AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet picks continue to dominate headlines. That includes his controversial pick for attorney general, former Congressman Matt Gaetz. NPR's Ryan Lucas covers the Justice Department. Good morning, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Good morning.
RASCOE: So remind us of the scope and the powers of this top job at Justice.
LUCAS: Right. This is a really big, really important job. The attorney general leads the hundred-thousand-plus people who work for the department. That includes, of course, federal prosecutors but also oversight of the FBI, other agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration. The attorney general is, to put simply, the top law enforcement officer in the country. They're responsible for prosecuting federal crimes, for enforcing civil rights laws, voting rights laws and, at a very fundamental level, for upholding the rule of law.
RASCOE: So update us on the controversy surrounding Matt Gaetz.
LUCAS: Well, there are a lot of reasons that this pick has generated such controversy. There's the fact that Gaetz was the subject of a federal sex trafficking investigation by the Justice Department, the very department that he would lead if he's confirmed by the Senate. Prosecutors ultimately closed that case last year without bringing charges.
But Gaetz was also the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation. That was looking into allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, some other things as well. But that ethics probes - that ethics probe ended when Gaetz resigned from Congress, after Trump picked him to lead the department. It's unclear whether a report from that probe will be made public. Senators who would have to confirm Gaetz - they say they want to see it. There is certainly pressure building for it to be released. But House Speaker Mike Johnson so far says he opposes that.
RASCOE: So is it fair to say that it's Matt Gaetz's character that is at the heart of this criticism about him?
LUCAS: It's certainly a large part of it, yes. There are a lot of questions about his character, his temperament, whether they fit the job of attorney general, and I'll give you an example of that. There's a speech that he made in 2022 at a conservative conference where he talked about women who support abortion rights. Here's a bit of what he said.
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MATT GAETZ: 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.
RASCOE: Calling other people and saying they look like a thumb - that is inflammatory. But, Ryan, what kind of legal credentials does Gaetz have?
LUCAS: Well, that's another issue here. Gaetz is a lawyer, but he's never worked as a prosecutor. He only briefly, in fact, worked as an attorney in Florida. Really, his experience is as a politician, first in Florida's state House, then in Congress. And in his time in politics, he's shown himself to be a partisan brawler, a Trump loyalist, a fierce critic of the Justice Department.
At one point, in fact, he called for the department and the FBI to be defunded if they weren't, as he put it, brought to heel. He's lashed out at the Justice Department over its investigations into Donald Trump. He's accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the department. And that mindset, of course, very much aligns with Trump's own views.
Trump, during the campaign, I'm sure you recall, talked about retribution against his perceived political enemies, including folks at the Justice Department. And so putting a partisan political guy like Gaetz at the helm of the department and its enormous powers is adding to concerns that Trump will follow through with that.
RASCOE: What can you tell us about some of the other - some of Trump's other picks at Justice?
LUCAS: Well, he tapped Todd Blanche to be the deputy attorney general. That's the No. 2 job at the department. Blanche is a former federal prosecutor, went into defense attorney work. Most notably, he worked on Trump's defense in the New York State criminal trial last summer, where Trump, of course, was convicted of 34 felony counts.
RASCOE: And there are others who have also represented Trump, right?
LUCAS: Yes. There's Emil Bove. He was tapped to be Blanche's top lieutenant at the Justice Department. That post doesn't need Senate confirmation, but it is an important job in running the department. He, too, like Blanche, is a former federal prosecutor who later worked on Trump's legal defense team.
And then there's Dean John Sauer. Trump named him to be the solicitor general. Sauer's a former solicitor general of the state of Missouri. He argued several recent Trump cases, including the big one on presidential immunity before the Supreme Court earlier this year.
All three picks have more traditional backgrounds than Gaetz. They could provide some institutional knowledge. But as you noted, all three of these people have one thing in common, and that's that they worked as personal attorneys for Trump on his recent legal cases. And Trump, of course, we know, values loyalty.
RASCOE: NPR's Ryan Lucas. Thank you so much, Ryan.
LUCAS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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