Matt Gaetz has withdrawn his name from consideration to be the next US attorney general, saying his selection had become “a distraction”.
Mr Gaetz was among Donald Trump’s original picks for his cabinet who faced a serious allegation of sexual impropriety.
The president-elect’s choices for defence secretary Pete Hegseth and health and human services secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr have also had accusations levelled at them in the past.
Mr Gaetz has now said his selection was “unfairly becoming a distraction” to the transition of Mr Trump’s administration into the White House.
But what had he and the others been accused of and how have they responded?
Matt Gaetz
Gaetz at a Trump rally in October. Pic: Reuters
Mr Gaetz previously faced a nearly three-year Justice Department investigation into sex trafficking allegations involving a 17-year-old girl, which ended in February 2023 without him facing any criminal charges.
He has always denied the allegations.
There was also a separate investigation by the House Ethics Committee into Mr Gaetz, who was a congressman up until Mr Trump announced him as his general attorney pick, at which point he stepped down.
His resignation brought the investigation to an end – two days before it had been expected to release its report into the trafficking claims.
US House Speaker Mike Johnson has pushed to prevent the release of the report’s findings, saying: “I’m going to strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report, because that is not the way we do things in the House.
“The rules of the House have always been that a former member is beyond the jurisdiction of the Ethics Committee.”
But some details from that investigation have become public.
On Monday, a lawyer representing two women who testified in front of the Ethics Committee told Sky News’ US partner NBC News that Mr Gaetz paid them for sex on several occasions, including at a small, invitation-only party in Florida.
The lawyer also said one woman said she saw Mr Gaetz having sex with her 17-year-old friend but added that she believed he didn’t realise she was a minor and that he allegedly ended their “sexual relationship” until she became a legal adult.
Mr Gaetz denies all allegations against him.
On Thursday, he wrote in a post on X after a meeting with senators that “it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition”.
He added: “There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as attorney general. Trump’s DOJ [Department of Justice] must be in place and ready on Day 1.”
Pete Hegseth
Hegseth at Trump Tower for a meeting with Trump in 2016. Pic: AP
Mr Hegseth has been accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2017, according to a detailed investigative report made public on 20 November.
The report cited police interviews with the alleged victim, a nurse who treated her, a hotel staffer, another woman at the event and Mr Hegseth.
The woman, who helped organise the California Federation of Republican Women gathering at which Mr Hegseth spoke, told police “things got fuzzy” when she drank at the hotel bar with him and a few others.
She said after arguing with him about “how he treated women” earlier in the evening, she was inside a hotel room with Mr Hegseth, who took her phone and blocked the door with his body so that she could not leave, according to the report.
She also told police she remembered “saying ‘no’ a lot,” the report said.
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She said her next memory was laying on a couch or bed with him hovering over her bare-chested and that afterwards, she recalled him asking if she was “OK”.
She told police she did not recall how she got back to her own hotel room and had since suffered from nightmares and memory loss.
Mr Hegseth claimed that after meeting the woman at the hotel bar, she led him by the arm back to his hotel room, and that the sexual encounter that followed was consensual.
He said he explicitly asked more than once if she was comfortable.
Mr Hegseth’s attorney said a payment was made to the woman as part of a confidential settlement a few years after the police investigation because Mr Hegseth was concerned that she was prepared to file a lawsuit that could affect his career.
Robert F Kennedy Jr
Kennedy endorsing Trump at a campaign in August. Pic: AP
Mr Kennedy was accused this summer of groping a former family babysitter.
In a Vanity Fair article, Eliza Cooney, who was a nanny for Mr Kennedy’s children in 1998, claimed he came up behind her one day while she was working, blocked her inside the room, and began groping her.
Asked about the allegations on the Breaking Points podcast, Mr Kennedy called the article “a lot of garbage” but added: “I said in my announcement speech that I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world.”
He said he had also been open about how he had a “very rambunctious youth” and “I am who I am” but that Vanity Fair was “recycling 30-year-old stories”.
Asked whether or not he was denying the allegation, he responded: “I’m not going to comment on it.”
NBC News later reported Mr Kennedy sent text messages to Ms Cooney days after the article’s release, apologising but saying he had “no memory of the incident”.
What has Trump’s team said?
The president-elect has not commented personally on the allegations against his picks.
After the report on Mr Hegseth came out, a spokesperson for the Trump transition team said 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”.
In an earlier statement, the spokesperson that Mr Trump’s election was a “resounding mandate from the American people to change the status quo in Washington.
“That’s why he has chosen brilliant and highly-respected outsiders to serve in his administration.”
“He will continue to stand behind them as they fight against all those who seek to derail the MAGA agenda,” they added.
Addressing the potential difficulty of getting some of Mr Trump’s controversial picks confirmed, another transition official told NBC News: “The president wants these nominees in his administration, and it is our job to make that happen,” adding that while “we know this will be hard, we just won an unprecedented election” and that Trump “wants this done, and we will get it done.”
All of Mr Trump’s picks for cabinet roles must be questioned by members of the Senate before it votes on their appointments. Even with the Republicans in control, some of the picks could be blocked due to controversies.