Trump picks Rep. Matt Gaetz to be attorney general
Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that he has chosen Rep. Matt Gaetz as his pick for attorney general, a move that, if he’s confirmed by the Senate, would place a firebrand and one of Trump’s most loyal allies at the head of the Justice Department.
“Matt is a deeply gifted and tenacious attorney, trained at the William & Mary College of Law, who has distinguished himself in Congress through his focus on achieving desperately needed reform at the Department of Justice,” Trump said in his social media post.
Gaetz is an explosive selection by Trump to be the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government, leading the very same executive branch of government that spent years investigating allegations regarding the Florida congressman. Gaetz was informed that the Justice Department would not seek changes just last year. He has long denied any wrongdoing.
Gaetz has been a member of Congress since winning in 2017, riding the MAGA wave that brought Trump to Washington eight years ago. Over the years, Gaetz has become one of Trump’s most ardent, and according to some allies, effective, defenders in Washington while also growing close to Trump.
Gaetz has been down at Trump’s residence in Mar-a-Lago almost every day since Election Day, helping make suggestions and input on other administration selections, sources tell ABC News. Gaetz was also seen traveling with Trump in his motorcade during his visit to Washington on Wednesday.
Notably, Gaetz is very close with Trump’s newly selected chief of staff, Susie Wiles, who also has deep and storied roots in Florida politics.
Beginning in 2019, Gaetz faced a yearslong Justice Department investigation into allegations related to sex trafficking and obstruction of justice. Gaetz has long denied any wrongdoing, and the Justice Department informed Gaetz in 2023 that it was declining to bring charges against him after its investigation.
The investigation into Gaetz stemmed from a probe into the Florida congressman’s one-time friend, former Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg, who was sentenced in 2022 to 11 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to multiple charges, including sex trafficking a minor and introducing the minor to other “adult men.”
Since the Justice Department declined to charge Gaetz following its investigation, the Florida congressman has faced an ongoing probe by the House Ethics Committee regarding the same allegations.
In September, Gaetz released a lengthy statement concerning the ongoing House Ethics probe into his alleged conduct. Gaetz stated that he would no longer voluntarily participate in the probe and included a string of answers seemingly to questions the committee asked the Florida congressman earlier that month.
(WASHINGTON) — With just 36 days until Election Day, the campaign trail is taking a sharp turn toward how Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are responding to the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene and its aftermath.
It’s also one day before the vice presidential debate on Tuesday.
Here’s how the news is developing.
Trump claims Musk will help Helene victims
Standing in front of a destroyed furniture store in Valdosta, Georgia, former President Donald Trump claimed he’s requested help from Elon Musk and will be traveling to North Carolina when conditions clear.
“They don’t have communication. … I just spoke to Elon,” he said. “We want to get Starlink hooked up because they have no communication whatsoever. And Elon will always come through.”
“As you know, our country is in the final weeks of a hard-fought national election. But in a time like this when a crisis hits, when our fellow citizens cry out in need, none of that matters,” Trump said before later suggesting the Biden-Harris administration wasn’t doing enough and falsely claiming that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp couldn’t get ahold of the president.
–ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa, Soorin Kim and Kelsey Walsh
Fact check: Biden and Georgia’s governor have spoken
Trump incorrectly claimed that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and President Joe Biden haven’t been in touch since Hurricane Helene devastated parts of the Southeast, making clear that his already controversial visit to the hard-hit state is a political one.
“I spoke with, for a couple hours, leaders yesterday affected by the hurricane,” Biden said Monday morning. “Governor Kemp of Georgia, Governor Cooper of North Carolina, county officials in the Big Bend region of Florida and other leaders in South Carolina and Tennessee.”
Kemp on Monday acknowledged the call with Biden and said he and Harris had been trying to speak.
–ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett and Molly Nagle
Trump claims Biden and Harris not responding to Georgia disaster
Trump claimed Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is having a hard time getting President Joe Biden on the phone and that the federal government is being unresponsive after Hurricane Helene wrecked the parts of the state.
“The Vice President, she’s out some place campaigning and looking for money,” Trump said after landing in Valdosta, Georgia. “They have to be focused over here.”
Biden approved Kemp’s request for an emergency declaration on Thursday and Harris canceled campaign events Monday to return to Washington for a briefing on the storm and the federal response.
NC leaders ask politicians to stay away
Ahead of his visit to Valdosta, Georgia, Trump posted to Truth Social that he will pay his respects to the community, which was devastated by Hurricane Helene, and bring aid.
Trump added that he was going to stop by damaged communities in North Carolina too, but determined it would be too burdensome on local officials.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and Rep. Chuck Edwards, who represents Asheville, North Carolina, told ABC Contributing Political Correspondent Rachael Bade on Sunday night that photo-ops were not welcome. Cooper even asked President Joe Biden and Harris to please not visit the state right now.
–ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa, Soorin Kim and Kelsey Walsh
New York Times endorses Harris
The New York Times endorsed Harris for president in an editorial published Monday morning, calling her “the only patriotic choice for president” and later “the only choice.”
“As a dedicated public servant who has demonstrated care, competence and an unwavering commitment to the Constitution, Ms. Harris stands alone in this race,” the Times’ editorial board wrote. “She may not be the perfect candidate for every voter, especially those who are frustrated and angry about our government’s failures to fix what’s broken — from our immigration system to public schools to housing costs to gun violence. Yet we urge Americans to contrast Ms. Harris’s record with her opponent’s.”
–ABC News’ Oren Oppenheim
Trump heads to Georgia devastation, Harris cancels campaign events and heads to DC for FEMA briefing
Trump is scheduled to visit Valdosta, Georgia, on Monday amid storm wreckage in the area.
Trump, who has been criticizing Harris for not visiting communities damaged by Hurricane Helene, will receive a briefing on the damage from the hurricane, help distribute relief supplies and deliver campaign remarks at a local furniture store in Valdosta, the campaign announced on Sunday.
Harris, meanwhile, is canceling her campaign events and heading back from Las Vegas to get a briefing at FEMA headquarters in Washington on what her campaign says are the “ongoing impacts of Hurricane Helene and the federal actions being taken to support emergency response and recovery efforts across several states.”
(WASHINGTON) — There is roughly a month left to go in the 2024 presidential race, yet Donald Trump has been ramping up his rhetoric to possibly challenge the outcome.
For months, he’s accused Democrats of cheating, threatened to prosecute election workers and falsely claimed noncitizens are being allowed in the country to cast ballots.
Trump’s also now telling his supporters that if he loses in November, it will be the country’s “last election” — the latest dark comment in his increasingly bleak and dystopian campaign rhetoric.
Asked for comment on his remarks, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told ABC News: “President Trump has always stated we need free and fair elections, or we won’t have a country.”
Here’s a closer look at what Trump has said to supporters on the trail in an apparent effort to sow doubt on the voting process.
Trump falsely accuses Democrats of cheating
“They cheat. That’s all they want to do is cheat. And when you see this, it’s the only way they’re gonna win,” Trump said at a rally in Wisconsin on Oct. 6. “And we can’t let that happen and we can’t let it happen again. We’re going to have no country.”
Trump’s claims that Democrats cheated in the previous election or are doing so in this race are baseless.
Trump’s allegations of fraud in the 2020 election were debunked by his own administration officials, legal challenges failed in the courts and recounts or audits conducted in narrowly-decided swing states all affirmed President Joe Biden’s victory.
In this same vein, he’s also accused Democrats of staging “coup” when Biden dropped out and Harris succeeded him. Harris received 99% of the delegate votes in the Democratic National Committee’s virtual roll call vote after Biden exited the race.
Top officials in key battleground states have said they are confident in the integrity of this election. Many have testified on Capitol Hill or at conferences on the steps they’ve taken to boost voter confidence and make the process more transparent.
The Pennsylvania Department of State, noting it conducts two audits after every election, told ABC News it was “confident in the integrity of county officials and election administrators across the Commonwealth, despite irresponsible statements that are not based in fact or supported by evidence.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger recently reiterated that the state’s elections are “secure.” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said “every valid vote will count, the election will be secure, the results will be accurate. Just like in 2020.”
Trump threatens to prosecute election workers if elected
In a post on his conservative social media site last month, Trump said if he is back in the White House, he will prosecute anyone he deems was involved in “unscrupulous behavior” in the 2024 election.
“It was a Disgrace to our Nation!” he wrote of the 2020 election. “Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again.”
The prosecutions, he said, would extend to lawyers, donors, political operatives and election officials.
Election officials and experts told ABC News that Trump’s comments were “dangerous” given the heightened threat environment for election administrators and poll workers.
Trump falsely claims illegal immigrants are voting en masse
“Our elections are bad,” Trump said during the ABC News presidential debate on Sept. 10. “And a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote. They can’t even speak English. They don’t even know what country they’re in practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote. And that’s why they’re allowing them to come into our country.”
Noncitizen voting in federal elections is already illegal, and recorded instances of undocumented immigrants casting ballots are incredibly rare, according to officials and studies.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has recorded about two-dozen instances where noncitizens were penalized for voting between 2003 and 2023. Over that period of time, the foundation found just 1,500 proven instances of overall voter fraud despite billions of votes being cast.
The Brennan Center, following the 2016 general election, also found noncitizen voting to be virtually nonexistent. The center reported that election officials who oversaw the tabulation of 23.5 million votes across 42 jurisdictions referred only an estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting for further investigation or prosecution — or 0.0001%.
Trump’s mixed messaging on mail-in ballots
Trump’s messaging on mail-in voting has been incredibly mixed. At times, he’s encouraged his supporters to vote by that method and in any other way possible — and voted himself by mail in 2020. Other times, however, he’s pushed a narrative that mail-in ballots are “corrupt” or not as secure.
“The elections are so screwed up. We have to get back in and we have to change it all,” Trump falsely said during a rally in Pennsylvania this past summer. “We want to go to paper ballots. We want to go to same-day voting. We want to go to citizenship papers. And we want to go to voter ID. It’s very simple. We want to get rid of mail-in voting.”
There are a number of safeguards in place to protect the voting process, including mail-in voting, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The agency has set out to combat misinformation about elections on its website.
Trump’s also targeted the U.S. Postal Service, claiming the agency may not be prepared for the election — which prompted significant pushback from Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who flatly said such comments are “wrong.”
More recently, Trump amplified false claims that a significant percentage of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania (considered a key state for both campaigns) were “fraudulent.” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro pushed back that mail ballots hadn’t been sent out yet when Trump made that claim and that the state conducts two audits after each election to ensure results are legitimate.
Trump still won’t accept he lost 2020 election
Trump continues to claim that the 2020 was stolen from him. His running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, the top Republican on Capitol Hill, have also recently declined to say Trump lost that election.
“We won, we won, we did win,” Trump falsely told rallygoers in Michigan on Oct. 3. “It was a rigged election.”
President Biden recently stressed he believed the election would be “free and fair” but voiced worry it would not be “peaceful.” The concern, he said, came from Trump and Vance’s recent comments.
“They haven’t even accepted the outcome of the last election. So, I am concerned about what they’re going to do,” Biden said on Oct. 4.
At times, Trump and members of his campaign have said he will accept the 2024 results so long as it is a free and fair election.
“If it’s a fair and legal and good election, absolutely,” he said during the CNN presidential debate, declining to outrightly say he would accept the outcome.
That didn’t stop him, however, from challenging the 2020 election results despite no evidence of widespread fraud or wrongdoing.
ABC News’ Soorin Kim, Lalee Ibssa and Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.
US Representative (R-FL) Mike Waltz. Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump has asked Florida Republican Rep. Mike Waltz to be his national security adviser, multiple sources told ABC News.
Waltz is a China hawk and is the first Green Beret elected to Congress. He emerged as a key surrogate for Trump, criticizing the Biden-Harris foreign policy record during the presidential campaign.
Waltz, who was elected to the House in 2018, sits on the Intelligence, Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees. He also serves on the House China Task Force with 13 other Republicans.
He has supported aid to Ukraine in the past, but has demanded “conditions,” including increased spending from European allies, additional oversight of funds, and pairing the aid with border security measures.
Waltz, a vocal critic of the Biden administration’s policy towards Ukraine who has visited the country, criticized the White House and allies for not providing Ukraine with more lethal aid — such as MiG fighter planes from Poland — earlier in the conflict.
Before running for elected office, Waltz served in various national security policy roles in the George W. Bush administration in the Pentagon and White House. He retired as a colonel after serving 27 years in the Army and the National Guard.
