JD Vance Courts Senators With Matt Gaetz, Controversial Cabinet Pick

The scene would have been impossible to predict three months ago: a motorcade of black sedans pulling up at the U.S. Senate to deliver JD Vance and Matt Gaetz on a mission to flex their new power.

Mr. Vance had been a junior senator from Ohio when Donald J. Trump chose him to be his running mate over the summer. And Mr. Gaetz, a Florida congressman, inhabited the right-wing fringe, shadowed by allegations of drug use and sex with an underage girl.

On Wednesday, Mr. Vance, now the vice president-elect, returned with considerably more political capital, but also significant questions about whether it was enough to persuade his erstwhile colleagues to confirm Mr. Gaetz as the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

The two men, who have campaigned together before, hunkered down for much of the day in the Strom Thurmond Room in the Capitol, an ornate conference room just steps from the Senate floor, as senators streamed in individually and in pairs.

At the same time, the allegations against Mr. Gaetz were coming into sharper focus. Federal investigators established a trail of payments from Mr. Gaetz to women, including some who testified that Mr. Gaetz hired them for sex, according to a document obtained by The New York Times and a lawyer representing some of the women. He has denied their accounts, and the federal investigation was closed by the Justice Department without any charges against him.

But behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, Mr. Vance and Mr. Gaetz asked senators to keep an open mind. According to people who met with them, they asked the senators to allow Mr. Gaetz to defend himself and hear his plans for overseeing more than 10,000 attorneys in the world’s largest law firm, known as the U.S. Department of Justice.