Insiders reveal why Trump is dead serious about Matt Gaetz as attorney general

The choice of Matt Gaetz for attorney general is not a stunt, a chance to troll the libs or a ruse to smuggle through other (marginally less) controversial cabinet picks.

Donald Trump is deadly serious about putting the combative politician in charge of his fightback against the people he blames for a witch hunt against him, according to confidants and allies.

Yet the appointment surprised many around Trump and it led to claims that the former president had gone freelance, reaching the decision Wednesday only when Gaetz traveled with him on his plane and while Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, was in a different cabin.

Not so, said a string of insiders familiar with Trump's thinking.

The announcement may have come as a surprise when it dropped on Truth Social, but Trump confidants said his name had long been in the frame as the natural choice to overhaul a justice department blamed for weaponizing the legal system.

'This is where you're going to get the Department of Justice cleaned out,' said John Fredericks, radio host and chair of Trump's Virginia presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020. 

'It's not business as usual ... the lawfare, the weaponization of government, all the things that we have seen and all of us experienced. 

'The Matt Gaetz nomination to the Department of Justice is a clear signal that those days are over, and those people have to pack their bags ASAP and get the hell out of town.'

It meant Trump chose a controversial figure with a reputation as a provocateur, disliked by many of his congressional colleagues and at the center of a House ethics investigation. 

And it meant that Trump picked a loyalist over more qualified lawyers who had been in the mix as contenders.

Possible names included former acting US Attorney General Matt Whitaker, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, and John Ratcliffe, who got the nod as C.I.A. chief.

'He saw his previous AGs turn out to be creatures of the establishment,' said a source familiar with Trump's thinking and his disappointment in first pick Jeff Sessions, who recused himself from investigations into Russian election interference rather than killing them off, and Bill Barr, who refused to back his claims that the 2020 elections were stolen.

'So when he saw the other contenders talking their legal talk he was turned off. Gaetz made clear he was going to blow things up.' 

Gaetz was the subject of a Justice Department investigation into allegations of sex trafficking.

He was never charged, but that probe and his friendship with Joel Greenberg, now serving 11 years in prison after admitting paying women and an underage girl to have sex with him and other men, will almost certainly be at center of a stormy and difficult Senate confirmation process.

There is an alternative. Trump could bypass the usual checks and balances by pushing his appointee through without a vote during a recess.

The process has been used before and is not unconstitutional, but could provoke the ire of senators. 

Either way the attorney general, the country's top law enforcement official, will be one of Trump's most important appointments, central to his plans to carry out mass deportations, pardon Jan. 6 rioters, and seek retribution against political opponents. 

'Gaetz will root out the systemic corruption at DOJ, and return the department to its true mission of fighting crime, and upholding our democracy and Constitution,' Trump wrote on social media when he announced his pick. 

'We must have honesty, integrity, and transparency at DOJ.'

Gaetz traveled aboard Trump's jet with him to Washington, D.C., on Wednesday morning.

And anonymous briefers suggested that he had clinched the gig while chatting to the former president alongside adviser Boris Epshteyn, while Wiles was elsewhere on the plane.

But a string of insiders told DailyMail.com that Gaetz's name had long been among those considered and disputed the idea that Trump had gone rogue by springing a surprise name on Wiles and the rest of his team. 

'Gaetz has had aspirations to be attorney general for years,' said a recent passenger on Trump Force One. 

'This feels like people are briefing against Wiles, trying to undermine her authority and say that she's not really in control as much as she is.'