Former Rep. Matt Gaetz's nomination as attorney general appears to be facing an uphill path for confirmation, even with Republicans assuming control of the Senate next year, some GOP senators are warning.
Gaetz will need 50 votes for confirmation, meaning that his nomination can be sunk if four Republicans vote against him, reports The Hill.
GOP moderate Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, are expressing strong reservations about confirming Gaetz's nomination and other GOP sources agree that his nomination is facing serious trouble,
"I don’t think it's a serious nomination for attorney general," Murkowski said Thursday. "We need to have a serious attorney general."
Collins said Gaetz's nomination "shocked" her and that she is sure there will be "many, many questions" raised at his confirmation hearing if it goes forward.
Other Republican senators are backing a call from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., demanding that the House Ethics Committee releases the findings it reached in its investigation of the former lawmaker on allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, said Thursday that the committee should be provided with the findings, and if Ethics found there was evidence of a crime, "it would certainly be relevant."
"I’m not going to speculate what the report shows, but that would certainly be a concern," he said.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., who was elected Wednesday to become Senate majority leader next year, told reporters this week that he will not know if Gaetz will have enough votes for confirmation until the Senate receives the nomination formally and starts reviewing it.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., a Judiciary Committee member, said Gaetz will have "some work cut out for him" to be confirmed.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said his Republican colleagues' jaws dropped "to the floor" when Gaetz's nomination became public, and told CNN that they will be "faced with a very difficult decision."
"Many of them know Matt Gaetz," Murphy said. "They know the investigations he’s been under. Matt Gaetz is being nominated because he will be and is today a political agent of Donald Trump. The ramifications of this pick, this particular pick, are stunning."
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been in a feud with Gaetz, who pushed for McCarthy's ouster last year, and told Bloomberg that he "won't get confirmed" as attorney general.
Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., told The Hill that McCarthy is "pretty right" with his prediction about Gaetz.
However, he added that Trump is a "savvy guy" and may have strategic reasons for picking Gaetz that Senate Republicans and political pundits can't understand yet.
Cramer also said that Gaetz is "more than capable of litigating the case for why the [Department of Justice] should be turned on its head," but the federal sex trafficking investigation that he faced leaves him as a nominee who "just doesn't have the moral authority" to change the department.
"I’m glad I’m not on Judiciary, put it that way," said Cramer, referring to the expected tough fight on that committee about Gaetz.
Other GOP Senate sources speculated that Gaetz's nomination may have been intended to draw scrutiny away from Trump's other controversial nominations, including Fox News anchor Pete Hegseth to head Defense; former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, to serve as director of national intelligence; and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.