Tennessee Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty responds to Donald Trump nominating Rep. Matt Gaetz for Attorney General, during an interview Thursday with MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell.
SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI: I don't think it is a serious nomination. We need to have a serious Attorney General, and I'm looking forward to the opportunity to consider somebody that is serious. This one was not on my bingo card.
SEN. SUSAN COLLINS: I was shocked that he has been nominated. If the nomination proceeds, I'm sure there will be an extensive background check by the FBI, public hearings, and a lot of questions.
ANDREA MITCHELL, MSNBC: What is your reaction to Matt Gaetz as Attorney General? Right now, would you support it?
SEN. BILL HAGERTY: It is amazing to me that people are reacting the way they are, as you just showed, because there has been no one better at channeling the American public's frustration with weaponization through the Department of Justice than Matt Gaetz.
You can understand the President's frustration with the DOJ. During his first campaign, they used a fake Clinton dossier to spy on him. Look at what happened in the first Trump administration—this who fake Russiagate hoax. The DOJ investigated him for years over that. In 2020, the DOJ went to Big Tech and had them censor Hunter Biden’s laptop to throw the election to Hunter Biden. And if you think about what just happened, the DOJ and their colleagues around the country brought five different cases against President Biden’s top opponent, President Trump. I can understand his frustration and wanting to put an agent of change in place. I'm not surprised at all.
ANDREA MITCHELL: I don't want to litigate what happened with Donald Trump because there is a lot of evidence to support many of the allegations and the indictments -- Mar-a-Lago, the sloppy intelligence handling--
SEN. BILL HAGERTY: The American people spoke louder than anybody, they gave him the strongest mandate in 50 years in their reaction to all of this.
ANDREA MITCHELL: But a Trump-appointed judge cut that off, and it wasn’t fully vetted, so let’s just acknowledge that -- this was the legal system at work, no question.
SEN. BILL HAGERTY: It was not working; it was weaponized.
ANDREA MITCHELL: Well, what about this nominee? This nominee has a record himself. He has been an outspoken critic, but what about his personal record? There were questions about him. He was on the House floor sharing photos of women, bragging about his sexual exploits, the medication he used, the drugs that he used. The Ethics investigation has not been released yet; it was cut off. It was supposed to be voted on tomorrow, but his resignation has aborted that. What about all of the questions and the allegations against him? His co-conspirator and friend is serving an 11-year jail sentence for sexual trafficking. There was plenty to investigate there.
SEN. BILL HAGERTY: You said it yourself -- these are allegations. It's amazing that you are more upset about allegations than you are about the weaponization of the Department of Justice. The American public has completely lost faith in the DOJ. Think about it. The DOJ sent their agents to spy on parents who go to school board meetings. It is just amazing. As the American public sees this, they see somebody like Matt Gaetz who is willing to stand up and call it all wrong. And President Trump is willing to put somebody in place who will change this.
ANDREA MITCHELL: This is the same Justice Department that indicted and prosecuted Hunter Biden.
SEN. BILL HAGERTY: Think about what this Justice Department did in 2020. They reached out to Big Tech to get information and censor that laptop, with that letter that was put together by Antony Blinken, by the way. If you think about the political dirty tricks that have gone on with the Biden administration, Antony Blinken got 51 so-called intelligence experts to sign a letter saying the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation and the DOJ cooperated with them to basically went out and brokered a deal with Big Tech to censor the laptop. They threw the election to Joe Biden as a result of that. This DOJ has got huge problems that need to be cleaned up.
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