Even Donald Trump's own inner circle privately feared Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was too compromised to serve as attorney general, Rolling Stone reported Thursday.
This comes after Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration for the role, facing pressure about an unreleased House Ethics Committee report into allegations of child sex trafficking.
Trump is now nominating Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general and Trump's own former impeachment defense lawyer.
The findings of the Ethics Committee, wrote Ryan Bort and Asawin Suebsaeng, were "reportedly damning, and there’s plenty to suggest that what is publicly known about Gaetz’s alleged indiscretions is only the tip of the iceberg. CNN reported on Thursday that Gaetz gave up his bid for attorney general less than an hour after the network informed him they were releasing a report about how he allegedly had multiple sexual encounters with the then-minor."
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Worse still, the report noted, Trump's own allies became concerned that if Gaetz became attorney general, the sheer number of skeletons in his closet would make it easy to blackmail him.
"As one Trump adviser put it, if Gaetz had become attorney general, he would likely would have been 'the single most blackmail-able person to ever serve as attorney general of the United States … and that’s not a risk you want to take when the whole job is going after criminals,'" noted the report.
Despite all of this, the Trump administration is reportedly trying to arrange a secure, lower-level, non-Senate-confirmed role in his administration to slot Gaetz in, as he remains one of Trump's most loyal allies and in the good graces of Trump himself.