From the archives. Barest of bones. Punchline is at the end.
Edmund Jennings Randolph, 1st Attorney General of The United States, born 1753.
Highlights.
Edmund Jennings Randolph was a Founding Father of the United States, serving as delegate from Virginia at the Constitutional Convention. He went on to serve as the first Attorney General after being appointed by George Washington, and then later as Secretary of State also in the Washington administration.
College of William & Mary, Virginia, studied law with his father John and his uncle Peyton, joined the Virginia bar, and began practicing law in Williamsburg.
Served as an aide-de-camp to General George Washington in 1775.
Elected to the Virginia Convention of 1776. Helped draft the Virginia Constitution. Elected as Virginia's first Attorney General in 1776. Elected Mayor of Williamsburg 1776. Elected as a Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress in 1779 and 1781. Elected Governor of Virginia 1786. Virginia delegate to the Annapolis Convention of 1786. Virginia delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention 1787. Committee on Detail charged with framing the first draft of the Constitution.
1787 - "Virginia Plan" by James Madison and Edmund Randolph proposed to the Constitutional Convention and advocated for separation of powers in national government with three branches - legislative, executive, and judicial.
1789 - Edmund Randolph becomes the 1st US Attorney General.
1791
- First US cabinet meeting, held at George Washington's home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of War Henry Knox, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph attend.
Matthew Louis Gaetz II, would-be 87th Attorney General of The United States, born 1982.
Highlights.
College of William & Mary Law School, Virginia, 2007.
In 2015, Gaetz was one of two members of the Florida House to vote against a Florida bill which criminalized revenge porn due to "personal animosity". He had successfully blocked the bill previously.
On December 19, 2017, in D.C., Gaetz was the only House representative to vote against the Combating Human Trafficking in Commercial Vehicles Act.
Gaetz served as a top campaign adviser to Ron DeSantis during his 2018 Gubernatorial campaign.
In January 2018, Gaetz invited Charles C. Johnson, an alt-right activist and Holocaust denier, to attend President Trump's State of The Union address. Johnson previously raised money for the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer. Gaetz defended Johnson in an interview, saying that Johnson was neither a Holocaust denier nor a white supremacist.
On February 27, 2018, Gaetz voted against the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, which had by then been combined with the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act.
In May 2018, Gaetz was one of 18 House Republicans to vote to nominate President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Gaetz hired Darren Beattie as a speechwriter in April 2019. Beattie had previously been fired as a speechwriter for the Trump Administration after attending a conference associated with white nationalists.
After the 2020 State of The Union, Gaetz filed an ethics complaint against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, arguing that she had committed a "flagrant violation of decorum" and perhaps broken the law by ripping up her copy of President Trump's speech.
In 2020, Florida Republican 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. In December 2024, the House Ethics Committee released a report which found evidence that Gaetz regularly paid for sex—including with a 17-year-old—and abused illegal drugs during his tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives. The committee report did not find sufficient evidence that he had engaged in sex trafficking as defined in federal law.
"The Committee determined there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress,”
On January 7, 2021, after Donald Trump supporters violently broke into the U.S. Capitol, Gaetz blamed ANTIFA for the attack, suggesting that rioters were "masquerading as Trump supporters".
On July 26, 2022, Gaetz voted against the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act.
In March 2023 Gaetz hired Derrick Miller as his military legislative aide. Miller spent eight years in prison after he was convicted of murdering a civilian during his army service in Afghanistan.
On November 13, 2024, President-elect Donald Trump announced he would nominate Gaetz to serve as United States Attorney General.