Welcome to The Beat, everyone. I'm Ari Melburgh, and we continue to follow this breaking news.

Matt Gates drops out. Donald Trump's beleaguered choice for Attorney General formally withdrawing his

name from consideration today, which is another way of reporting that the Trump transition has lost

its first big clash. I was just discussing this if you've been watching with our colleague

Nicole Wallace. I've got some excellent guests standing by. This is a big and important story,

and I'm going to give you a couple updates before we turn to our first guest. This was just eight

days after the big and controversial announcement was made by President-elect Trump.

Some noting that in the Trump era, you can measure things many ways. This was not even a

full scaramucci, the aide who made it to the White House for just 11 days. That was a non-Senate

confirmed position. So there was not this kind of vetting process. Gates, in his announcement,

says he did not want a, quote, protracted Washington scuffle. He also, we can report, withdrew his name today

immediately after news was breaking of another alleged sexual encounter with a 17-year-old that

was alleged to have occurred in 2017. As we have reported previously, Gates has denied

all wrongdoing in the matters under investigation, but it was the latest in a series

of accusations and recriminations. This here was within about a day ago. So this was in the last

24 hours of Washington, what looks like a scrum, a media circus, a pressure. Yes, it's still

earlier in the transition. Yes, some people have pulled out of Washington and pulled away from

the political and media process,

but the process grinds on. And you could see, for example, those hardworking reporters from many

different outlets, trying to get straight answers from House Republicans who were basically on the record

saying they wanted to cover up their own report, which even by the standards of Washington is unusual,

that they were doing an ethics investigation of a colleague, now a former colleague, that they then wanted to chuck.

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