Matt Gaetz announced today that he has withdrawn his name from consideration to be the next attorney general of the United States. It seemed his nomination had a minor problem.

Sorry, but it's almost impossible not to treat the whole sordid story as a joke. Gaetz was a completely laughable candidate from the start, so it's hard not to have a few final laughs as he exits. After all, the nomination of Gaetz didn't even last a full Scaramucci!

Kidding aside, I do have to wonder whether this was the plan all along. From the start, there was speculation that this was all very conveniently timed to allow Gaetz to escape what is reportedly a very damning report from the House Ethics Committee being made public. If Gaetz hadn't been nominated, this report likely would have been released last Friday. Gaetz reportedly has plans to run for Florida governor in 2026, and it would be easier for him to do so if the report stays buried.

Immediately after he was nominated, Gaetz resigned his House seat. This is unusual -- most politicians would have held onto a House seat until they were fully confirmed by the Senate. But after Gaetz resigned, he was no longer a sitting House member -- and thus the Ethics Committee had no jurisdiction over him any more. So they would have no need to release the conclusions of their investigation into Gaetz. The timing of it all seemed more than a little fishy, in other words.

Donald Trump reportedly was talked into nominating Gaetz during a plane ride the two took together last week. It is entirely plausible that Gaetz laid the whole plan out to Trump and got Trump to go along with it. "Nominate me, I'll resign from the House, the report will be buried, then I will withdraw my name and you can nominate the person you really want in there -- and I'll go replace Ron DeSantis!" That's the sort of thing Trump might find amusing, you've got to admit.

Gaetz raised his profile in the MAGA universe with the nomination, but he drew all kinds of scrutiny in the process. He may not care -- these days absolutely nothing seems to be an automatic disqualification for any ambitious Republican politician. And he certainly was the center of attention for a whole week.

So what happens now? It's unclear, at this point. Gaetz has a number of paths he could choose to take right now. The first would be unprecedented, and it's unclear whether it'd even be legal or not: Gaetz could decide to just go back to the House. He did resign his seat, but he also was re-elected to that seat in the recent election. In his resignation letter he stated: "I do not intend to take the oath of office for the same office in the 119th Congress," but he could always try to take that back. Whether he could get away with such an audacious move would be up to his fellow Republicans, both in his home state and in the House. Would they allow him to retake his seat or would they push back on the idea? At this point, that is unknown -- but he could always try.

There's a second possibility some have suggested, but it wouldn't entirely be up to Gaetz. Marco Rubio is going to become secretary of State, which will leave a Senate vacancy for the Florida governor to fill -- so Gaetz could try to talk DeSantis into naming him to Rubio's seat. There's already some jockeying going on by some Florida Republicans for the seat, but the decision is entirely up to DeSantis. I consider this one to be a longshot, though, since I think it's pretty farfetched to think DeSantis would do so -- even if Trump pressured him to.

The third possibility is the one people suspected from the start -- Gaetz goes back to Florida and immediately begins his 2026 gubernatorial campaign. He's certainly checked off the "name recognition" box already, right? And DeSantis is term-limited, so he can't run again. Whether Florida voters would elect him is an open question, but Gaetz certainly could try to convince them.

The fourth option is that Gaetz retires from being a politician and perhaps takes some cushy rightwing media job (or just retires quietly to Florida). Gaetz could just fade away from the political scene, or comment on it from the sidelines.

Now that Gaetz has withdrawn his name from consideration for the nation's top legal official, it is doubtful the public will ever see that Ethics Committee report. If his nomination had gone forward, some Senate Republicans likely would have either demanded to see it or just called all the witnesses in to testify in his confirmation hearing. At least four GOP senators were already saying they were going to vote against Gaetz, so it was really just a question of whether or not they aired his dirty laundry in public before ultimately turning him down.

Gaetz was doomed to fail, that much seems certain. What he does next is anyone's guess, but the only other thing that seems certain right now is that the title of "Sleaziest House Sleazebag" will now be open. This dishonor was bestowed on Gaetz after Madison Cawthorn (remember him?) lost his bid for re-election, but now it will be wide open once again. There is no shortage of candidates for the title among the Republican ranks, so it will be interesting to see who emerges as the most embarrassing sleazebag moving forward.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant