By James Oliphant

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump’s willingness to pick cabinet members with a history of alleged sexual misconduct derailed his transition plans this week.

Matt Gaetz, Trump’s pick for attorney general, withdrew from consideration Thursday amid growing questions about allegations of having sex with a minor and using illegal drugs. He denied wrongdoing.

His withdrawal underscores the risk of Trump’s approach to staffing the second administration. He seems buoyed by his political comeback and willing to challenge Senate Republicans to support some unorthodox choices.

Gaetz’s departure leaves two other Cabinet nominees who have also been accused of sexual misconduct: Pentagon nominee Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Trump’s pick for Health and Human Services secretary.

While allegations of sexual misconduct are not uncommon in politics, including against Trump himself, it is unusual for cabinet nominees to face such allegations.

Some Republican senators said Hegseth, in particular, would now face more scrutiny with Gaetz out of the mix, though they did not believe the extra attention would hurt his confirmation prospects.

“You’re going to look more and more at what happened and you’re going to realize that it’s completely taken out of context, and I think Pete will be confirmed at the end of the day,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a Trump ally, told reporters.

Hegseth, a 44-year-old military veteran and former Fox News host, was accused by a woman who told police he sexually assaulted her at a conference in California in 2017. No charges were filed, and Hegseth and his lawyer said the sexual encounter was consensual.

Hegseth met with Republican senators on Capitol Hill on Thursday to drum up support for his nomination when news of Gaetz’s withdrawal broke.

Sen. Jack Reed, the incumbent Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the stumble with Gaetz means the allegation against Hegseth will have to be closely scrutinized.

“From what I’ve seen on the news, it’s very worrying. It has to be looked at,” Reed told reporters.

#METOO METEORS

Asked by Reuters this week whether Trump was reconsidering his choices of Hegseth and Kennedy, the president-elect’s transition team issued statements in support of both men.

He called Kennedy a respected leader and Hegseth “an incredibly tough and smart candidate.”

Reuters could not reach Hegseth for comment on this story. A spokesman for Kennedy did not immediately respond. Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday about the specific allegations against the pair.

Kennedy, 70, has become a key adviser to Trump on health policy. Her family’s babysitter accused him of groping her in 1999, when she was 23. No charges have been filed.

Kennedy told his accuser, in a text message previously seen by Reuters, that he had no recollection of the incident. The woman showed Reuters the text in July after she went public with her claims about Kennedy.

When asked to comment on the sexual assault allegation, Kennedy told a podcaster in July, “I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world.”

It’s unclear how big the alleged 1999 incident will play into Senate confirmation hearings for Kennedy, who is criticized by Democrats for spreading misinformation about vaccines.

“This is something I’m sure will be explored in the hearings,” Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate Republican, said when asked by reporters if she was concerned about the number of nominees facing sexual abuse allegations.

Trump has his own well-documented history of alleged wrongdoing, which he denies.

Last year, a New York jury found him guilty of sexually abusing a writer, E. Jean Carroll, and awarded him damages. She was one of more than a dozen women who accused Trump of sexual assault or harassment.

The nominations of Gaetz, Hegseth and Kennedy represent a cultural counterpunch to the country’s #MeToo movement, which has seen women accuse hundreds of men in entertainment, media, politics and other fields of sexual misconduct, said Juliet Williams, professor of gender studies. at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Trump’s election supports the idea that “this kind of sexual behavior is the right of male privilege,” Williams said of the #MeToo allegations.

Bill Dailey, a fellow at the Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame, said Gaetz’s withdrawal showed some of the checks and balances in Washington still work.

Even as Trump has threatened to dismantle institutional norms by pushing the limits of his presidential authority, there has been resistance among some Senate Republicans to confirm him.

“That he (Gaetz) didn’t even make it to December shows that the Senate is not going to simply do Trump, as we would expect them to do if autocracy were imminent,” Dailey said.

As the focus turns to Hegseth, Republican Sen. Mike Braun compared the charges against him to those facing Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee to the US Supreme Court.

Kavanaugh was accused during his 2018 Senate confirmation hearing of sexually assaulting a woman while in high school. He was eventually confirmed after Senate Republicans said the accuser’s allegations could not be substantiated.

Braun predicted a similar fate for Hegseth: “I’m sure he’ll go through hearings, but I imagine he’ll survive.”

(Reporting by James Oliphant; Additional reporting by Bo Erickson, Richard Cowan and David Morgan; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Alistair Bell)