Matt Gaetz
Matthew Louis Gaetz II known as Matt Gaetz (/ɡeɪts/ GAYTS; born May 7, 1982) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the U.S. representative for Florida’s 1st congressional district from 2017, until his resignation in 2024, and is the current member-elect of the same district to the 118th United States Congress.
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Matt Gaetz
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| United States Attorney General Presumptive Nominee |
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| Assuming office TBD |
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| President | Donald Trump |
| Succeeding | Merrick Garland |
| Member-elect of the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida’s 1st district |
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| Assuming office January 3, 2025 |
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| Succeeding | Matt Gaetz |
| Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida’s 1st district |
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| In office January 3, 2017 – November 13, 2024 |
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| Preceded by | Jeff Miller |
| Succeeded by | Himself |
| Member of the Florida House of Representatives from the 4th district |
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| In office April 13, 2010 – November 8, 2016 |
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| Preceded by | Ray Sansom |
| Succeeded by | Mel Ponder |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Matthew Louis Gaetz II
May 7, 1982 |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse |
Ginger Luckey
(m. 2021) |
| Parent | Don Gaetz (father) |
| Relatives | Palmer Luckey (brother-in-law) |
| Education | Florida State University (BS) College of William & Mary (JD) |
| Signature |  |
His district included all of Escambia, Okaloosa, and Santa Rosa counties, and portions of Walton County. A member of the Republican Party, he is widely regarded as a staunch proponent of far-right politics as well as an ally of president-elect Donald Trump.
The son of prominent Florida politician Don Gaetz and grandson of North Dakota politician Jerry Gaetz, Gaetz was raised in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. After graduating from the William & Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia, he briefly worked in private practice before running for state representative. He served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2010 until 2016, and received national attention for defending Florida’s “stand-your-ground law”. In 2016, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and was re-elected in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024.
Gaetz’s tenure as congressman led to widespread criticism and controversy, with The New York Times noting that he faced accusations of “illicit drug use, sharing inappropriate images and videos on the House floor, misusing state identification records, converting campaign funds for personal use, and accepting impermissible gifts.” In 2020, Gaetz was accused of child sex trafficking and statutory rape. After an investigation, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) decided not to charge him, although Gaetz remained under investigation of the House Ethics Committee up until his resignation. In October 2023, Gaetz filed a motion to vacate which led to the removal of Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Gaetz has endorsed the white nationalist Great Replacement theory. In 2021, he called the Anti-Defamation League a “racist organization” after it condemned Tucker Carlson’s promotion of Great Replacement theory. Gaetz said that Carlson “is correct about Replacement Theory as he explains what is happening to America”. On November 13, 2024, president-elect Donald Trump announced he would nominate Gaetz to serve as United States attorney general. Gaetz resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives shortly after the announcement. His nomination led to alarm and negative reception from Senate Republicans.
Early life and career
Matt Gaetz was born on May 7, 1982, in Hollywood, Florida, to Victoria (née Quertermous) and Don Gaetz, who later became a prominent local politician.
He grew up near Fort Walton Beach, and graduated from Niceville High School. He graduated from Florida State University in 2003 with a Bachelor of Science in interdisciplinary sciences, and from the William & Mary Law School in 2007 with a Juris Doctor. Gaetz was admitted to the Florida Bar on February 6, 2008.
Gaetz’s father represented parts of northwest Florida as a member of the Florida State Senate from 2006 to 2016, and was Senate president from 2012 to 2014. Gaetz’s grandfather, Jerry Gaetz, was the mayor of Rugby, North Dakota, and a candidate for lieutenant governor of North Dakota at the 1964 North Dakota Republican Party state convention, where he died of a heart attack.
After graduating from William & Mary Law School, Gaetz worked at the law firm Keefe, Anchors & Gordon (now AnchorsGordon) in Fort Walton Beach. In October 2021, the Florida bar suspended Gaetz from practicing law due to unpaid fees. He was reinstated after the $265 fee was paid.
Personal life
In June 2020, following an argument with then-Representative Cedric Richmond, Gaetz said he had been living with a 19-year-old immigrant from Cuba, Nestor Galbán, since Galbán was 12, and considered Galbán his son. He later clarified that Galbán is the brother of Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend and that Galbán spends time with Galbán’s sister, Gaetz’s family, and Gaetz. The two are not related genetically or legally. Gaetz said, “Our relationship as a family is defined by our love for each other, not by any paperwork.” In 2016, he called Galbán a “local student”; in 2017, he called Galbán “my helper”.
In December 2020, Gaetz announced his engagement to his girlfriend, Ginger Luckey, the sister of Oculus VR founder and major Republican donor Palmer Luckey. They married in August 2021. Gaetz is a Baptist.
Entry into politics
After working for several years at a law firm in northwest Florida, Gaetz made his first foray into politics in 2010 when, at age 27, he was elected to the Florida House of Representatives. He won and ran again, unopposed, in 2012 and 2014.
During his time in the legislature, he sponsored a bill to accelerate the executions of inmates on Florida’s death row and pushed to end a requirement that gasoline suppliers provide ethanol-blended fuel. He was also one of only two legislators who opposed a bill criminalizing revenge porn. The bill’s sponsor said that Gaetz’s position was that former lovers should be able to use photos however they want.
Meanwhile, he developed a reputation in the statehouse for partying (“I’m a legislator, not a monk,” he once joked), for his aggressiveness in committee hearings, and for his lively presence on the social media platform Twitter (now X). In 2013 The Miami Herald described his account as “part commentary, part GOP and FSU fanboy, and part insult comic.”
Representative Gaetz
In 2016 Gaetz ran to represent Florida’s 1st congressional district, which encompasses Pensacola and the surrounding area, in the U.S. House of Representatives, after the incumbent, Jeff Miller, announced that he would not seek reelection. Gaetz won a seven-way primary and then defeated a Democratic opponent that November. In the House, he has staked out a number of far-right positions. He has opposed sanctuary cities (in line with his claim on the campaign trail that undocumented immigrants were “sucking us dry”), gun restrictions, and abortion and the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act.
Gaetz has long been a staunch supporter of Donald Trump; in 2018 GQ called him “the Trumpiest Congressman in Trump’s Washington.” However, he has occasionally partnered with Democrats, including to promote the legalization of marijuana, and he is an ardent defender of animal rights. But more than his legislative record, Gaetz has drawn attention for his incendiary actions and rhetoric. He has identified himself as an “admirer” of his party’s ultraconservative Freedom Caucus.
Controversy
In 2018 he brought a right-wing activist who had questioned whether six million Jews actually died in the Holocaust to the State of the Union address. In a 2019 hearing about gun control, he claimed that a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border would save more lives than the policies in question, and, when two fathers whose children were murdered in the Parkland, Florida, school shooting objected, he tried to have them thrown out. That same year Gaetz led a group of roughly two dozen House members in storming a closed-door deposition of a Defense Department official, during the course of Trump’s first impeachment inquiry. The Capitol Police were consulted when they refused to leave. “It was closest thing I’ve seen around here to mass civil unrest as a member of Congress,” one person in the room told CNN. And after the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Gaetz blamed antifa, saying that its members had marched on the building while “masquerading as Trump supporters.”
In 2021 the Justice Department investigated accusations that Gaetz had had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and had paid for the teenager to travel with him. The Daily Beast reported that one of Gaetz’s associates affirmed this in a confession letter. The associate also said that Gaetz had paid for sex with other women, according to the website. By February 2023, the investigation had been dropped. Prosecutors said they were concerned about the credibility of two key witnesses.
Several months later, the House Committee on Ethics reopened a separate investigation into accusations about Gaetz’s sexual misconduct and other criminal behavior, which it had suspended while the Justice Department was conducting its probe. Throughout the turmoil, Gaetz resisted calls, including some made by fellow Republican legislators, for him to resign.
The congressman versus the speaker
In the fall of 2023, Matt Gaetz and Freedom Caucus members clashed with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, as McCarthy tried to work with Democrats to pass legislation to continue funding the government. Gaetz ultimately led a successful charge to oust McCarthy as speaker—marking the first time a speaker had ever been voted out. McCarthy claimed Gaetz was acting on a personal vendetta because McCarthy had not quashed the investigation by the House Ethics Committee. Gaetz’s opposition to McCarthy put him at odds with another firebrand and conservative backer of Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
“Has there been a politician both as broadly despised, including in his own party, and yet as improbably effective as Matt Gaetz?” Benjamin Wallace-Wells asked in The New Yorker following McCarthy’s ouster. He pointed out that Gaetz had carried out his plan with the support of only seven other House Republicans out of 221. Gaetz was later asked on NBC’s Meet the Press whether his actions would seem worth it if he wound up losing his legislative seat as a result. “Absolutely,” Gaetz replied. “Look, I am here to fight for my constituents. And I’m here to ensure that America is not on a path to financial ruin.”
In 2024 Gaetz continued his support for Trump and the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement. When Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky announced his plans to step down from his leadership position after the November elections, Gaetz took to social media to announce: “We’ve now 86’d: McCarthy, McDaniel, McConnell,” in a reference that included Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who had announced she was stepping down. “Better days are ahead for the Republican Party.”
