Several of US President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s cabinet nominees are facing heavy scrutiny, including claims of misconduct.<\/p>\n
His defence secretary pick Pete Hegseth denies a sexual assault allegation and potential attorney general Matt Gaetz is at the centre of an ethics investigation.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s health secretary nominee, Robert F Kennedy Jr, is facing severe criticism for his vaccine scepticism.<\/p>\n
Trump will need the US Senate to confirm these nominees when he takes office in January, and though the chamber will be controlled by his fellow Republicans, his cabinet contenders will face an intense grilling during bipartisan hearings.<\/p>\n
On Friday, police said that Hegseth, the Pentagon nominee, had been investigated for an alleged sexual assault in California in 2017.<\/p>\n
Hegseth, a Fox News host and veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, was never arrested and denies wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said: \u201cMr Hegseth has vigorously denied any and all accusations, and no charges were filed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the BBC\u2019s US partner CBS reported that Hegseth had once been flagged as a potential \u201cinsider threat\u201d by fellow military personnel who thought he had a white-supremacist tattoo.<\/p>\n
Hegseth has denied any connection to extremist groups.<\/p>\n
A former member of the Minnesota National Guard, he has a tattoo on his bicep reading \u201cDeus Vult\u201d, a latin phrase meaning \u201cGod wills it\u201d, a rallying cry for Christian crusaders in the Middle Ages.<\/p>\n
Retired Master Sgt DeRicko Gaither told CBS: \u201cI looked it up and that tattoo had ties to extremist groups.\u201d He said he had flagged the body ink to leadership.<\/p>\n
US Vice-President-elect JD Vance rushed to Hegseth\u2019s defence, saying the latin phrase is a nothing more than a Christian motto. He accused the Associated Press, which first reported the story on the tattoo, of \u201cdisgusting anti-Christian bigotry\u201d.<\/p>\n
Hegseth was stopped from serving as an officer in Washington DC during President Joe Biden\u2019s inauguration in 2021. In a book published earlier this year he said he was turned down for the duty because of his tattoos.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Trump\u2019s pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, is battling allegations of misconduct while he was a congressman.<\/p>\n
He resigned from his Florida seat in the US House of Representatives on Thursday within hours of Trump nominating him to lead the US Department of Justice.<\/p>\n
His exit halted the release of a congressional report into allegations of sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and misuse of campaign funds.<\/p>\n
The post Trump cabinet nominees battle misconduct claims and controversy<\/a> first appeared on KBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n The post Trump cabinet nominees battle misconduct claims and controversy<\/a> appeared first on KBC<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Several of US President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s cabinet nominees are facing heavy scrutiny, including claims of misconduct. His defence secretary pick Pete Hegseth denies a sexual assault allegation and potential attorney general Matt Gaetz is at the centre of an ethics investigation. Trump\u2019s health secretary nominee, Robert F Kennedy Jr, is facing severe criticism for his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}