Trump News Live: Matt Gaetz reveals if he’ll return to Congress… and what he thinks of Pam Bondi

Matt Gaetz said he fell victim to a ‘smear’ campaign that dredged up old and discredited allegations in his first interview since withdrawing his name for consideration as Donald Trump’s attorney general.

He sensationally dropped out on Thursday amid a drip, drip, drip of allegations from a House Ethics Committee probe into allegations that he had sex with an underage girl.

‘If the things [in] the House Ethics report were true, I would be under indictment and probably in a prison cell,’ he told The Charlie Kirk Show, according to clips shared exclusively with DailyMail.com.

‘But of course, they’re false, because when you test them against other records, when you test them against other testimony, it all falls apart very quickly.’

He said he was the victim of a politically motivated campaign because of his key role in forcing out Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker.

And he insisted he could have answered all the allegations during his confirmation hearings but that the process would have dragged on, undermining Trump’s plans to begin his overhaul of government on day one.

The interview will be released at midday Friday.

Matt Gaetz has hailed Pam Bondi, his successor as Donald Trump’s nominee for Attorney General.

Gaetz dropped out on Thursday and was quickly replaced by Bondi.

In a statement on X, Gaetz said:

Pam Bondi is a stellar selection by President Trump for Attorney General. Pam and I worked closely together when she was Florida’s Attorney General and I chaired Criminal Justice in the state house.

She’s a proven litigator, an inspiring leader and a champion for all Americans. She will bring the needed reforms to DOJ.

Donald Trump’s sentencing in the hush money case has been delayed indefinitely and New York Jude Juan Merchan has opened the door for the charges to be thrown out.

It was the latest stunning turnaround in the case, where Trump had been scheduled to be sentenced before the election aft his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying financial records.

That sentencing, which could have brought four years of jail time, was delayed. Now that he is set to take office as the 47th president, Trump’s team wants the case tossed entirely, now that their client, the first former president to be convicted of a crime, is set to take the reins of power.

Underlining the oddities of the case, Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche, who urged the case get tossed, is now being nominated to be the No. 2 official at the Department of Justice.

‘Just as a sitting President is completely immune from any criminal process, so too is President Trump as President-elect,’ wrote lawyer Todd Blanche and lawyer Emil Bove, who is also nominated to a top DOJ post, in a filing to judge Merchan.

The former congressman is shown in a dark suit sitting at a bar with a martini in front of him.

‘Unemployment has never looked so good,’ Ginger said in a post along with the picture.

On Thursday, she sent her husband heartfelt messages of support after he dropped out of contention for Trump’s Cabinet after he was accused of having a threesome with a minor.

By Emily Goodin, senior White House correspondent

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will hold a thank you dinner for their longtime loyalists on the South Lawn of the White House Friday evening.

Aides say it’s a thank you for campaign staff. Longtime loyalists and donors are expected to be on the guest list.

The event will have the trappings of a state dinner but it’s not a country being honored. It’s those who have stuck by Biden during his more than 40 years in public life.

A glass pavilion has been built, similar to those used when foreign leaders visit. The covered space will be needed – rain mixed with snow flurries in the forecast for the evening.

It will also allow the Bidens to invite more people. The state rooms in the White House can only accommodate a few hundred guests. The pavilion can hold several hundred.

One person who won’t be there is Vice President Kamala Harris. She and second gentleman Doug Emhoff are in Hawaii for vacation.

Donald Trump hit his first stumbling block over Cabinet picks with the seemingly forced withdrawal of Matt Gaetz from consideration as attorney general.

But he quickly replaced the sex-scandal embattled former Florida congressman with the Sunshine State’s ex-attorney general Pam Bondi.

There are a slew of other loyal allies who stood by him during his first term and in the four years outside the White House.

He has also nominated former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, who infuriated critics with claims about ‘biolabs’ in Ukraine, to be Director of National Intelligence.

And his choice of military veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth to run the sprawling Defense Department, despite little experience managing anything of that scale and complexity, has come under fire as well, heightened by allegations of a past sex assault.

With that in mind, DailyMail.com has been keeping an up-to-date scorecard of the second Trump administration’s potential Cabinet and West Wing.

Dana White was a quasi-permanent fixture on Donald Trump’s campaign trial as he threw his full support behind the Republican candidate in his bid to seek re-election.

The UFC president, who is close friends with the 78-year-old, has been such an ardent supporter that he even stole the limelight during Trump’s victory celebrations at Mar-a-Lago after beating Kamala Harris at the ballot box.

But now that Trump has sealed his return to the White House, the UFC chief wants nothing to do with the president-elect’s second term – or politics at all.

Donald Trump moved quickly to find a new candidate for attorney general on Thursday, announcing the former Florida A.G. Pam Bondi as his pick to head the nation’s legal system.

‘Pam was a prosecutor for nearly 20 years, where she was very tough on violent criminals, and made the streets safe for Florida Families,’ Trump posted on Truth Social as he made the announcement.

Insiders said the charm offensive went well.

Matt Gaetz spent Wednesday in Washington, D.C., with Vice President-elect J.D. Vance meeting 10 key Republican senators he would need to secure his confirmation as Donald Trump’s controversial attorney general.

‘Feedback from the senators on the meetings was very positive,’ said a source close to Vance.

And a day earlier Trump had made clear he had no plan B if it came to a test of strength. ‘No,’ he told a reporter when asked whether he was reconsidering his choice.

But that all unraveled spectacularly on Thursday, when Gaetz announced he was withdrawing from consideration amid the fallout from a federal sex trafficking investigation.