Trump Transition Week-in-Review: More Unfit Crony Nominees That Invite Corruption & Rigged System Against Working People

This week, President-elect Trump’s transition team leaned on an old familiar tactic in their effort to make permanent a rigged system that benefits the wealthy few over everyone else. They ‘flooded the zone’ with controversy to distract from their newly reported and quietly laid plans to rip away health care and raise costs for millions of American workers and seniors to pay for more tax breaks and deregulatory gifts for Trump’s billionaire donor friends and big corporations that price-gouge and ship jobs overseas.

Trump Demands the Senate Abdicate Its Responsibility and Confirm His Picks Without Scrutiny: In what can only be described as a cynical “Overton window” strategy, the New York Times reported that Trump is deliberately overwhelming the public with controversial picks to shift the standard of what is acceptable to the Senate, with the belief that they can’t reject all of his nominees. As the Times noted: Trump’s choices, including Gabbard, Hegseth, RFK Jr. “would have had virtually no chance of confirmation in a Republican-held Senate in the Washington that existed before 2024.”

Political Fealty Outweighs Qualifications, Continued: The Trump team introduced another slate of extreme cabinet nominees with disqualifying personal baggage and woefully lacking relevant experience that continues to prove the President-elect puts far more stock in political loyalty to himself than what’s best for everyday Americans. This includes noted snake oil salesman and self-interested Medicare privatization advocate Dr. Mehmet Oz for CMS Director; former WWE executive Linda McMahon for Education Secretary, who allegedly swept sexual abuse allegations under the rug; former Congressman Sean Duffy for Transportation Secretary who brings conflicts of interest from his lobbyist days; and Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, to lead the Department of Commerce for who has an ax to grind against financial regulators as his own company’s violations racked up millions of dollars in fines from the SEC.

If Senate Republicans weren’t already taking their constitutional role of advice and consent seriously, they must now vet the extreme records of these nominees, given all that’s at stake for Americans’ health and financial security.

Project 2025 and Trump Agenda Are One In the Same: Project 2025 – a cabal of far-right special interest groups and thought leaders – wrote the detailed ‘how-to’ manual for the incoming Trump administration to gut checks and balances, consolidate power, take more control over our lives, and tear apart communities. President-elect Trump insists Project 2025 holds no sway over him, yet that claim gets more dubious by the day. An Accountable.US review found that at least five people associated with Project 2025 have already been tapped to serve in the Trump Administration, with fierce Social Security and Medicare opponent Russ Vought likely soon to follow.

The More Problems We Learn About Trump’s Nominees, the More Serious Republicans Senators’ Responsibility Becomes: A deluge of truly alarming reporting came out this week involving many of Trump’s first round of nominees. These revelations put immense pressure on Senate Republicans to do their jobs and hold serious public hearings. If Senators vote to rubber stamp these crony nominees despite their scandals, conflicts of interest, and susceptibility to corruption, they will be every bit as responsible for the consequences for everyday Americans. There can be no plausible deniability. They are not bystanders, and there can be no surprises or comments of “concern” later when these nominees enact their agenda.

Among Ethical Controversies Trump Nominees Are Mired In:

More Details Come to Light About Sexual Assault Claim Against Pete Hegseth: This week, it was reported that Trump’s nominee to run the Defense Department, Pete Hegseth, paid a confidential settlement to a woman who accused him of sexual assault in a hotel after a Republican conference in 2017. The Post reported additional corroborating details this morning: “An emergency room nurse contacted police in 2017 after treating a woman who said that while drinking with colleagues after a political gathering several nights earlier she may have been drugged and was then sexually assaulted by a man she later identified as Pete Hegseth.” Hegseth has previously come under scrutiny for a tattoo linked to extremist groups such as neo-Nazis, which was flagged as a security threat while he was a member of the National Guard and caused his removal from helping secure Biden’s inauguration in 2021.

Troubling Allegations Involving Trump HHS Pick Robert Kennedy Jr. and a Former Nanny: The USA Today reported this week that a former live-in nanny for the RFK Jr. family alleges Trump’s HHS pick groped her when she was 23 years old. Reported allegations include: “a shirtless Kennedy, then 46, appeared in her bedroom doorway asking her to rub lotion on him. …Later, she said he approached her from behind in a kitchen pantry and started groping her, sliding his hands from her hips to the sides of her breasts. While doing so, he was blocking her exit out of the small room.” Meanwhile, it was reported this week that RFK Jr;. has “previously expressed his belief that the U.S. government planned the COVID pandemic that killed more than 1.2 million of its citizens.”

Ed Secretary Pick Linda McMahon Faces Lawsuit Over Alleged Mishandling Child Sexual Abuse: Accountable.US raised alarms that McMahon, who former WWE employees are suing for allegedly knowing sexual abuse was occurring under her leadership, is now poised to oversee reforms to Title IX—a federal law critical for preventing sexual violence and discrimination in schools.

Other Trump Picks Have Confirmed Suspicions He Intends to Continue a Rigged System that Benefits the Super Wealthy, Well-connected, and Big Corporations over Working Class Americans:

Wright’s Climate Denialism: This week, Trump nominated Chris Wright, the CEO of Liberty Energy, to be Energy Secretary. According to a Reuters report, “Wright has called climate change activists alarmist and has likened efforts by Democrats to combat global warming to Soviet-style communism.” Calling him a “vocal critic of government efforts to fight climate change,” Politico noted that if Wright were confirmed by the Senate, he would likely “be one of the loudest voices in the administration against measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels that are raising the planet’s temperature and causing an upsurge in extreme weather.” The report also noted that in a LinkedIn video posted last year, Wright said, “We have seen no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts or floods despite endless fear-mongering of the media, politicians, and activists. The only thing resembling a crisis with respect to climate change is the regressive, opportunity-squelching policies justified in the name of climate change.”

Trump Transportation Nominee Duffy’s Lobbying Conflicts: An Accountable.US review found that in February 2020, The Partnership for Open and Fair Skies hired Sean Duffy to lobby in “support for US Open Skies policy.” The Partnership for Open and Fair Skies’ membership includes American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines, which all joined in a May 2024 lawsuit alongside industry trade group Airlines for America against the Biden Transportation Department’s rulemaking to protect airline passengers from surprise junk fees when purchasing a ticket.

Republican Mega Donor Turned Trump Commerce Nominee Has Faced Millions in Regulator Fines: An Accountable.US review found Trump Commerce Secretary Pick Howard Lutnick has given $19 million in political donations almost exclusively to Republican candidates, PACS, and party committees. In 2023, Lutnick’s company, Cantor Fitzgerald, was fined $1.4 million by the SEC for “repeatedly failing to identify and report customers who qualified as large traders.” And in 2022, Cantor Fitzgerald agreed to pay $16 million in fines after financial regulators found it was among 11 banks and brokerage firms that had widespread use of unauthorized communication methods such as WhatsApp and Signal.

Dr. Oz Would Bring Self-Serving Agenda CMS: Dr. Oz’s career marred by repeated promotion of unproven medical treatments and pseudoscience, often for personal financial gain, are not the only things that make him a dangerous choice to oversee Medicare and Medicaid. His lack of accountability and history of misleading the public make him a dangerous choice to oversee Medicare and Medicaid. Financial disclosures show that, as of 2022, Dr. Oz and his wife own up to $600,000 in UnitedHealth Group stock and up to $100,000 in CVS Health stock, which owns Aetna. And during his run for Senate, Dr. Oz proposed legislation that would push seniors off traditional Medicare and into private insurance plans. Both UnitedHealth and CVS have reported significant revenues from Medicare Advantage plans, raising serious concerns about potential self-dealing if Oz were confirmed.

Accountable.US Press Releases This Week (Nov. 15-22, 2024):

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