WASHINGTON — Wisconsin Congressman Derrick Van Orden hasn’t always seen eye-to-eye with Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican who quit Congress just hours after President-elect Donald Trump nominated him to be his Attorney General.
But now, Van Orden said he supports the president’s decision to nominate Gaetz.
“Let's stop all this high school drama and petty infighting,” Van Orden told Spectrum News. “If people don't do what they said they're going to do, we'll talk about it later, but right now, I'm so excited that we have unified government for the first time in a long time, with folks that I share an agenda with.”
Gaetz has the support of other Wisconsin Republicans in the U.S. House too.
“Matt Gaetz is a fire brand,” said Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Glenbeulah.
“He's a very smart man,” said Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau.
Representative Mark Pocan, D-Madison, is calling on the House Ethics Committee to release a potentially damning report on Gaetz. Van Orden and other Republicans say they want to see it too.
The bipartisan committee has spent years investigating sexual misconduct and other allegations against Gatez, who says he’s done nothing wrong.
The decision on whether to confirm Gaetz is up to the Senate. Republicans will control the upper chamber beginning in January, and some senators, including Republicans, also say they want to see the report.
“I think it would be absolutely essential in investigating his background and his qualifications to have access to that full report from the house,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, said in a recent MSNBC interview.
Ron Johnson, Wisconsin’s Republican senator, didn’t say whether he thinks Gaetz will be confirmed.
“We’ll go through that confirmation process, so there’ll be FBI background checks,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, told Newsmax. “I’m sure that ethics report that we keep hearing about will be reviewed. Don’t know if it’ll be made public, but it’ll be a process.”
Trump has also nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist, to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Many public health officials have denounced some of Kennedy’s views as dangerous. Johnson, however, is behind the pick.
“I think Bobby Kennedy will be kind of like the person [who] will be responsible for a healthy America,” Johnson said on Newsmax.
Confirmation hearings will begin after the new Congress is sworn in in early January. That’s when we’ll see who makes it through.