Trump Defies the #MeToo Movement With Cabinet Picks Facing Accusations

Politics|Trump Defies the #MeToo Movement With Cabinet Picks Facing Accusations

When he takes the oath of office in January, Donald J. Trump will make history as the first court-adjudicated sexual abuser to assume the presidency. But if he gets the team of his choice, he will not be the only one in the room whose conduct has been called into question.

Mr. Trump, who was found liable in a civil trial last year of accosting a woman, has selected a defense secretary, an attorney general, a secretary of health and human services and an efficiency czar, all of whom have been accused of variations of sexual misconduct and, like the president-elect, deny them.

The rise of the accused to positions of power raises new questions about the future of the #MeToo movement that swept through the country and upended societal expectations in recent years. The kind of accusations that took down titans of Hollywood, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Washington, the news media, sports and state capitals have proved no obstacle in Mr. Trump’s selection process.

Rather than be deterred by such allegations, Mr. Trump seems determined to force a fight over them. He knew that Matt Gaetz, the renegade Republican congressman, had been accused of all manner of sordid conduct, including sex with an underage girl, but tapped him to run the Justice Department anyway. He may not have known that Pete Hegseth, the Fox News weekend host he named to preside over the Pentagon, had paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault, but has indicated that he will stand by him.

Likewise, Mr. Trump has expressed no concern about accusations that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his choice for the health department, groped a family babysitter, or that Elon Musk, tasked with reinventing government, created a sexually charged workplace that treated women as objects. All of his nominees have denied intentional wrongdoing, and Mr. Trump, who has made a career of denying wrongdoing himself, appears to take them at their word.

He still denies sexually assaulting the writer E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room in the 1990s even though she has won two civil court judgments against him for $83.3 million. And he has said that more than two dozen other women who have accused him of sexual misconduct were all lying.