Reince Priebus said that President-elect Trump made it “very clear” to him that the decision to nominate now-former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) for attorney general was a “big middle finger” to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI.
“He made it very clear to me that the Matt Gaetz pick is not three-dimensional chess to help another nominee get through, that this was what he wanted to have happen,” Priebus, who served as chief of staff in the first Trump administration, said Sunday during a panel discussion on ABC’s “This Week.”
Priebus also said the nomination was a response to those who voted to impeach Trump in his first term.
“He had a list of who those people were, and almost all of them in the House are gone,” Priebus said. “He feels like he has gone to hell and back ten times. So, this is also a big middle finger to the DOJ and the FBI.”
The House Ethics Committee had been investigating Gaetz over allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use. That investigation came to an end after the Florida representative resigned from Congress shortly after the nomination, as the Ethics panel does not have jurisdiction over former members of Congress. However, pressure on the Ethics Committee to release its report has been increasing, with some lawmakers in both parties pushing for its release.
Additionally, Gaetz’s office said early last year that the Justice Department decided not to charge him in a sex-trafficking investigation.
Gaetz has denied the allegations.
Priebus visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida last week – a place the former Republican National Committee chair called “the center of the political universe.”
“The issues with the nominees are not really penetrating there. They’re pushing forward,” he said on Sunday. “They feel like they’ve got a mandate.”
