Lisa Desjardins:
Yes.
First, I’m going to drop in two other names that we heard today as we refresh our phone as I’m talking to you see if we get more. These are two important positions within the Trump White House. This would be the head of personnel, Sergio Gor. He used to work for Rand Paul on the Senate side.
And Steven Cheung, longtime adviser, would be in charge of communications. Cheung is particularly important because he is someone who has that bombastic, really kind of almost cutthroat tone on social media and he would continue in that kind of role.
Let’s talk about Matt Gaetz, because a lot of people considering that, including my Senate sources. There is an intense fight under way right now over what exactly senators will get to know about him before they have to decide if he should be attorney general. The House Ethics Committee, as we have been reporting, has spent months looking into these allegations of sexual misconduct, improper campaign funds and bribery.
Gaetz has denied all of this. And the Department of Justice did not charge him in their investigation. So here’s how this will get decided. The House Ethics Committee is made up of five Democrats and five Republicans who would vote. You need a majority, so at least one Republican to vote to release that report.
They were to meet today. That meeting has been postponed. In addition, today, House Speaker Mike Johnson said he would like them not to release this report. Traditionally, when someone resigns, they lose jurisdiction and the report is not released.
But, in this case, senators are saying they need the report to make their decision. That’s a bipartisan decision. Meanwhile, one other thing.The Trump campaign is handling new information about another nominee. That is defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, FOX News host and also a combat veteran. He’s a current member of the National Guard.
Police in Monterey, California, say they investigated him for an alleged sexual assault in 2017. He wasn’t charged. He has said that there is nothing he did wrong. And we don’t know more from police about this. The Trump administration is defending him. But the military, of course, has had generations of problems with sexual assault. The fact that he has been charged and also experienced to charge is something worth considering.
