at the Florida-based firm Keefe, Anchors & Gordon. Gaetz was first elected to Congress in a special election in April 2010.
As for Gaetz’s “independence,” Honig mentioned how he proudly describes himself as “a tireless defender of President Trump and his vision for the United States.”
“He says he wears that as a badge of honor. He is there to weaponize,” Honig said. “I am not into these doomsday scenarios...but as somebody who spent a career at the Justice Department, this is of grave concern to me.”
Honig later contrasted a potential Gaetz tenure with that of two of Trump’s former attorneys general, Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr.
“What Bill Barr wouldn’t do was use the Department of Justice as an offensive weapon to go after people,” he said, noting that Barr mainly served to defend Trump. “Every indication...is that’s the strategy here.”
Gaetz was also the subject of a federal sex trafficking probe—a point that CNN chief legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid said made him feel “victimized” by the Justice Department and the FBI. Trump, of course, does as well, she noted.
Gaetz denied the accusations and the federal probe resulted in no charges. A House Ethics Committee investigation has shuttered due to Gaetz’s resignation Wednesday.
