The latest on Trump’s presidential transition

Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin on Sunday defended Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, who is facing scrutiny over a 2017 allegation that he sexually assaulted a woman at a hotel.

“There was no case here. He was falsely accused,” Mullin claimed in an interview with Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“As a father of three girls, I will admit, when I first heard that, I thought, ‘That’s not good.’ As I started reading the report, I thought, ‘Wait a second, there’s more to this story.’ When I sat down and had a conversation with Pete I enjoyed the conversation, he answered every one of my questions, and I look forward to helping him get confirmed as the next secretary of defense.”

Key context: According to a newly released police report, the woman told police that Hegseth physically blocked her from leaving a hotel room, took her phone, and then sexually assaulted her even though she “remembered saying ‘no’ a lot.”

The 22-page report lays out the competing narratives of what happened in new detail — including conflicting accounts of how intoxicated Hegseth and the woman were, and descriptions of video surveillance showing some of their movements that night.

Hegseth was not charged with a crime in connection with the allegation. His attorney has acknowledged that Hegseth later entered into a settlement agreement with his accuser that included an undisclosed monetary payment and a confidentiality clause.

Though Hegseth insisted the encounter was consensual, the lawyer said he was fearful that the woman was poised to make an allegation against him during the #MeToo movement that might have cost him his job as a Fox News host.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth speaks at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 20.

Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a female combat veteran who served in Iraq, said on Sunday that President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, was wrong to say women should not serve the US military in combat roles.

Duckworth called Hegseth “unqualified” for the defense secretary post, and incorrect to suggest that women in combat did not make the military more effective. After watching a clip of Hegseth’s past remarks on the subject, Duckworth replied flatly: “He’s wrong.”

Duckworth also called Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick to lead the intelligence community, “compromised” due to her past meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and comments viewed as sympathetic to Russia.

Tulsi Gabbard speaks at a campaign rally for Donald Trump on October 27 in New York.

GOP Sen. James Lankford, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Sunday that the committee will have “lots of questions” to ask Tulsi Gabbard, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the intelligence community, during the confirmation process.

Lankford, a new member of Republican leadership, specifically referenced Gabbard’s meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“We’ll have lots of questions. She met with Bashar Assad. We’ll want to know what the purpose was,” Lankford told Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“We’ll want to get a chance to talk about past comments that she’s made and get them into full context,” he added.

In 2019, Gabbard said “Assad is not the enemy of the United States,” standing by her opposition to US involvement in Syria’s civil war two years after she met personally with the accused war criminal.

The senator acknowledged Gabbard has been “outspoken” on US foreign policy and highlighted the importance of having leadership that is supportive of the intelligence community.

Lankford said all of Trump’s Cabinet nominees will “get a fair shake” in confirmation hearings. “We’ll let the process work out,” he told Bash.

More context: Trump’s selection of Gabbard to run the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has quickly drawn scrutiny because of her relative inexperience in the intelligence community and her public adoption of positions on Syria and the war in Ukraine that many national security officials see as echoing Russian propaganda.

CNN’s Sam Fossum contributed to this report.

Brooke Rollins, AFPI President & CEO, arrives to speak at the America First Policy Institute Agenda Summit in Washington, DC, on July 26, 2022.

President-elect Donald Trump has now made most of his picks for key Cabinet roles and other high-ranking administration positions, announcing a slew of them Friday before the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

Trump announced his latest Cabinet selection Saturday, tapping one of his former policy advisers, Brooke Rollins, as agriculture secretary. Rollins is the CEO of the America First Policy Institute, a group with close ties to Trump’s transition team, and has been a vocal supporter of the president-elect.

Remember: Most of Trump’s selections are subject to Senate approval, a process that still needs to play out, with high-profile hearings expected on Capitol Hill.

Here are the other names to know from Trump’s latest announcements:

Check out our full list of Trump’s picks for the Cabinet and key roles here.

Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard.

Republicans avoided a confirmation firestorm when former Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration as attorney general, but lawmakers are already bracing for how they’ll navigate the confirmation process for the next slew of unorthodox picks by President-elect Donald Trump.

Some of Trump’s Cabinet selections, including Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, and Tulsi Gabbard, his pick for director of national intelligence, could force Republicans to choose between their allegiance to Trump and their growing concerns that some of his nominees might not be up for the job — or possible to confirm in a narrowly controlled Senate.

Hegseth on Thursday huddled with a handful of Republican senators, many of them seen as close allies of Trump, for a series of meetings. Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee called it “a great meeting,” while Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma called Hegseth “very qualified to do the job.”

Earlier on the morning of those meetings, new details emerged about a police report from 2017 in which a woman alleged that Hegseth blocked her from leaving a hotel room, took her phone, and then sexually assaulted her even though she “remembered saying ‘no’ a lot,” CNN reported. Police declined to press charges, and Hegseth has maintained the encounter was consensual.

But while some members of the party signal support for the nomination, other Republicans on the Hill warn there are mounting concerns about Hegseth. Although many senators have known Hegseth, a Fox News host and military veteran, for years, the process of vetting him to lead the Pentagon will force them to examine him and his views in a new light.

Read more about the headwinds facing Hegseth and other Cabinet picks here.

Then-candidate Donald Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in New York on September 27.

We asked CNN readers for their questions about the incoming second Trump administration.

Here’s what one reader is wondering about the president-elect’s approach to Ukraine and its war against Russia:

Jim Sciutto is CNN’s chief national security analyst and the author of “The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China, and the Next World War.” This is what he wrote in response:

I don’t speak to anyone in the US, Europe or Ukraine who expects business as usual. The question is not if Trump will change the US approach, but how much.

For my book, several former Trump administration officials told me they expected him to end US support for Ukraine in a second term, part of a broader effort to improve US relations with Russia.

That said, there is another school of thought that Trump — seeing the damage done by the US withdrawal from Afghanistan — would not want to invite accusations of weakness if Ukraine were to fall or otherwise be further occupied by Russia. We don’t know yet.

What is clear is that he has said multiple times he intends to end the war. The question is: How far will he be willing to go to do that? And can he end it, given Russian President Vladimir Putin sees the Ukraine war as a strategic interest?

His Cabinet appointments are somewhat contradictory, with some having expressed support for Ukraine, while his pick for spy chief, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, blamed Russia’s invasion on NATO.

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, who was President-elect Donald Trump's first nominee to be attorney general, closes a door to a private meeting with Vice President-elect JD Vance and Republican Senate Judiciary Committee members at the Capitol in Washington, DC, on November 20.

Matt Gaetz, the embattled former Florida lawmaker, became the first of President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks for his second administration to withdraw from consideration.

Gaetz, who was the subject of a House Ethics Committee probe into allegations of sexual misconduct and other wrongdoing, dropped out Thursday due to flagging support on Capitol Hill, where Cabinet selections face confirmation hearings in the Senate.

While he is the first pick from Trump’s current slate to do so after being publicly named, it’s not without precedent in recent presidencies.

Here’s a look at the past three decades: