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

(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump has shown no qualms about making or sticking by picks for his Cabinet no matter the baggage they carry — even some accused of sexual assault.

It’s a far cry from the days when much smaller-scale scandals, such as marijuana use or hiring an undocumented worker as a nanny, sunk candidates put forward by Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, experts said.

“We’re in untested waters,” Jonathan Hanson, a political scientist and lecturer in 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 become less concerned about some indiscretions, such as minor and one-time drug and alcohol arrests. Ronald Reagan’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Douglas Ginsburg admitting to smoking pot when he was younger would never have gotten much negative blowback today, Hanson said.

Two of Bill Clinton’s picks for attorney general — Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood — both withdrew amid questions over their hiring immigrants in the country illegally as babysitters. Former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle — Clinton’s choice for health and human services secretary — had to bow out after it was revealed he didn’t pay taxes for the use of a car and driver.

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

Trump’s picks bring the debate to a new level, he argued.

Trump himself campaigned in the shadow of his hush money felony criminal conviction and after a Manhattan civil jury found him liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll. Trump has repeatedly denied the allegations in both cases.

Matt Gaetz was already a controversial figure before his nomination while under a House Ethics Committee investigation for alleged sexual abuse and illicit drug use.

The former Florida congressman has denied all the allegations and the investigations by the Justice Department ended with no charges being brought and the House Ethics Committee ended when Gaetz resigned from his seat.

Trump’s pick to head the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, paid a woman who alleged he had sexually assaulted her in 2017, an accusation he denied and for which he was not charged.

The New York Times published an email Friday that Hegseth’s mother, Penelope Hegseth, sent him in 2018 in the context of his divorce from his second wife, saying he had routinely mistreated women for years.

“I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego,” she wrote in the message, according to the Times.

She said she later apologized and told the paper that she sent the e-mail in anger, adding “I know my son. He is a good father, husband.”

The New Yorker reported Hegseth was allegedly forced to step down from two non-profits veterans’ groups that he ran due to “serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.” The magazine cited “a trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues.”

ABC News has not independently confirmed The New Yorker or The New York Times reporting.

Tim Parlatore, a lawyer for Hegseth, called the New Yorker piece, “outlandish claims laundered …by a petty and jealous disgruntled former associate,” in a response to the magazine.

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

Hegseth has said the sex assault allegation from 2017 was “fully investigated” and that he was “completely cleared” although a police report did not say that. He has avoided talking about the allegations while he met with Republican lawmakers over the last couple of weeks to garner support.

Hanson notes Trump named Gaetz and Hegseth after a majority of voters sent him back to the White House despite his own criminal indictments, including attempting to overturn the 2020 election. The sentencing for Trump’s New York conviction has been postponed indefinitely while the federal cases have been dismissed.

That, along with the Republicans taking control of Congress, Hanson said, might have motivated Trump to push forward with his controversial picks.

“It does raise the question if we are holding people to different standards than we used to,” he said. “There has been this notion to shrug it all off, thinking, ‘Everyone is corrupt. At least he’s open about it.'”

Edward Queen, a faculty member at Emory University Center for Ethics, said this thinking has been linked to what he said is growing distrust in the American political system.

“One of the consequences of the decline of trust is that everyone has done ‘it’ therefore ‘it’ doesn’t matter. And that’s disturbing,” he told ABC News.

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

“There are voters in the middle who voted for Trump that would be unhappy for a vote for these troubling nominees,” Hanson said. “That will come back to hurt Republicans who may have ridden on his momentum.”

Jeff Spinner-Halev, the Kenan Eminent Professor of Political Ethics at the University of North Carolina, however, told ABC News that the general public has not kept up with the ins and outs of the confirmation process on Capitol Hill, and the outcry may not be that loud.

“It will have limited influence,” he said of the public reaction. “What will matter if a few senators are concerned about the controversies or competency of the candidate verses how much they care about the wrath of President Trump.”

The Senate must confirm each Cabinet choice, and while the GOP will have the majority, some Senate Republicans who back Trump also question whether his picks’ ethical issues make them impossible to approve, according to Hanson.

“Putting my shoes in a senator’s for a moment, they don’t want to walk the plank for a vote,” Hanson added. “If they feel that a nominee is too unpopular, they don’t want to stick their hand in the air and say ‘yes’ — but if they do, he said, they would need to weigh the consequences of looking the other way.”

He sees the fact that some GOP senators signaled Gaetz wasn’t acceptable as proof some standards still exist. For example, Gaetz withdrew his name from the nomination eight days after Trump announced it due to the increased scrutiny and more details about his scandals came to light.

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

“No one was really looking to defend this guy, and the message got sent to the president-elect’s team that this isn’t going to work,” Hanson said.

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

Steven Cheung, Trump’s choice for White House communications director and campaign spokesman, reiterated his claim that “voters gave President Trump a mandate to choose Cabinet nominees that reflect the will of the American people and he will continue to do so.”

“President Trump appreciates the advice and consent of Senators on Capitol Hill, but ultimately this is his administration,” he said in a statement after Gaetz withdrew.

Hanson predicted there will continue to be increased scrutiny of Trump’s Cabinet picks as Senate confirmation hearings get closer, but he warned that the opposition might have limits.

“It depends on how much fight will come from Democrats and interest groups that engage with politics. It will be interesting to see what happens because there is plenty of opportunity here for Democrats in the Senate to make a lot of noise,” he said.

“We will also be in a situation where there may be only enough clout and power to fight only the most controversial of nominees and let others pass,” he said.

Spinner-Halev said that Republican senators, in particular, may not want to cross Trump too many times and may just limit their opposition to his picks with the most baggage.

“One of the worries the Republicans will have is if a person [who is nominated] is incompetent,” he said. “The danger for the Trump administration and Republicans general is if these people are incompetent and mess up and then the public notices. This is what happened with George W. Bush and [Hurricane] Katrina where he said [FEMA Director Michael Brown] was doing a ‘heck of a job.’ That hurt him badly.”

Queen said there is a possibility that some Republican senators may put ethics before partisanship when all is said and done.

“It’s not unreasonable to assume that there are a number of senators who realize there will be consequences of their choices and their decisions that it will be bad for the country as a whole,” he said.

In the long term, Hanson said it is unclear if Trump’s selections will usher in a new norm of presidential picks who buck ethics and experience standards.

He noted that American history has shown several cycles of reform brought on by demand of a public frustrated with dysfunction and improper behavior, such as in the aftermath of the Nixon administration in the 1970s.

“Now that they see what is happening, they may be reminded what the Trump presidency was like the first time around,” he said of Americans who supported him. “There may be a bunch of people who say this is not what I voted for, and that could affect things tremendously.”

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

“There is a lot that happens in Washington that’s not in the public eye, and I think it’s important that the public keeps an eye on the bureaucratic ongoings,” he said.