Ogebe tears into Trump, says his appointees embroiled in ethics issues
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Human rights lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe has railed against United States President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination as attorney general former Rep Matt Gaetz who was facing ethics investigation by fellow lawmakers which forced him to resign from the House of Representatives last week to pre-empt publication of the report of the probe of alleged sexual abuse of minors and illegal drug use.
Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for defence secretary, also faces allegation of sexual assault against a woman whom he allegedly paid in a settlement.
“No country in the world elects convicts president, not even Nigeria,” Ogebe stressed on Arise TV, lamenting that America is becoming more third world where bad actors face no consequences and are infiltrating into power.
Unlike Nigeria where people ruled first as dictators then came back as democrats, he said, Trump ruled first as a democrat and is coming back as a dictator, which is even worse.
The transcript of the interview, which Ogebe sent to TheNiche, is produced below:
Charles Aniagolu (Arise TV)
First tonight, there’s astonishment in the United States after Donald Trump named the Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz to be his Attorney General, the administration’s chief law officer.
Some critics describe this as the worst cabinet pick in American history, Mr. Gaetz is seen as a divisive figure within the Republican Party.
A Make America Great Again (MAGA) loyalist, he voted to overturn the 2020, election result and spoke out in favor of Donald Trump after his supporters rioted on January 6, 2021.
Correspondents say the Republicans hold a very slim majority in the Senate, and with Mr. Gaetz being such a divisive figure, there are questions being raised about whether he will get the votes needed to get through the Senate.
Matt Gaetz is a firebrand conservative loyalist who has used his seat in Congress to reliably defend Donald Trump during the course of multiple investigations and to echo his claims that the Justice Department is weaponized against him. In fact, Donald Trump has few defenders in Congress.
As reliable as Gaetz has been we’ve seen him time after time lash out at different representatives of the Justice Department whom he perceives as being biased, for some reason, against Donald Trump, and so he now has been selected to lead the same Justice Department that he has repeatedly condemned and railed against.
One of the things that I think is really interesting to note about the appointment announcement, the selection announcement, is the virtues that Trump cites, and chief among those is essentially Gaetz’s loyalty to him and the fact that he has been a defender of him during the course of the Russia investigation, and the fact that he shares, in Trump’s view, Trump’s desire to sort of dismantle elements of the Justice Department and really start fresh.
Matt Gaetz has faced a couple different investigations in recent years arising from the same allegations. The Justice Department examined allegations that he had sexual encounter with an underaged woman, that investigation was closed without any charges, and the House Ethics Committee has separately embarked on investigation that remains pending.
With more on this, I’m joined now on the line from Washington by the US-based Nigerian human rights lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe.
Emmanuel, thank you very much indeed for joining us. And among the many appointments coming up right now, one that is creating quite a lot of headlines is that of Matt Gaetz nominated to be attorney general. Just tell us a bit about him and why he’s generating such controversy.
Ogebe
Well, I have to tell you, Charles, you know, it was just a short while ago we were talking about the situation in Nigeria with the elections, and now we’re talking about the US and the elections. And very frankly, I have to tell you, the feeling right here in Washington right now is that the lunatics are running the asylum.
You know, as your intro said, this fellow is the lead on crazy town when it comes to conspiracy theories and so on and so forth.
One of his colleagues in the White House just said on TV here a few moments ago that he came to the White House once [during Trump’s first tenure], and he held a folder, and she asked him, “Look, what’s in the folder? and it was just a bunch of conspiracy theories. So she said to him, “on no account should you show this to President Trump.”
And she said, of course, he ignored her. He went ahead and showed Trump. And Trump was tweeting, you know, malicious false information for the next week. And so, you know, this goes to his credibility, his character, or lack thereof, and so on and so forth.
But the most troubling thing I have to say, Charles, is the fact that we are seeing a deconstruction of the US government in the sense that this fellow, who was the subject of investigations by the Department of Justice for criminal activity involving minors and who was the subject of ethical violations in the US Congress is now being tipped to be the head of law enforcement, basically the chief law officer of the entire nation.
And nothing could be more disconcerting than having, you know, literally, the fox in charge of the hen house.
Aniagolu
That you couldn’t have said it in a more sort of apt.
I mean, I don’t know if I should say apt, but you know the way that you described it really brought it home to us, a man facing allegations of sexual misconduct, financial impropriety, House of Representatives ethics committee investigation.
Given all this, Emmanuel, is he likely to face quite a difficult confirmation hearing at the Senate?
Ogebe
And so here’s the thing, you know, Charles, we in New America. You know, as I said at the Wilson Center yesterday, we have an America that is beginning to look like the third world.
You know, a short while ago we were concerned about state capture in Nigeria, but what we have right now is state capture in the US, where we have bad actors taking over the system.
One of the people yesterday was saying how well the system works – there’s a peaceful transfer of power. And I’m saying no, the system failed. There’s nowhere in the world where convicted felons are allowed to run and be president of the country.
And we’re seeing the direct consequence of that. A convicted felon is putting a fellow bad actor to gut the Justice Department that tried to prosecute him. Now the question, therefore, is, what will happen in his Senate confirmation?
We saw a situation in elections where there were American Republicans, who had enough conscience, who worked with Trump, who said “this man is not fit to be president”, and refused to vote for and endorse him.
When it comes to Congress and when it comes to Senate confirmation, will we see enough courageous Americans who will decide to put integrity above party loyalty and not confirm this man as attorney general?
Let me point out something that happened last year. Some of us were very upset when President [Bola] Tinubu nominated Bagudu, [Sani] Abacha’s bagman, to be budget minister.
We said, “How can somebody who has money laundering issues, till this day, a money laundry case in the United States, be the budget minister?” and right now, the US is doing exactly the same thing that we thought was embarrassing to Nigeria last year, and so the jury is still out on whether the Republicans will stand up and stop this really erroneous and egregious nomination to the Office of Attorney General of the United States.
Aniagolu
And I imagine that for you, Emmanuel, being a lawyer, I mean, you straddle the legal sort of fence, both in Nigeria and the United States. All this and this appointment must really rub you up the wrong way. Doesn’t it?
Ogebe
The thing about this is that people don’t realize how significantly disruptive this is. Now we have a situation where Donald Trump is awaiting sentencing next week for felonies, and we have a situation where he could potentially be the President of the United States shortly after that, which means that he has the powers to victimize all the jurors who convicted him, to victimize the prosecutors who prosecuted him, to do all manner of havoc and retaliation.
And this is unpalatable and unacceptable. It’s a direct threat to the rule of law in this country and I think that the current attorney general of the United States needs to think long and hard.
They are saying they are going to drop the prosecution against him. That’s a terrible precedent. You cannot send a message that if you’re a criminal, the way out of your crimes is if you win an election.
We’ve seen a situation in Nigeria before where someone you know who was trying to evade prosecution for his crimes ran for governor just to get immunity and protection. The United States is becoming like Nigeria in that respect, where people will now begin to run for office just to evade the consequences of their crimes, and this is unacceptable.
I do not believe that the judge in New York should postpone sentencing because of elections. If anything, the sanctity of your judicial role is that you shouldn’t be swayed by any external factor, including elections. These are very fundamental core principles of fair hearing and judicial ethics.
So it’s a mystery to me why anyone would think that the election should have any impact whatsoever on the sentencing of Trump. If he’s eligible for four years imprisonment, give him his four years. If he comes out and he still has a few months left to be president, so be it. But you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. It’s unacceptable.
Aniagolu
Well, I mean, you talked about the principle of fairness there, Emmanuel. I mean, we don’t want to sort of jump the gun and nail the man to the cross before his time.
I mean, is there a sense that Mr. Trump is planning to use federal American agencies like the Justice Department for personal political retribution, because that’s specifically the problem that many people have with Matt Gaetz, that he’s being used as some sort of wrecking ball to a Justice Department that’s caused Mr. Trump so many problems.
Ogebe
Well, you see, that’s the whole point when Trump says something, sometimes you should believe him. He has already said this is precisely what he will do. He’s taking the wrecking ball to the Department of Justice, but not just the Department of Justice.
He’s already planning to screen out generals who he believes are not loyal to him in the Pentagon and replace them with loyalists. So we’re seeing the grand deconstruction of the late great America. And what is painful here is this, as I said, there is a rule of law. This man is a convict.
An American was trying to troll me that I should focus on cleaning up Nigeria. And I said, “Listen, right now, Nigeria is better than America because the president of Nigeria, at least, was not a convicted criminal. The United States DOJ refused to prosecute him, but Trump was arraigned, and Trump is facing multiple counts, so don’t troll Nigeria. Nigeria is ahead of you”.
But the point here is this, that Trump is ruling this time for Trump, and he’s out for vengeance, and he said precisely what he hopes to do and what has happened. Why I keep saying it is a system failure is that we had an attorney general of the United States who failed to effectively and timeously prosecute this man.
If Trump had been convicted for the document theft case, if he had been convicted for the insurrection, both of those were disqualifiers for his being able to be president again. And so we’re seeing the direct consequence of the failure to act timely and professionally, by the Department of Justice.
Now, on the flip side, the bad actors are coming in. And guess what? They will not fail to act. They will do precisely what they shouldn’t do, which is to gut the system. But one last point with regard to this, let’s be very clear that Trump tried to use his Department of Justice to overturn the last elections. In fact, that’s why you know where some of those charges came from, because he tried to do that before, and he’s going to try and weaponize the Department of Justice again against his opponents.
Aniagolu
Well, let’s move away from briefly, from Gaetz . What about Marco Rubio, who has been named as the new foreign secretary? How is his nomination being received? Briefly?
Ogebe
Yeah. Well, in fairness, to Mark, he’s someone that I’ve had the opportunity to interact with. He does have the foreign relations expertise from his time on that committee in the Senate. So he does have some familiarity with international affairs.
He’s not a complete novice, and he is not a spoiler. So I think of all Trump’s nominations this week, this is probably one of those that you can say, “well, the guy knows his onions.”
The main criticism about him is, I think, twofold.
One is that he obviously has a strong bias for Latin America, being the first Latino to be nominated to that position, but secondly that he has shifted his stance, his principal stance on Ukraine, which was to be supportive of Ukraine as a counterweight to Russia, and is moving his position towards Trump.
So we can already see the corruptive influence of Trump on somebody who ordinarily would have been a competent person to hold that office.
Aniagolu
And I mean, we know now that the Republicans control both houses of Congress. I mean, are you relatively convinced that all of Mr. Trump’s nominees will probably get through, that he has sufficient loyalty in Congress, and you know that things that stand against Matt Gaetz and the likes of Pete Hegseth won’t cause a roadblock.
I mean, does Mr. Trump have that kind of latitude?
Ogebe
Yes. Trump has a mandate in quotes, and he also has a honeymoon period. I argue that we no longer have the Republican Party. We have the party of Trump, and so very arguably, he will be able to go through a lot of things that others ordinarily wouldn’t be able to go through.
And again, I’ll liken this to what happened last year when Tinubu was elected. He was able to push through his cabinet ministers and all of that through the National Assembly.
And the only breaking point for Tinubu in the National Assembly was when he tried to do a war authorization to invade Niger Republic. At that point, all his senators, and everybody who had agreed to nominate Bagudu and others finally said, “No, we’re drawing a line on this – You can’t invade Niger”.
And so for Trump, the question now will be whether Matt Gaetz will be his Niger Republic. Is that the tipping point? Is that the line that you know his party will not cross, because you really, really do not want to have the fox in charge of the hen house, and that’s what it will amount to if someone you know with his dubious background is put in charge of law and order in the United States, that’s just a no no.
Aniagolu
But I mean, of all these people that have turned out to be controversial. I mean, are there people among all these nominees who will challenge Donald Trump and give him that difficult opinion that a president needs to hear sometimes, but might not want to hear? Or they are the all sort of what we call wilting daisies, who simply, go along to get along?
Ogebe
Yeah, so clearly, this was what the concern was about Trump all along, which is a Trump second term has no guardrails compared to first term.
You know, when he was president the first time around, you had a bunch of people who protected the establishments from Trump’s worst excesses. This time around, he’s appointing co-loyalists.
Yesterday at the Wilson Center, I said that, in a sense, Trump is kind of like Buhari, somebody who tried to overthrow a democracy before who came back as a civilian and was elected president.
The difference between Buhari and Trump is, Buhari first came as a dictator and then came back as a Democrat. Now we have Trump, who first came as a Democrat and is returning as a dictator.
Let me say this, there is no one who will be able to stand up to Trump in the second term.
He, first of all, he’s not running for reelection, so he has nothing to fear. Secondly, he has done the worst previously, he survived it. He paid no consequences, so he has no incentive to do anything right anymore.
And so you’re not going to have Mark Kelly. You’re not going to have characters, people of character like Kelly was, a Four Star Marine General who was chief of staff to Trump, and try to manage Trump. There’s no one. There’s no one watching or looking out for America anymore. He’s not going to have a Mike Pence who refused to overturn the Constitution. He literally has a carte blanche to do whatever he wants to America.
Aniagolu
Well, on that rather depressing note, I want to thank you very much indeed, Emmanuel.
We appreciate your analysis and the detail that you’ve gone into, and also to try and make those comparisons with Nigeria, which would make it much, much easier for the global audience to sort of understand.
Ogebe is a human rights lawyer who straddles both American and Nigerian law, and he was talking to me on the line there from Washington.
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