WASHINGTON - President-elect Donald Trump on Nov 13 named Matt Gaetz, the firebrand Republican from Florida, as his attorney-general - a stunning and provocative move that puts a fierce partisan in position to execute Trump’s vow to exact retribution on Justice Department officials who prosecuted him.

Mr Gaetz, 42, was himself the subject of a federal sex trafficking investigation that concluded in 2023 when the Biden Justice Department declined to bring charges.

The Trump administration has long signalled its view of the Justice Department’s importance to its priorities, with Vice-President-elect J.D. Vance calling the attorney-general’s job the second-most critical in government.

Trump has complained that his past attorneys-general fell far short of his expectations, setting an ambitious agenda for the Justice Department in his second term and indicating an interest in an appointee receptive to breaking the norm of keeping politics out of the justice system. NYTIMES