Trump’s Matt Gaetz Pick Unnerves an Already Jittery Justice Department and FBI

• Nov. 14, 2024Updated 2:34 p.m. ET

Matt Gaetz, who savaged the Justice Department and the F.B.I. as Donald J. Trump’s off-leash political guard dog, faces an uphill fight to becoming attorney general. But his selection has already achieved one desired effect: intimidating an already-frazzled federal law enforcement work force.

During his campaign, Mr. Trump vowed to exact revenge against officials who prosecuted him. That threat is particularly acute for the F.B.I., which has been in his cross hairs since it opened an investigation into his campaign’s connection to Russia in 2016.

Mr. Gaetz, a former Florida Republican congressman who was the focus of a federal investigation into sex-trafficking allegations, has positioned himself as the right guy for that job, an avenger who will tear down and rebuild a Justice Department that twice indicted Mr. Trump, with the close cooperation of the bureau’s agents.

“People trusted the F.B.I. more when J. Edgar Hoover was running the place than when you are,” Mr. Gaetz told Christopher A. Wray, the bureau’s director, during a testy oversight hearing in 2023, invoking the name of its imperious and secretive founding director. “And the reason is because you don’t give straight answers.”

Whatever the outcome of his nomination, the fact that he was selected at all was intended to send an unmistakable message to the nonpolitical career officials who form the backbone of federal law enforcement: Get in line or get out — and maybe get a lawyer.

All of this has sent a wave of uncertainty throughout Justice Department and F.B.I. headquarters, perhaps unlike anything experienced by the federal law enforcement establishment since Mr. Trump fired James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, in 2017.