Is Matt Gaetz ‘an accomplished attorney’? Digging into Trump AG pick's record as a Florida lawyer

Barely a week after winning the presidency, President-elect Donald Trump made his surprise announcement that he would nominate Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., for attorney general

A few hours later, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., praised the pick.

"Everyone who’s served with him will tell you he’s one of the most intelligent members of Congress," Johnson said in remarks to the media Nov. 14. "He’s an accomplished attorney. He’s very concerned about the lawfare that’s been occurring in the Department of Justice under the Biden administration."

The part that caught our ear was that Gaetz was "an accomplished attorney." Gaetz jumped into politics in his late 20s, and his legal résumé includes less than a decade of private practice.

The more standard profile for an incoming attorney general in recent decades is past experience as a judge (such as Merrick Garland, Eric Holder, Michael Mukasey and Alberto Gonzales), a senior federal or state prosecutor (Garland, Jeff Sessions, Loretta Lynch and Janet Reno), a senator (Sessions and John Ashcroft), a governor (Ashcroft and Richard Thornburgh), a White House counsel (Gonzales), a senior Justice Department appointee (Bill Barr), or some combination of these roles. 

We dug into what Gaetz’s career as a young lawyer in the Florida Panhandle entailed.

Gaetz, 42, is best known for his career in politics. At 27, he won a seat in the Florida state House and served from 2010 to 2016. At 34, he advanced to the U.S. House, serving from 2017 until he resigned Nov. 13, shortly before the announcement of his nomination by Trump and days before a House Ethics Committee could have released a report on Gaetz. (He had just won a new two-year term on Election Day.) 

Gaetz became nationally known for his appearances on Fox News, for being investigated by the Justice Department, for controversial comments such as blaming left-wing antifa protesters for the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and for calling abortion-rights supporters "disgusting" and overweight. Gaetz gained additional attention for moving to oust then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in 2023, which led to weeks of voting for a new speaker until Johnson managed to win a majority.

PolitiFact has rated 15 statements by Gaetz since 2011; four rated Half True or better. He made six False claims, including that "1 out of every 5 people that the federal government charges with murder is an illegal alien."

Gaetz also was investigated for sex trafficking by the Justice Department, but he denied wrongdoing and has said the probe ended with no federal charges against him. Separately, the House Ethics Committee has investigated him for years over allegations including sexual misconduct; the fate of that investigation is unclear given that Gaetz has left the House and is no longer under the Ethics Committee’s jurisdiction. 

He earned a law degree from the College of William & Mary in 2007 and was admitted into the Florida Bar in 2008. He worked for the law firm AnchorsGordon (previously known as Keefe, Anchors & Gordon) in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, which is part of the congressional district Gaetz represented.

To gauge the scope of Gaetz’s legal career, we looked through court records for the Florida Bar; Fort Walton Beach’s Okaloosa County and neighboring Walton County; MyFloridaCounty.com; and the legal websites Justia and CourtListener.

Messages left at Gaetz’s former House office, Johnson’s office, AnchorsGordon, and the Trump campaign and transition press office were not returned.

We found that Gaetz argued at least seven cases in his home county on a variety of matters; that he was 2-0 in appellate cases; that he’s been delinquent on his bar dues but is current now; and that he received a critical letter from the bar but was not formally disciplined. He also had more than a dozen traffic-related charges, about half as a teenager and half after he became a lawyer.

From 2009 to 2016, Gaetz argued at least seven cases at the trial level in Okaloosa County. (For part of that time, Gaetz was serving in the Florida House, but working as a lawyer is not unusual for a legislator; Florida has a part-time Legislature, so it’s common for legislators to keep day jobs.)

The seven cases in court records ranged widely in substance. In 2008, Gaetz represented two separate clients for speeding tickets. In 2009, he represented a local restaurant, the Crab Trap, in a workers’ compensation case. That same year, he began representing a local aircraft maintenance company that was pursuing a negligence case. 

Starting in 2009, he represented Okaloosa County in a civil case against the city of Valparaiso. In 2010, Gaetz represented a client over a money dispute of less than $15,000. And in 2016, he represented a client involved in a custody case.

We were unable to access a full list of cases in neighboring Walton County, but he also had at least one more case as the attorney of record in that jurisdiction. 

Gaetz may also have worked on other cases for more senior lawyers at the firm without being noted as an attorney of record. Not everything a lawyer does ends up in court, so Gaetz was likely working on other clients’ legal business outside of court cases during his time with the firm.

"Some junior lawyers do nothing but legal research, so Rep. Gaetz’s record at the firm is not unusual," said Dave Aronberg, the state attorney for Palm Beach County, Florida, and a former Democratic state senator. "I knew Matt in the state legislature, but I never heard anything about his legal career."

In one case, plaintiffs James and Melanie Nipper appealed a trial court ruling barring them from operating a skydiving business on their 290-acre farm in Walton County. With Gaetz as the lead attorney, the appeals court announced that it was overruling the trial court in January 2017, around the time Gaetz was starting in the U.S. House. 

In the other appeals case, Gaetz represented Suzanne Harris, who had sued Walton County for hiring an attorney without the public notification required under Florida’s "sunshine" transparency law. Harris had won at the trial level and the appeals court upheld the decision. The case sprang from the county’s actions during a controversial land purchase.

In 2021, when Gaetz was serving in Congress, The Daily Beast reported he had failed to pay his Florida Bar dues, making him "delinquent" and "not able to practice law in Florida." After the initial version of the article appeared, Gaetz paid his dues and was restored to good standing by the Florida Bar, The Daily Beast reported.

Today, Gaetz remains a "member in good standing" and "eligible to practice law in Florida," according to the bar’s website.

Gaetz has no formal disciplinary record with the Florida Bar, but a committee took him to task in a letter after he seemed to threaten former Trump attorney-turned-critic Michael Cohen before Cohen testified to Congress in 2019.

Gaetz tweeted, "Hey @MichaelCohen212. Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot..."

This drew a complaint to the bar. Gaetz deleted the post and apologized to Cohen and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

The committee concluded that although he didn’t violate the bar’s rules, it did not condone his actions.

"While your conduct in this instance did not warrant formal discipline, the grievance committee believes it was not consistent with the high standards of our profession, and in light of the public nature of your comments, your actions do not reflect favorably on you as a member of The Florida Bar," the committee wrote.

Gaetz told the Pensacola News Journal at the time that he was pleased with the committee’s decision.

"I crossed the line," Gaetz said. "I walked it back and apologized. No rules were broken. I'm very pleased with the result and I'm always grateful when I get advice from my fellow attorneys and constituents."

Half of the 12 times Gaetz was listed as a defendant in Okaloosa County were when he was a teenager. Twice in 2000 he faced speeding charges. In 2001, he faced speeding charges twice, once with the additional charge of failing to obey a traffic control device. In 2001, he also faced one charge of failing to adhere to a seat belt law.

The other six times came after he had passed the bar, from 2008 to 2015. 

The most serious came in 2008, when he faced a DUI charge; it was later dropped. That same year, Gaetz had separate charges for speeding and driving a vehicle in an unsafe condition.

In 2013, he was charged with speeding. In 2014, he was charged with careless driving, and in 2014, he was charged with failure to provide insurance.

Beyond the dropped DUI case, Gaetz typically paid the fine and did not contest the cases. 

Gaetz was also charged with speeding in one Walton County case in 2007.

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.