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Matt Gaetz, Attorney General of the United States. It’s almost an oxymoron.

This is a crazy choice. This is a dangerous choice. This is a choice that warns of dark intentions.

Let’s be specific. We can evaluate any attorney general candidate on two basic criteria: qualifications and independence.

Gaetz is aggressively unqualified. The man was never a prosecutor. He has no idea what it means to stand up in court and represent the United States. He has no idea what it means to investigate, indict and convict another human being. He has never been able to deprive another human being of his freedom and has no idea what that feels like. It has no sense of prosecutorial judgment or discretion. That’s not his fault; it just never did the job.

Nor is Gaetz independent of any definition of the term. He is “an outspoken conservative” and “a tireless defender of President Trump.” He has earned nicknames such as “the Trumpiest Congressman in Trump’s Washington” and “the Trumpiest Congressman,” both of which he “considers badges of honor.” No doubt he is proud of all this – each of the preceding quotations in this paragraph are taken verbatim from Gaetz’s own congressional website.

The stake here is unimaginably high. The Attorney General sits above United States Department of Justice. That means he is responsible for more than 115,000 employees, including federal prosecutors, civil attorneys, law enforcement officials. He manages $37 billion annual budget. AG oversees all 94 US Attorney’s offices; separate criminal investigation divisions handling civil rights, national security, and public integrity cases; The Attorney General, who handles all Supreme Court litigation for the federal government; FBI, DEA and ATF; Office of Penitentiaries; and US Marshals. It is a big job that carries unimaginable power.

Regular readers of this column know that I don’t buy doomsday scenarios, including those involving a second Trump term. But the impending nomination of Gaetz as the nation’s top police official is as dark and clear as vestiges get. Gaetz prides himself on attack-dog political tactics, unabashedly defending Trump, and settling scores (or perceived scores) against his political opponents. And there will be precious few railings to test its strength. Republican majorities will run the Senate and (probably) the House, so don’t expect significant congressional oversight. Nor can the judiciary do anything to hold back an investigation, although the courts play a bigger role if (and hopefully not when) this all turns into political indictments.

In 2021, I wrote a book called The man with the axe: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor’s Code and Corrupted the Justice Department. It’s pretty much all there in the title. Barr was a terrible attorney general. But right now, I’d take Barr as AG in half a second. His tenure was defined by dishonesty and political manipulation to protect Trump and his political allies. But Barr at least understood the Justice Department; served as AG in the early 1990s and in other senior DOJ positions. And he had a line he wouldn’t cross. While Barr has unabashedly used her power to defend Trump, she has generally not used the Department as an offensive weapon to go after political opponents — despite Trump’s repeated calls to do so. Gaetz promises to cross that line.

There is a tradition at the Department of Justice that new prosecutors are handed a copy of a legend speaking delivered by Attorney General Robert Jackson in 1940. Jackson spoke of the extraordinary power that prosecutors have over life, liberty, and property. “While the best prosecutor is one of the most beneficial forces in our society, when he acts out of malice or other underlying motives, he is one of the worst,” he told the assembled prosecutors. That rings true today, over 80 years later. Jackson’s speech is often cited as an inspirational text. Now it threatens to become an ominous warning.