Matt Gaetz, member of the U.S. House of Representatives, was nominated for attorney general. Gaetz just resigned from the House so he can pursue the AG role. What happens if the Senate does not confirm Gaetz? Can he return to the House automatically or does there have to be another election?
Bonus question: Generally speaking, what about the other nominees from the House? How are their seats filled if they are confirmed to the Cabinet?
He would have to run in (and win) a special election to return to the House. The other nominees’ seats will also be filled by special election (the rules differ a bit by state, but usually the governor sets the date and has to do so within a specific time frame).
If he truly resigned his seat, then I’d imagine that Florida would have to appoint someone to that vacancy or hold elections for it or whatever Florida law says happens when there’s a vacancy.
I have to admit it’ll be hilarious if his dumb ass resigns his seat, then fails to be confirmed by the Senate.
Do you mean, what happens if the Senate does not confirm Gaetz and both Trump and Gaetz accept that outcome? Because my answer would be “they ignore the Senate and bully their way into having Gaetz take the role without confirmation.”
I doubt that’s going to happen.
I can’t imagine he’d want his seat back, either way. The Ethics report is said to be incredibly damning. From the (presumably supported) rumors, it involves a high school girl and witnesses.
Until January 3rd, it’s kind of weird in that Matt Gaetz has resigned but is still the elected member in the next term, so if it became clear before then that he couldn’t be confirmed, I think he maybe could resume his seat in January by opting not to resign a second time.
If that’s the case, it would seem as though the Senate could still go through with their report on Gaetz.
Governors don’t get to make appointments for House vacancies like they do for Senate ones; the seat just stays open until the special election takes place. (Likely to be soon in all cases – there are states where a governor of the opposing party can slow-walk the special, but New York has pretty strict rules about the timeline, and AFAIK, all of the other nominees are from states with Republican governors who will want the seat filled as soon as possible.)
Agree with @Great_Antibob that Gaetz is unlikely to want his seat back; he did not have to resign before confirmation (most nominees don’t), but in this case, he seems to have been trying to get out in time to squelch a career-killing report.
I’m thinking that Gaetz would probably become acting AG:
Why and How Acting Officials Are Making Senate Confirmation Obsolete
I think you do have to already be a government employee to be named an acting. But I also think there are jobs Trump could throw Gaetz into so he was a government employee. Someone correct me if wrong.
This is not Trump 45. He has become radicalized.
For vacancies in the US House, the Constitution only permits special elections. Unlike in the US Senate, there is no option for an appointment. The schedule is mostly a matter of state law, which often gives the governor wide latitude to decide on the timing. Federal law does require that overseas voters have 45 days to vote in any federal election, and there has to be some time before that for candidates to file, so two months is just about the absolute fastest it can be. But if the nominees are to be chosen in a primary election, that process has to be done twice, so more like four months, and it’s often longer than that for convenience (e.g. to put it on a date where there was already some scheduled election).
I think (but open to correction) that to be named to an acting role in a position that requires Senate confirmation, you have to already hold a position that required Senate confirmation.
So the Assistant Secretary who’s been confirmed by the Senate could be named Acting Secretary, but not someone so far down in the org chart that they didn’t need senate confirmation.
What are the odds that the House ethics report on Gaetz gets into the hands of (a) the Senators and (b) the new s media despite not being officially released?
The odds are auspicious. From the Guardian, just two minutes ago (on a newsticker page, no sense linking to it, because it changes constantly, but I’ll try anyway):
Top Democrat on Senate judiciary committee calls for sharing of ethics report on Gaetz
Dick Durbin, the Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee, has called on the House ethics committee to share its report into Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general who resigned his seat in Congress yesterday.
The judiciary committee is tasked with holding hearings into nominees to lead the justice department, but Gaetz will only come before the body next year, when the GOP takes control of the Senate after winning a majority in last week’s elections.
In a statement, Durbin said:
In light of Donald Trump’s selection of former congressman Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general, I am calling on the House Ethics Committee to preserve and share their report and all relevant documentation on Mr. Gaetz with the Senate Judiciary Committee. The sequence and timing of Mr. Gaetz’s resignation from the House raises serious questions about the contents of the House Ethics Committee report. We cannot allow this valuable information from a bipartisan investigation to be hidden from the American people. Make no mistake: this information could be relevant to the question of Mr. Gaetz’s confirmation as the next attorney general of the United States and our constitutional responsibility of advice and consent.
Gaetz’s resignation from the House yesterday could prevent the ethics committee from releasing its investigation into sexual misconduct and drug use by Gaetz. Yesterday, Punchbowl News reported that it was expected to soon do so, before Gaetz resigned.