When The President Is A Criminal, Should His Appointees’ Backgrounds Matter?

WASHINGTON — When Americans elected a coup-attempting, sexually abusing, fraud-committing criminal as president, did they by that choice also lower the bar for those serving in his administration?

As they prepare to go before the U.S. Senate for confirmation, Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Matt Gaetz — until Gaetz withdrew from consideration — and others have been facing questions over their previous actions and words that have raised doubts about their fitness for the job.

Yet in every case, the man who appointed them, President-elect Donald Trump, has done or said things far more egregious during his previous term in office and over his subsequent three-and-a-half-year effort to return to the White House. American voters narrowly returned him to office anyway — meaning senators will now have to decide whether Trump’s appointees should be held to a higher standard than Trump himself.

“This question breaks my heart,” said Jennifer Horn, the former chair of New Hampshire’s Republican Party who broke from Trump soon after he was first elected in 2016.

Trump campaign and transition officials did not respond to HuffPost’s queries.

Critics of Trump’s choice for defense secretary point to allegations of Hegseth’s treatment of women, including an allegation he raped a woman in 2017, in an encounter Hegseth has said was consensual. Yet Trump himself was found by a New York jury to have sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll by digitally penetrating her in a department store – an act that the trial judge pointed out was considered rape in many jurisdictions.

Democrats and some Republicans argue that Tulsi Gabbard’s defense of Syrian dictator and alleged war criminal Bashar Assad and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin should disqualify her from serving as Director of National Intelligence. Trump, though, knowingly used Russian help to win the 2016 election, famously said he believed Putin over his own intelligence community, and to this day praises Putin, even calling him a genius for having invaded Ukraine.

And while Patel has aggressively spread lies and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and promised vengeance against Trump’s critics, Trump himself is the prime mover behind the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, without whom the day would have passed without notice. Throughout his 2024 campaign, he has vowed revenge against the justice system that tried to hold him to account.

“The fact that Donald Trump has been re-elected is a devastating blow to democracy, and his nominees for the highest positions in government are a reflection of that,” Horn said. “But whether or not these unqualified, Putin advocates are actually seated lies in the hands of the Senate. If they are accepted, it will be a measure of the character and integrity of each Republican senator.”

Whether the Senate will hold Trump’s appointees to a higher standard than voters held Trump himself could be in the hands of a small group of Republican senators who have never been great fans of the man who took over their party over the past decade.

Erick Erickson, a conservative radio talk show host who supported Trump, despite misgivings, on the belief that American democracy is stronger than Trump, said the Senate needs to evaluate appointees based on what it believes is good for the country.

“The president is chosen by an Electoral College selected by the people. His appointees are confirmed by a Senate, some of whom were chosen in 2020, some of whom were chosen in 2022, and some of whom were chosen in 2024, all of whom have their own standards and opinions, which may or may not be the same as the people who support Trump,” he said. “The Constitution still matters and remains a robust check on the powers of all three branches of government.”

The prevailing theory on presidential appointments, generally shared by both Democrats and Republicans, is that presidents should be able to have the leadership team of their choosing. That, however, has been tempered by senators’ desire not to give a president a blank check.

In 1992, senators forced Democratic president Bill Clinton’s first two choices for attorney general, Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, to withdraw after revelations that they had hired undocumented immigrants to care for their children.

Thirty-two years later, former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew as Trump’s attorney general pick after Republican senators said they expected to see a still-secret House Ethics Committee report that reportedly details Gaetz’s payments to a 17-year-old girl for allegedly having sex with him at a drug-fueled party. Gaetz has denied he did anything wrong or illegal.

Gaetz, in any event, has not been found liable for sexual abuse by a jury following a trial, as Trump has. Nor was he described by notorious accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein as his “closest friend,” as Trump was.

How hard Republican senators, a number of whom were publicly warning against Gaetz’s nomination, will push against some of the others is unclear.

At the Capitol Tuesday, Utah’s newly elected John Curtis, like many of his GOP colleagues, largely avoided questions about specific nominees but agreed that Trump’s wishes mattered a great deal. “He gets a lot of deference,” Curtis said.

Others, though, made clear they believed Trump deserves complete deference. Idaho’s Michael Crapo said he was fine with whatever Trump wants, even if he submits names that have not undergone an FBI background check, as has traditionally been done prior to receiving a security clearance. “My position is what President Trump decides to do is what I will support,” he told reporters on Monday.

George Conway, who supported Trump’s candidacy in 2016 and was briefly considering a job in his first administration but has since become a vocal critic, said he doubts Senate leaders will have much appetite for a fight with Trump.

“What they should do and what they will do will be different,” he said. “I think they may try to torpedo a couple of them and call it a day.”

To former Republican Rep. Joe Walsh, who also turned against Trump early in his first term, the very idea of rejecting Trump’s nominees for behaviors that Americans have made clear they are OK with in Trump is absurd.

“There should be no objections. Pete Hegseth is Donald Trump. Tulsi Gabbard is Donald Trump. Kash Patel is Donald Trump,” Walsh said.

“And when it comes to any of these nominees who couldn’t pass an FBI background check,” he added, “we need to remember this: Trump couldn’t pass an FBI background check either.”

Trump was convicted in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 hush money payment to a porn star just before the 2016 election. The judge in the case has repeatedly postponed sentencing and now wants to hear arguments from Trump and the New York state prosecutors about whether he should dismiss the case because Trump won the presidential election.

Federal felony charges against Trump based on his actions leading up to and during his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt and for refusing to return secret documents he took with him to his South Florida country club have already been dismissed based on Justice Department policy not to prosecute a sitting president.

Jennifer Bendery contributed to this report.