Trump’s controversial Cabinet picks raise questions about lower ethical standards

President-elect Donald Trump has shown no qualms about making or retaining picks for his cabinet, regardless of the baggage they carry, including accusations of sexual assault.

It’s a far cry from the days when smaller scandals, such as the use of marijuana or the hiring of an undocumented worker as a nanny, sunk the candidates running for presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, experts said.

“We’re in untested waters,” Jonathan Hanson, a professor of statistics at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, told ABC News.

Hanson and other experts said the public has been less concerned about certain indiscretions, such as minor and one-time drug and alcohol arrests. Ronald Reagan’s Supreme Court nominee Justice Douglas Ginsburg’s admission that he smoked pot when he was younger would never have had much negative repercussions today, Hanson said.

Bill Clinton’s two picks for attorney general — Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood — both left amid questions about the illegal hiring of immigrants in the country as babysitters. Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle — Clinton’s pick to be secretary of health and human services — had to bow out after learning he didn’t pay taxes on his car and driver.

“It’s true that people’s standards have changed, but the question is, when does it really cross a line?” Hanson said.

Trump’s choices take the debate to a new level, he argued.

Trump himself campaigned in the shadow of his hush money felony conviction and after a Manhattan civil jury found E. Jean Carroll guilty of sexual assault. Trump has repeatedly denied the allegations in both cases.

Before his appointment, Matt Gaetz was already a controversial figure, being investigated by the House Ethics Committee for alleged sexual abuse and illegal drug use.

The former Florida congressman has denied all allegations and the Justice Department’s investigation ended without charges and the House Ethics Committee ended when Gaetz resigned his seat.

To become head of the Pentagon, Trump, Pete Hegseth, paid a woman who alleged that he sexually assaulted her in 2017, who denied it and was not charged.

The New York Times posted an email On Friday, Hegseth’s mother, Penelope Hegseth, sent him in 2018 in the context of his divorce from his second wife, saying that he had regularly abused the woman for years.

“I have no respect for men who lie, cheat, sleep around and use women for their own power and ego,” she wrote in the post, according to the Times.

He later said he apologized and said he sent the email in anger, adding, “I know my son. He’s a good father, husband.”

The New Yorker reported that Hegseth was reportedly forced to resign from two veterans’ nonprofit groups he ran following “serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual misconduct and misconduct.” The magazine referred to “a trace document, which is confirmed by the accounts of former colleagues”.

ABC News has not independently confirmed the news from The New Yorker or The New York Times.

Hegseth’s attorney, Tim Parlatore, called the New Yorker piece, “outrageous claims … by a petty, jealous former associate,” responding to the magazine.

Jason Miller, a senior Trump adviser, told CNN on Tuesday that The New Yorker’s allegations about Hegseth are “distractions and gossip,” and said Trump’s transition has no concerns about his choice to lead the Defense Department.

Hegseth said the 2017 sexual assault allegation was “thoroughly investigated” and “completely cleared,” although a police report did not say so. He has avoided talking about the allegations while dating with Republican members of parliament for help in the last two weeks.

Hanson noted that Trump nominated Gaetz and Hegseth after a majority of voters returned him to the White House despite his criminal charges, including trying to overturn the 2020 election. Trump’s sentencing in New York has been delayed indefinitely while the federal lawsuit is dismissed.

That, along with Republican control of Congress, Hanson said, could push Trump to press ahead with his controversial picks.

“It raises the question of whether we’re holding people to different standards than before,” he said. “There’s been this idea of ​​lifting everything up, thinking, ‘Everybody’s corrupt. At least he’s open about it.’

Edward Queen, a faculty member at Emory University’s Ethics Center, said that thinking has been linked to what he said is a growing distrust of the American political system.

“One of the consequences of the decline in trust is that everybody has done it, so it doesn’t matter. And that’s troubling,” he told ABC News.

At the same time, Hanson said, history shows that the public has traditionally opposed corruption, cronyism and other questionable behavior by public officials.

“In the middle are voters who voted for Trump who would be unhappy to vote for these troubling candidates,” Hanson said. “That’s going to come back to hurt Republicans who have been riding on their momentum.”

Jeff Spinner-Halev, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Political Ethics at the University of North Carolina, however, told ABC News that the general public hasn’t been following the details of the confirmation process on Capitol Hill, and may not be clamoring for it. be so loud

“It will have a limited impact,” he said of the public’s reaction. “What will it matter if some senators are concerned about the nominee’s controversies or qualifications how much they care about President Trump’s anger.”

The Senate must confirm each cabinet pick, and while the GOP will hold a majority, even some Senate Republicans who support Trump question whether they can’t accept the ethical problems of his picks, according to Hanson.

“Put in my senator’s shoes for a moment, they don’t want to walk the voting board,” Hanson added. “If they feel a candidate is unknown, they don’t want to throw their hand in the air and say ‘yes,’ but if they do, they should weigh the consequences of looking the other way,” he said.

Some GOP senators see Gaetz as unacceptable as evidence that some standards still exist. For example, Gaetz withdrew from the nomination eight days after Trump announced it, as scrutiny increased and more details about his scandals emerged.

Gaetz said in a social media post that his nomination process would be “a distraction.”

“Nobody really wanted to defend this guy, and the message was sent to the president-elect’s team that this wasn’t going to work,” Hanson said.

“I think it’s a positive sign because, at some point, the lines were crossed. Some candidates are just a bridge too far, and that may be the case with other nominations,” he added.

Steven Cheung, Trump’s chosen White House communications director and campaign spokesman, reiterated his claim that “voters have and will continue to give President Trump a mandate to select Cabinet nominees who reflect the will of the American people.”

“President Trump appreciates the advice and consensus of senators on Capitol Hill, but at the end of the day this is his administration,” Gaetz said after he retired.

Hanson predicted that there will be greater scrutiny of Trump’s Cabinet picks as Senate confirmation hearings approach, but he warned that opposition could be limited.

“It will depend on the fight between the Democrats and the interest groups involved in politics. It will be interesting to see what happens, because there is a lot of opportunity for the Democrats in the Senate to make a lot of noise,” he said.

“Also, we will be in a situation where there can be enough strength and power to face the most controversial candidates and let others pass,” he said.

Spinner-Halev said Republican senators, in particular, may not want to cross Trump too much and may limit their opposition to the pick with the most baggage.

“One of the concerns that Republicans will have is whether a person (the nominee) is incompetent,” he said. “The danger of the Trump administration and the Republican general is that these people are incompetent and confused and then the public remarks. This is what happened with George W. Bush and (Hurricane) Katrina,” he said (FEMA director Michael Brown) was doing a job. ‘ That hurt him a lot.”

Queen said there’s a chance some Republican senators will put ethics ahead of partisanship when it’s all over.

“It is not unreasonable to think that there are some senators who realize that the consequences of their choices and decisions will be bad for the whole country,” he said.

In the long term, Hanson said it’s unclear whether Trump’s election will lead to a new norm for presidential picks that exceed standards of ethics and experience.

He noted that American history has shown several cycles of reform in response to the demands of a public frustrated with dysfunction and misbehavior, such as after the Nixon administration in the 1970s.

“When they see what’s happening now, they’re going to be reminded of what President Trump was like the first time,” he said of Americans who supported him. “There can be a lot of people who say that this is not what I voted for, and that can have a huge impact on things.”

Spinner-Halev said the future will depend on how informed the public is in the next four years.

“There’s a lot that goes on in Washington that is frowned upon, and I think it’s important for the public to look at the bureaucracy,” he said.