WATCH: Trump nominates controversial figure for AG, accused of embracing antisemitic conspiracy theory

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Matt Gaetz as his nominee for attorney general, putting forward a firebrand who has tussled with Jewish groups, was accused of embracing an antisemitic conspiracy theory and associated with a Holocaust denier, according to JTA.

As attorney general, Gaetz would head the government department responsible for investigating and prosecuting hate crimes, including antisemitism.

In 2018, the Republican Jewish Coalition and the Anti-Defamation League both criticized Gaetz, then in his first term, for inviting a Holocaust denier as his guest at the State of the Union address. The guest, Charles Johnson, had publicly doubted that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust and suggested falsely that only 250,000 had died of illness.

“This organization is deeply troubled by the comments from Charles C. Johnson, and it is incredibly important for the congressman to acknowledge he is a Holocaust denier and has extensive writings that attest to that and that it was wrong to bring him to the State of the Union,” RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks told BuzzFeed at the time.

The ADL also called on Gaetz to repudiate Johnson’s extremist views, writing in a letter to the representative that inviting Johnson was “an insult to the memories of those killed in the Holocaust, to their families, and to the Jewish community.”

Gaetz denied that Johnson was a Holocaust denier. He told BuzzFeed that Johnson “is not a Holocaust denier and he’s not an anti-Semite. He’s a provoker, I should’ve vetted him better before inviting him to the State of the Union, I regret that I didn’t. That’s my fault. I take responsibility for it. But he is not a Holocaust denier.”

By JTA