Trump picks linked to sexual misconduct allegations

What they're saying: "President Trump has nominated high-caliber and extremely qualified individuals to serve in his administration," Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump, told Axios.

• "None of these baseless allegations peddled by the Fake News media ... will stop President Trump and his team from serving the American people, who gave him a historic mandate to Make America Great Again," he added.

Flashback: During Trump's first term, his White House staff secretary Rob Porter and speechwriter David Sorensen were both forced to resign after being separately accused of domestic abuse, CNN reported.

• Both men denied the allegations.

The big picture: Trump himself is no stranger to sexual misconduct allegations, having been accused by more than two dozen women over the course of several decades.

• He has firmly denied all wrongdoing in each of the cases.
• Last year, a jury in a civil trial found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation of the writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump denied wrongdoing in the case.
• One of the most infamous moments of Trump's political career came in 2016, when a resurfaced Access Hollywood tape revealed Trump's past boasts about groping women.

Here are the planned members of Trump's second administration linked to sexual misconduct allegations.

Matt Gaetz

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) withdrew his nomination to serve as the next attorney general amid mounting scrutiny over alleged sexual misconduct.

• Shortly after being nominated, Gaetz resigned from Congress, effectively ending a wide-ranging and years-long probe by the House Ethics Committee over alleged sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.
• Gaetz has denied the allegations.
• The House Ethics Committee voted against releasing a report of its findings a day before he pulled out of the nomination.

Zoom in: Two women who appeared before the committee as part of its investigation into Gaetz testified that he paid them for sex, their lawyer told Axios.

• One of the women also testified that she saw Gaetz having sex with a minor.

Pete Hegseth

Trump tapped former Fox News co-host and Army veteran Pete Hegseth to be the next Secretary of Defense.

• Hegseth was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2017.
• Hegseth has insisted the encounter was consensual and denied the accusations, which did not result in charges.
• However, he later paid the woman an undisclosed financial settlement that included a nondisclosure agreement.

Zoom out: Records released Wednesday by the Monterey Police Department revealed new details about the woman's alleged assault.

• The woman told a nurse at a hospital a few days after the alleged assault that something may have been slipped into her drink.
• She told police that Hegseth sexually assaulted her after taking her phone, blocking the door of the California hotel room they were in and refusing to let her leave.
• "JANE DOE remembered saying 116 'no' a lot," the police report stated.

The other side: Hegseth's lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, told Axios in a statement Thursday that the report confirmed "that the incident was fully investigated and police found the allegations to be false, which is why no charges were filed."

RFK Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been tapped to serve as the Department of Health and Human Services secretary.

• A former babysitter for the Kennedy family in the late 1990s told Vanity Fair this summer than Kennedy had, in separate incidents, rubbed her leg under the table during a meeting and asked her to rub lotion on his back.
• A recent college graduate at the time, she also recounted an alleged sexual assault, telling the magazine that Kennedy had groped her.

The other side: Kennedy told the Breaking Points podcast in July that the Vanity Fair article was a "lot of garbage" but declined to comment on the former babysitter's allegations specifically.

• The Washington Post reported that Kennedy had privately apologized to the woman in July via text message, saying he didn't remember the encounter but that any harm caused was "inadvertent."

Linda McMahon

Trump tapped Linda McMahon, his transition team co-chair and a former WWE executive, to serve as the next secretary of Education.

• A lawsuit filed last month on behalf of five former WWE "Ring Boys" accused McMahon and her husband, WWE mogul Vince McMahon, of being complicit in the grooming and sexual exploitation of children.
• The lawsuit alleged the McMahons knowingly gave ringside announcer Melvin Phillips Jr. "free reign" to entice boys as young as 12 or 13 to help around the shows.
• The lawsuit also alleged that the McMahons knew since at least as early as the 1980s that Phillips had a "peculiar and unnatural interest" in boys.

State of play: An attorney for Vince McMahon has denied the allegations.

• Linda McMahon's attorney likewise told the Washington Post that the lawsuit was "baseless" and noted that the couple is now separated.
• Vince McMahon resigned as the executive chair of WWE's parent company TKO Holdings earlier this year after being accused of sexual assault and sex trafficking in a separate lawsuit.

Elon Musk

Elon Musk was one of the Trump campaign's greatest supporters and is now set to lead a new government agency, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), alongside Vivek Ramaswamy.

• Musk and his company SpaceX were hit with a lawsuit in June from eight former employees who alleged they were wrongly fired after raising concerns about sexual harassment and discrimination against women at the company.
• SpaceX did not comment on the lawsuit at the time. The company rarely responds to press inquiries from media outlets.
• The lawsuit accused Musk of "unwanted conduct and comments of a sexual nature" and said he "knowingly and purposefully created an unwelcome hostile work environment based upon his conduct of interjecting into the workplace vile sexual photographs, memes, and commentary that demeaned women and/or the LGBTQ+ community."

Context: The same employees had also filed similar charges against SpaceX with the National Labor Relations Board in 2022. Earlier this year, SpaceX sued the NLRB to dispute the charges, the New York Times reported.

Editor's note: This story was updated with new developments.

Go deeper:

• What to know about the sexual misconduct allegations against Matt Gaetz
• Pete Hegseth paid settlement to accuser but denies sexual assault