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Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Wednesday warned that President-elect Donald Trump nominating former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to be his attorney general will be a “red alert moment for American democracy.”
“Matt Gaetz is being nominated for one reason and one reason only,” Murphy told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“He will implement Donald Trump’s transition of the Department of Justice from an agency that stands up for all of us to an agency that is simply an arm of the White House designed to persecute and prosecute Trump’s political enemies.”
Trump, who made over 100 threats to his political foes on the campaign trail, declared on Wednesday that Gaetz will “restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department” while describing him as a “Champion for the Constitution and the Rule of Law.”
Gaetz resigned from Congress following the announcement on Wednesday.
The president-elect’s nomination of Gaetz, once the target of a sex trafficking investigation by the Justice Department, left several GOP lawmakers stunned.
“You could literally hear the jaws dropping to the floor of Republican senators who are now going to be in a position to stand up to Donald Trump in a way that they have been unwilling to,” said Murphy, who described walking off the Senate floor to the news of the nomination.
He called Gaetz “dangerously unqualified” but “that’s not the worst of it.”
Gaetz, he noted, has been a “chief defender” of Trump’s “assault on democracy” and pointed to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021 attack.
Gaetz has floated conspiracy theories about “antifa” being behind the Capitol riot, pushed for rioters to face lighter sentences and was one of three dozen House Republicans to vote against awarding officers for defending the Capitol during the attack.
Murphy added that Gaetz has called to abolish law enforcement agencies if they don’t “get in line” with right-wing priorities.
Murphy told Tapper that Trump’s announcement is “stunning” in some ways while also “not surprising” in others.
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“Trump told us during the campaign that he was going to use the White House to go after people who politically opposed him and it seems this pick for the head of the Department of Justice is very much in line with the promises he made during the campaign,” he said.
H/T: Mediaite
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