‘You Don’t Have the Votes’: How Trump Barred the Gaetz

The scandal-plagued, widely hated pick for attorney general was a waste of time and energy.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

DONALD TRUMP GIVETH. And he taketh away.

Eight days after making the snap decision to nominate Matt Gaetz to be the nation’s next attorney general, Trump phoned him Thursday morning to tell him he wouldn’t get confirmed, according to a source briefed on the conversation. The president-elect explained that Republican senators were too troubled by the sex scandals and investigations surrounding Gaetz and that the constant and salacious distractions had doomed him.

“You don’t have the votes,” Trump said, according to the source. “These senators aren’t moving.”

Another source familiar with the conversation between Trump and Gaetz said Gaetz had acknowledged he had between four and six Republican votes against him. He could only lose three.

“The writing was on the wall. Gaetz fell on his sword,” the source said, calling the decision a mutually understood acceptance of political reality.

Gaetz had repeatedly told others he would stay in the hunt for the nomination unless Trump signaled it had become a distraction. That signal came Thursday.

The conversation came after Trump and the former Florida congressman made multiple calls to lawmakers; and after current Ohio Senator and Vice President-elect JD Vance accompanied Gaetz to the Hill to lobby Senate Judiciary Committee members.

Dumping Gaetz constituted a remarkable about face for Trump, who had not only been adamant that Gaetz would be his attorney general but who had floated the possibility of using a recess appointment to install him. And it signified an awareness by Trump that, though he won big, fighting such pointed battles with his own party wasn’t worth the sacrifice of time.

And time is important. Trump is a one-term president whose own staff believes he has fewer than two years to accomplish his big goals of radically reducing illegal immigration and implementing new tariffs to reorient the nation’s taxation, trade, and manufacturing structure.

Despite the daunting obstacles Gaetz faced—including overcoming the anger of his fellow Republicans over his past criticisms of them—he sounded optimistic about his confirmation prospects in recent conversations.

Judiciary committee member Mike Lee (R-Utah), who met with Gaetz on Wednesday, said the ex-congressman sounded upbeat in their conversation.

“Give me a hearing. Give me a chance to make my case,” Gaetz begged, according to Lee, who liked what he heard.

“If people have concerns, I’m confident in my ability to address and refute those in a hearing,” Lee recalled him saying. “But if people were hell-bent on opposing me, that certainly shouldn't mean that I don’t even get a hearing. I should get a hearing, and I’m confident that once I have my hearing, I’ll be able to disabuse people of those concerns.”

Gaetz was so confident in his abilities to press his nomination that he had wanted to speak publicly about the ethics case against him with Sean Hannity on Fox, but Trump advisers dissuaded him from appearing. One Trump adviser noted that the timing of the resignation made it clear who ultimately made the decision to pull the plug. “Matt was in this full force right up until he talked to Trump,” the adviser said.

But Trump appeared unwilling to let the confirmation process drag on. He also, in private, sounded increasingly reluctant to try to test a novel legal theory to essentially force the Senate into recess and appoint Gaetz to the post. Gaetz had helped advise Trump on the strategy and Trump had extracted a promise from incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to potentially allow for recess appointments. But Trump advisers came to the conclusion that, in this case, it would be a needless distraction and ultimately would not have worked.

“Matt is licking his wounds. This hurt. But he knew what he was getting into,” a friend of Gaetz’s said on condition of anonymity.

Gaetz’s nomination was made essentially on the fly, both figuratively and literally—he and Trump were on the president-elect’s ‘Trump Force One’ airplane at the time. Trump made the decision in consultation with billionaire Elon Musk and longtime Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn, a Gaetz’s friend recalled. Trump said he didn’t like any of the other lawyers who applied for the job because they didn’t have the right attitude and approach for the DOJ.

“Those other guys are stiffs,” Trump said. Musk howled in approving laughter.

“Mr. President,” Gaetz said, according to the source, “I might not be confirmable. Those guys hate me.”

But Trump and Gaetz, both of whom have been investigated by the DOJ, decided to try anyway.

Hours later, Gaetz abruptly resigned his Florida congressional seat to preempt the release of a House Ethics Committee report that dovetailed with the federal investigation into whether he sex-trafficked a 17-year-old and paid other adult women for sex at drug-fueled orgies. On Thursday morning, CNN reported that the 17-year-old had two sexual encounters with Gaetz—including one that involved another woman. Prior reports indicated that there was only one such encounter.

Gaetz denied the charges, but lawyers for some of the women began leaking more details of the sordid affair. The scandal became too unbearable for enough senators to ignore.

“While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition,” Gaetz announced at 12:24 p.m. “There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I'll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General. Trump's DOJ must be in place and ready on Day 1.”

That doesn’t mean Gaetz is gone from Congress, however. He won reelection this month, and his resignation does not apply to the next congressional term. That could open the door for him being seated when the next Congress convenes in January, according to a top Florida election lawyer familiar with the thinking of Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has not called a special election for Gaetz’s seat in Florida’s First Congressional District.

“By law,” the source said, “he could walk back into it. It was uncharted territory to have a resignation prospective for an office not yet held.”

Gaetz has also discussed running for Florida governor in 2026. And if he returned to Congress, he would face the same ethics report controversy.

“He was leaving to dodge the ethics report,” the source said. “It’s waiting for him if he goes back.”