Criticisms have mounted surrounding President-elect Trump naming former Rep. Matt Gaetz as his pick for U.S. attorney general, following nearly four years of actions taken by the Biden administration’s Department of Justice that came under fierce fire from conservatives.
Trump named Gaetz as his pick for attorney general last Wednesday, coming as a surprise to both conservatives and liberals alike. Democrats have notably slammed the choice, citing the House Ethics Committee’s investigation into Gaetz’s alleged sexual misconduct with a minor. Gaetz has long denied any wrongdoing, and the Trump transition team said they are confident the Senate will confirm Gaetz.
‘I know Matt personally. He is a great person. He’s a man of integrity. He also is a brilliant litigator. He served on the House Judiciary Committee for eight years. Anyone who has watched him in those hearings knows that he’s incredibly impressive,’ Karoline Leavitt, the transition team’s spokesperson and Trump’s recently announced pick for press secretary, said on Fox News last week.
‘Like President Trump, Matt Gaetz has been a victim of the weaponized Department of Justice, and one of the promises President Trump made to the American people was to root out the corruption at the DOJ. We have seen this agency turn against the American people because of their political beliefs. Matt Gaetz and President Trump are going to put an end to that, and that’s what the American people want. That’s why they elected him,’ Leavitt added.
The Biden administration’s Department of Justice, led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, has repeatedly come under fire for a series of actions viewed as targeting conservatives.
The DOJ was heavily criticized by parents nationwide in 2021, when Garland issued a memo directing the FBI to use counterterrorism tools related to parents speaking out at school board meetings against transgender-related issues and critical race theory curricula. The memorandum followed the National School Boards Association (NSBA) sending a letter to President Biden, asking that the federal government investigate parents protesting at school board meetings, claiming school officials were facing threats at meetings.
The NSBA requested that parents’ actions should be examined under the Patriot Act as ‘domestic terrorists,’ sparking Garland’s eventual memo, which did not use the phrase ‘domestic terrorist.’
‘After surveying local law enforcement, U.S. Attorney’s offices around the country reported back to Main Justice that there was no legitimate law-enforcement basis for the Attorney General’s directive to use federal law-enforcement and counterterrorism resources to investigate school board-related threats,’ the House Judiciary Committee stated in an interim report on the memo last year.
Garland testified before the Senate last year that the memo ‘was aimed at violence and threats of violence against a whole host of school personnel,’ not parents ‘making complaints to their school board,’ but the memo set off a firestorm of criticism from parents, nonetheless.
‘The premier law enforcement agency of the United States of America, the FBI, was used as a weapon by the DOJ against parents who dared to voice their concerns at the most local level – their school board,’ Moms For Liberty founder Tiffany Justice told Fox News Digital last year.
Other parents sounded off on social media, facetiously asking if they looked like a ‘domestic terrorist,’ and others stating ‘arrest me’ online in response to protesting liberal school policies.
