President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet is proving to be one of the most controversial in recent memory, including a number of people who face sexual misconduct allegations.
Trump himself has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women. He has bragged about grabbing women “by the p***y.” A jury found him liable for sex abuse against former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll.
Still, he has been elected twice to serve as president. He has denied all the accusations against him.
“This is not a good time for survivors or victims. People are not going to speak up because, look, it’s falling on deaf ears. No one cares,” one of Trump’s accusers previously told The Independent after he was re-elected.
Now, he’s nominated a number of individuals who also face claims of engaging in or tolerating sexual misconduct.
Karoline Leavitt, Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman said: “The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail — and his Cabinet picks reflect his priority to put America First. President Trump will continue to appoint highly-qualified men and women who have the talent, experience, and necessary skill sets to Make America Great Again.”
Below we look at some of the contentious picks Trump has made for his inner circle.
Matt Gaetz, Attorney General
The claims against Matt Gaetz, Trump’s former pick for attorney general, have garnered the most attention so far and finally claimed his scalp after days of backlash.
The 42-year-old, who represented Florida’s first congressional district until last week, was once at the center of two probes: one by the Justice Department and the other by the House Ethics Committee.
The department — which Gaetz would lead if he had been confirmed — ended its sex trafficking investigation into him last year without pressing any charges. His associate Joel Greenberg pleaded guilty to sex trafficking of a minor and other crimes in 2021; he is serving an 11-year prison sentence.
In his plea deal, Greenberg didn’t name Gaetz, but he did admit introducing a minor to “other adult men, who engaged in commercial sex acts,” court documents say.
The House panel has not agreed to release the findings, with some saying it’s against the chamber’s rules to release the report since he resigned from the House.
However, some of the report has been leaked. Records obtained by the New York Times and ABC News suggest that Gaetz paid over $10,000 to two women who testified before the committee. The Republican made 27 Venmo and PayPal payments bearing descriptions like “being awesome” and “just because” from July 2017 through January 2019, the outlets reported. Both women were over 18 at the time of these transactions.
Additionally, Gaetz also made payments to a 17-year-old girl when she attended one of the parties, the Times reported.
The committee was probing whether Gaetz had sex with the minor. Records don’t show that Gaetz paid the girl, but do show that Greenberg paid her $450.
The girl was a high school student at the time “and there were witnesses,” her lawyer has said. One such witness appears to be one of the two women who testified before the committee; she said that she had seen Gaetz having sex with the 17-year-old but noted that she didn’t think Gaetz knew the girl was underage, her attorney told the Times.
Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing.
Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung told the Times: “This purposeful leaking of classified investigative materials is the sort of politicized D.O.J. weaponization that Matt Gaetz will end. He added: “The Justice Department investigated Gaetz for years, failed to find a crime and are now leaking material with false information to smear the next attorney general.”
Gaetz withdrew from the nomination on November 21. He wrote on X: “I had excellent meetings with Senators yesterday. I appreciate their thoughtful feedback - and the incredible support of so many. While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance.”
Pete Hegseth, Defense Secretary
Trump tapped Fox News host Pete Hegseth to serve as his defense secretary. Hegeseth was accused of sexual assault in Monterey, California in October 2017, a police report obtained by The Independent reveals.
The woman, identified in the report as Jane Doe, told police that Hegseth blocked the door to prevent her from leaving his hotel room and took her phone away before sexually assaulting her. She told police she told him “‘no’ a lot” during the assault.
Hegseth has denied any wrongdoing and faces no charges related to the allegation. He emphasized at the time “there was ‘always’ conversation and ‘always’ consensual contact,” the police report said.
The 44-year-old paid the woman in 2023 as part of a confidential settlement to prevent a potential lawsuit, which he labeled as baseless.
The “report corroborates what Mr. Hegseth’s attorneys have said all along: the incident was fully investigated and no charges were filed because police found the allegations to be false,” a Trump transition team spokesperson told the Associated Press on Thursday.
Elon Musk, Department of Government Efficiency
While not part of the Cabinet per se, Trump has chosen the world’s richest person to lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) along with billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy.
He is also the subject of a June 2024 lawsuit brought by eight former SpaceX employees who claim Musk allegedly fired them after they accused the company of tolerating sexual harassment in the workplace.
While working at SpaceX, each plaintiff “experienced exposure to unwanted conduct and comments of a sexual nature by Elon Musk that created a hostile and abusive work environment,” the suit, filed in California, states.
Musk “runs his company in the dark ages — treating women as sexual objects to be evaluated on their bra size, bombarding the workplace with lewd sexual banter, and offering the reprise to those who challenge the ‘Animal House’ environment that if they don’t like it they can seek employment elsewhere.”
The suit came after a former SpaceX flight attendant accused Musk of offering to give her a horse in exchange for an erotic massage. The company then paid the woman $250,000 to settle a 2018 sexual misconduct claim against Musk, Business Insider reported in 2022.
Musk denied the allegation at the time, telling the outlet: “If I were inclined to engage in sexual harassment, this is unlikely to be the first time in my entire 30-year career that it comes to light.”
Robert F Kennedy Jr, Secretary of Health
Kennedy, who Trump nominated to serve as secretary of health and human services, is also embroiled in a sexual misconduct allegation.
Eliza Cooney told Vanity Fair in July that she was hired by RFK Jr and his then-wife as a part-time babysitter in 1994 to look after the couple’s four kids. The alleged incidents took place years later.
In one instance, she recalled him moving his hand up and down her leg under the table during a meeting in his kitchen. “In the back of my mind, I was hoping it wasn’t what it actually was,” she told the outlet.
In a separate encounter, she said a shirtless RFK Jr walked into her bedroom and asked him to rub lotion on his back. She reluctantly obliged. “It was totally inappropriate,” she told the magazine. At the time, Cooney was 23 and he was 45.
Months later, she said he stood behind her and began groping her, putting his hands on her hips and sliding them up to her rib cage and breasts, as she stood in the kitchen pantry in a bra and leggings after a yoga class. “I was frozen. Shocked,” she said.
Two days after the bombshell story was published, the then-independent presidential candidate texted her an apology. \
“I have no memory of this incident but I apologize sincerely for anything I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable or anything I did or said that offended you or hurt your feelings,” Kennedy wrote in texts obtained by the Washington Post. “I never intended you any harm. If I hurt you, it was inadvertent. I feel badly for doing so.”
RFK Jr offered to meet face-to-face to “make amends” but she turned him down.
“It was disingenuous and arrogant,” Cooney told the Post in response to his message. “I’m not sure how somebody has a true apology for something that they don’t admit to recalling. I did not get a sense of remorse.”
Kennedy has never been charged with any crime in connection to this incident.
Linda McMahon, Education Secretary
Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick for education secretary, was accused in October of enabling sexual abuse that occurred at WWE, which she co-founded with her estranged husband Vince. She served as the administrator of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term.
The civil lawsuit, seen by The Independent, details allegations of sexual abuse of underage boys by ringside announcer Melvin Phillips. It accuses the McMahons of allowing a “rampant culture of sexual abuse.”
“It was also well known throughout the WWE that Phillips had sexual fetishes for young boys; namely, and only partially, because Phillips didn’t try to hide his recruiting and cavorting with underaged boys,” the suit states. “It was there for the WWE and its leaders to see in plain sight; yet no one did anything to stop Phillips’s rampant and open abuse of young boys.”
Linda and Vince knew “at least as early as the early or mid-1980s” that Phillips had what Vince described as a “peculiar and unnatural interest” in young boys, the filing says.
The couple fired Phillips after more allegations about his sex abuse of children surfaced, but “inexplicably” rehired him six weeks later — on the condition that he “steer clear from kids” — according to the suit.
One former employee said the McMahons “clearly knew what was going on, but really did nothing to stop it. . . . There was not a damn thing we could do about it.”
A lawyer for Linda branded the allegations as false, telling CNN: “This civil lawsuit based upon thirty-plus year-old allegations is filled with scurrilous lies, exaggerations and misrepresentations regarding Linda McMahon.”
She added: “Ms. McMahon will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit and without doubt ultimately succeed.”
She, her husband and Phillips do not face criminal charges related to these claims.
