Laura Barron-Lopez:
Sources that I talked to today close to the transition, said that Matt Gaetz simply did not have the votes.
And the more and more that came out, the details that came out about these sexual assault allegations, sexual abuse allegations, it made his pathway harder, Amna. And the timing of the announcement is notable, because Matt Gaetz announced this a day after meeting with senators on the Hill. He was joined by vice president-elect J.D. Vance.
And he can only lose — he could have only lost three votes in the Senate. And Gaetz never requested a meeting with some of the senators who were most likely to oppose him, like Senator Susan Collins of Maine. But, ultimately, it appeared as though he didn’t have the support at all.
And in a post on TRUTH Social, president-elect Trump thanked Gaetz for trying to get the Senate approval and said that Gaetz “was doing very well, but at the same time did not want to be a distraction for the administration, for which he has much respect.”
Now, that distraction that the president-elect, as well as Gaetz, have talked about is sexual misconduct allegations that also the House Ethics Committee was investigating. And, as a reminder, Amna, two women testified to the House Ethics Committee investigators that Gaetz paid them for sex on multiple occasions beginning in 2017, while he was a congressman.
And one of the women testified that she saw Gaetz having sex with a 17-year-old at a party.
