President-elect Donald Trump nominated former Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida firebrand who has been investigated by the Justice Department on allegations of sex trafficking and obstruction of justice, to lead the nation's top law enforcement agency as U.S. Attorney General on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump has had few defenders in Congress as reliable as Matt Gaetz, who has thundered at one prosecutor after another for perceived bias against the president-elect and emphatically amplified the Republican's rallying cry that the criminal investigations into him are “witch hunts.”