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President-elect Donald Trump is entering the White House with a Republican trifecta, but he may hit roadblocks to implement his America First agenda — and not because of Democrats. Instead, Republican swamp creatures like Texas Sen. John Cornyn are signaling their intent to sabotage Trump’s cabinet nominees because they threaten the deep state.

Trump tapped former Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz to serve as attorney general. Gaetz, prior to March of 2021, “had been an effective and prominent voice in Congress pushing back against the Washington establishment’s worse impulses and abuses of power,” as my colleague John Daniel Davidson wrote.

Gaetz took on the Democrats headfirst, exposing the deep-state’s lies during the Russia collusion hoax and sounding the alarm on Washington’s excessive (and perhaps unconstitutional) response to the Jan. 6 riot and the weaponized Department of Justice prosecutions targeting everyday Americans caught up in the political crackdown.

But “Gaetz couldn’t very well critique the Department of Justice for their political prosecutions if he was a pariah who everyone thought was a pedophile,” as The Federalist’s Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway wrote.

So, The New York Times published an anonymously sourced piece in 2021 accusing Gaetz of potentially being a child sex trafficker. The story created 18 months of fodder for Democrats before prosecutors decided not to recommend charges for Gaetz, according to yet another anonymous piece this time published by The Washington Post.

But swamp creature Cornyn is dredging up the pedophile hoax to sabotage Trump and Gaetz.

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“I think that there should not be any limitations on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation, including whatever the House Ethics Committee has generated,” Cornyn told reporters.

His comments came just one day before the House Ethics Committee was, according to The Hill, “set to meet Friday to vote on whether to release its findings.”

But why is Cornyn hellbent on getting his hands on a report the committee conveniently never released? (Surely if the findings were so damming that they warrant review by Cornyn the committee would have released them)

Because Cornyn and his cronies are preparing for what Justice Clarence Thomas described as a “high-tech lynching” of any Trump nominee they dislike. Thomas was infamously disparaged by then Sen. Joe Biden’s Judiciary Committee for a series of baseless allegations.

In the end, the only threats to Trump’s America First agenda are Republican establishment figures like Cornyn who are more concerned about protecting their swamp interests than supporting Trump’s vision for change. Cornyn’s crusade against Gaetz is just the latest example of an out-of-touch Republican establishment desperately trying to hold onto power by resurrecting baseless smears to impede key nominations.

Republicans have a choice: fight the swamp or become part of it.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2