WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump will nominate Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., to be the 87th Attorney General of the United States, filling the nation’s top law enforcement position with an ardent supporter who was once a criminal investigated by the department he would oversee.

No charges were filed in the case, which was investigated by the FBI and centered on allegations of sex trafficking. It completed last year. Gaetz later called for the office to be abolished.

“I don’t care if it takes every second of our time and every ounce of energy, either we get this government back on our side or we defund, get rid of, abolish the FBI,” Gaetz. he said last year Conservative Political Action Conference.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters Wednesday night that Gaetz had offered to resign from the House. The letter has not yet gone into effect because it has not been announced on the floor of the House.

“I think out of respect for us, he has issued his letter of resignation effective immediately from Congress,” Johnson told reporters. “That caught us a bit by surprise, but I asked him what the reasoning was and he said, ‘Well, you can’t have too many absences.’

Eventually, a special election will be held to fill Gaetz’s seat, and Johnson said “under Florida state law, there is approximately an eight-week window to select and fill a vacancy.”

Trump’s announcement Wednesday comes at a critical time for Department of Justice and the FBI, which he has relentlessly attacked for years. especially after Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith charged him with four federal felonies in connection with his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. This case, however, is already underway.

Trump has revealed his pick for attorney general on Truth Socialsaying Gaetz will “end gun rule, protect our borders, dismantle criminal organizations, and restore Americans’ severely shattered faith and trust in the Department of Justice.”

Gaetz has a law degree but has never worked as a prosecutor. He briefly practiced law in Florida before entering politics. A longtime Trump loyalist, has repeatedly attacked the Justice Department and the FBI, both of which he would oversee as attorney general if the Republican-led Senate confirms it.

The bipartisan House Ethics Committee is also looking into whether Gaetz engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use. Gaetz told the committee in September that he was no longer cooperating with the commission, which he said had asked him for a list of adult sexual partners over the past seven years.

In a letter to the committee and later to reporters, Gaetz blasted the investigation as “not the business of Congress.”

“They’re nosy, the way they are, and it’s none of their business,” Gaetz told NBC News in late September.

Trump’s selection of Gaetz to succeed Attorney General Merrick Garland has troubled Justice Department prosecutors as well as FBI agents.

Many have been waiting in recent days to see who Trump will pick. Trump’s selection of Gaetz was a surprise, and his name was not among those widely circulated this week as potential nominees.

A former senior FBI official expressed astonishment that Gaetz, who accompanied Trump on his plane back to Florida after his visit to Washington on Wednesday, would oversee the nation’s two most powerful federal law enforcement agencies. The official noted the false conspiracy theories Gaetz has spread about the office.

“I’m still in shock,” the person said. “Honestly, I don’t know what to say.”

DOJ officials called the choice “crazy” and argued that Gaetz was the least qualified candidate in the department’s history.

“It’s laughable,” said a senior Justice Department official, adding that Gaetz “should not be confirmed.”

A former FBI official also said they hoped senators would not confirm Gaetz.

“I just have to hope there are three or four senators who won’t confirm,” the former official said.

If confirmed, the former FBI official predicted that Gaetz will not find the conspiracies he says exist in the bureau.

“They want to realize that things are not as bad as they thought they were,” the person said.

The source went on to express concern for the FBI agents, saying, “They are hard-working people who are trying to do the right thing.”

Asked about the likelihood of Gaetz making it through the Senate confirmation process, a source close to Trump predicted that voters will pressure their senators to vote for him.

“The American people have made it clear that they want President Trump to remake Washington, and Rep. Gaetz is the perfect man to restore the DOJ to greatness,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity to share internal thinking. “Senators will hear from their constituents who support the congressman.”

Trump’s allies have called on the Justice Department to investigate criminally Smith and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Smith led criminal prosecutions against Trump in two federal cases, while James won a $355 million civil verdict against Trump companies.

As attorney general, Gaetz would be in a strong position to determine the course of the Jan. 6 riot cases.

After the riot, Gaetz claimed without evidence that it was antifa, not a pro-Trump mob that believed Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, which attacked the Capitol. One rioter on Jan. 6 — one of the first men to breach the Capitol — even posted about Gaetz’s plan to challenge Electoral College votes, which Gaetz had presented at a Turning Points summit in the U.S. in late 2020.

Another defendant since January 6, Brandon Straka, said he was in “regular” contact with Gaetz during a Twitter Space in early 2023 as Gaetz was driving the outcome of the House speaker’s race.