Matt Gaetz has withdrawn his name for consideration as Trump’s Attorney General. He says his confirmation was becoming a “distraction to the critical work” of the Trump transition. Here is Gaetz’s statement below:
Gaetz stepping down is good news for the rule of law. But the former Florida rep was one of the multiple sexual predators in Trump’s cabinet. After he and Vance went begging for votes yesterday, I figured the spineless GOP Senators would confirm Gaetz.
The Venmo receipts must be lit, and the Gaetz congressional report must be beyond bad.
CNN reports that there were additional allegations against him in the ethics report, including the testimony from the alleged underage girl that he had sex with her twice, and with an older woman present. They were about to break that news when Gaetz withdrew. Video above.
Transcript:
I just want to walk our viewers through a tick tock of what happened here earlier today.
We finalized our reporting that the Ethics Committee had been informed of a second sexual encounter between Gaetz and the woman who was just 17 years old at the time this alleged encounter took place.
This is testimony that the alleged underage victim had given to the House Ethics Committee.
We also learned that she had said the same thing consistently in a civil deposition.
At 1130 today, we reached out to the then Attorney General nominee’s team explaining our reporting, giving them the opportunity to weigh in.
They asked us to give them an hour.
We did.
We said we would go at 1230 and about a moment before I was supposed to come on air and share the new reporting from myself and our colleague, Sarah Ferris, is we didn’t get a statement from Gates and said, we got the statement saying that he was withdrawing as the Attorney General pick.
And I just want to reiterate that our new reporting is that the woman who is at the center of these allegations that he had sex with a minor has told the Ethics Committee that when she was just 17, she had not one, but two sexual encounters with Gates at a party in Florida and that that second encounter involved an adult woman.
Now I want to note the former congressman was investigated by the Justice Department for allegations that he had sex with a minor.
He has denied that DOJ did not, did not charge him obviously, but the adult woman who is involved in this, she too has denied that there was any sort of threesome at this party.
But we reached out an hour ago with our new reporting and instead of giving us a response or a comment, a former congressman Matt Gates announced that he is withdrawing as the Attorney General nominee.
UPDATE: Trump weighs in with the kiss of death:
