President-elect Donald Trump’s decision on Wednesday to tap now-former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz to serve as his attorney general raised eyebrows across the political spectrum.

Gaetz, a four-term congressman from Florida’s Panhandle, has little experience as a practicing attorney and has carved out a reputation for himself in both Tallahassee and Washington as a right-wing provocateur who’s highly critical of federal agencies and deeply loyal to Trump.

During his eight years on Capitol Hill, Gaetz has pulled a number of stunts that earned him acclaim among conservatives, as well as the ire of many of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

Here’s a look at some of Gaetz’s most high-profile moments in the U.S. House:

Kevin McCarthy ouster

Gaetz played an outsized role last year in the removal of now-former U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker – a crusade that ultimately won the support of the chamber’s Democratic members and certain rightwing lawmakers, but earned Gaetz the ire of many of his Republican colleagues.

Facing the prospect of a government shutdown, McCarthy, a California Republican, pushed a short-term funding bill through the House with the help of congressional Democrats. That maneuver infuriated Gaetz, who made good on a months-long promise to file a rarely used procedural tool called a motion to vacate to force a vote on McCarthy’s speakership.

The move worked. House Democrats and a small group of Republicans led by Gaetz voted to boot McCarthy from his leadership job, kicking off a weeks-long fight among the chamber’s GOP majority over who should replace him. Republicans eventually elected U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana as McCarthy’s successor, but only after the speaker search exposed deep rifts within the GOP.

Gas mask stunt

In March 2020, as the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic set in across the U.S., Gaetz strutted out onto the House floor wearing a gas mask as lawmakers prepared to vote on a bill that would devote billions of dollars to combating the effects of the rapidly spreading virus.

“Essentially the floor of the Congress is a Petri dish. We all fly into these dirty airports, we touch and selfie everyone we meet, and then we congregate together,” Gaetz said at the time.

Gaetz ultimately voted in favor of the spending package along with 414 of his colleagues, both Republicans and Democrats.

Allegations of witness tampering

Gaetz came under investigation by the House Ethics Committee five years ago after he posted a threatening tweet in which he suggested he would release embarrassing personal information about Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, who was set to testify before Congress.

The since-deleted tweet implied that Cohen had engaged in extramarital affairs.

The tweet set off a firestorm among congressional Democrats, who accused Gaetz of witness tampering ahead of Cohen’s hearing. Gaetz deleted the post and apologized to Cohen. The House Ethics Committee ultimately cleared Gaetz of the witness-tampering allegations, but admonished him for not reflecting “creditably upon the House of Representatives.”

Voted no on a human-trafficking bill

During Trump’s first year in office, lawmakers overwhelmingly approved a measure designed to combat human trafficking – dubbed the Combating Human Trafficking in Commercial Vehicles Act – by directing the Transportation Department to designate an official to coordinate human-trafficking prevention efforts and creating an advisory committee on human trafficking.

The bill passed unanimously in the Senate. Every House member except Gaetz voted in favor of the legislation. In a Facebook Live held after the vote, Gaetz said he wasn’t opposed to fighting human trafficking, but claimed that the measure was an instance of “mission creep” from the federal government.

Gaetz himself later became the subject of a years-long federal sex-trafficking investigation focused on his alleged involvement with a 17-year-old girl. While prosecutors ultimately declined to bring charges, the case has been the subject of a House Ethics Committee probe.

With Gaetz’s resignation from the House on Wednesday, the committee no longer has jurisdiction in the matter.

Getting rid of the EPA

Weeks after being sworn into his first term in Congress, Gaetz introduced a bill that would have abolished the Environmental Protection Agency, the federal watchdog created in 1970.

The text of the legislation was brief, but its intent was clear: “The Environmental Protection Agency shall terminate on December 31, 2018.”

The bill didn’t make it far, winning support from only a handful of ultra-conservative lawmakers. Gaetz later said that he was not opposed to tackling climate change – he even joined the congressional Climate Solutions Caucus – but stood against the existence of a federal environmental regulatory agency.

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