Trump Transition Live Updates: Cabinet Picks and Matt Gaetz News

If confirmed, Mr. Lutnick — who has donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s super PAC in recent years — would join a long list of commerce secretaries chosen from a president’s donors. He has also faced questions about potential conflicts in his role overseeing Mr. Trump’s transition, because he has not stepped away from running financial firms that serve corporate clients, traders, cryptocurrency platforms and real estate ventures, which are regulated by the agencies with leadership he is helping select.

Mr. Lutnick’s candidacy surfaced as Mr. Trump’s choice to lead the Justice Department, Matt Gaetz, the former Florida congressman, faced intense scrutiny. An unidentified hacker gained access to a file shared in a secure link among lawyers with clients who have given damaging testimony related to Mr. Gaetz, someone with knowledge of the activity said on Tuesday.

The file is said to include sworn testimony by a woman who said that she had sex with Mr. Gaetz in 2017 when she was 17, in addition to testimony by a second woman who said that she had witnessed the encounter. The material does not appear to have been made public by the hacker.

Mr. Trump continues to consider candidates for other high-level positions, including Treasury secretary, a position that could involve an unconventional and incongruous set of policy demands.

None of Mr. Trump’s cabinet choices have been officially nominated, which can be done only by a sitting president. They are also subject to Senate scrutiny. The chamber is controlled by Republicans, but confirmation could still be a challenging for some of Mr. Trump’s more contentious picks — including Mr. Gaetz, whom Mr. Trump has privately admitted may have difficulty being confirmed.

There may be a boundary-testing workaround to get his choices through. Mr. Trump has repeatedly pushed for so-called recess appointments, which allow a president to bypass the normal Senate confirmation procedures to appoint agency chiefs such as Mr. Gaetz.

Here’s what else to know:

• SpaceX launch: Mr. Trump was set to attend a SpaceX launch in Texas on Tuesday, in yet another demonstration of the billionaire Elon Musk’s closeness to the incoming president. Mr. Trump has made no secret of his admiration for Mr. Musk’s rocket launches.

• Transportation pick: On Monday, Mr. Trump selected Sean Duffy, a former Republican congressman from Wisconsin and a Fox Business host, as his choice to lead the Transportation Department. Mr. Duffy is the second cabinet selection to come from the Fox airwaves, after Mr. Trump said he would nominate Pete Hegseth as his defense secretary.

• Trump’s Treasury pick: Mr. Trump’s Treasury secretary will help steer tax cuts through Congress and lead trade talks with China as part of a broad portfolio likely to involve unconventional ideas about economic policy. Budget experts have warned that Mr. Trump’s plans could add as much as $15 trillion to the national debt while increasing inflation and slowing growth.

• Defying the #MeToo movement: Mr. Trump, who was found liable in a civil trial last year of sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, chose a defense secretary, an attorney general, a secretary of health and human services and an efficiency boss who have been accused of variations of sexual misconduct and, like the president-elect, deny them.

As has been the case with many of Mr. Trump’s job candidates, Mr. Musk’s influence and presence brings potential conflicts of interest. Mr. Musk’s SpaceX program has already received a $4.4 billion commitment from the federal government to pay for Starship missions to the moon, and SpaceX has secured more than $10 billion worth of federal contracts over the last decade. Several of Mr. Musk’s companies have been targeted by federal agencies, in at least 20 investigations or lawsuits.

Although he and Mr. Musk only recently became close allies, Mr. Trump had long expressed admiration for Mr. Musk’s rocket launches and would frequently reference SpaceX during campaign speeches.

The SpaceX launch on Tuesday is a pivotal one for Mr. Musk’s aspirations. It is the sixth test of its Starship rocket, the largest ever built, which Mr. Musk also hopes will deliver more of his communications satellites into orbit; carry NASA astronauts to the moon; and, eventually, take humans to Mars.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social that Mr. Lutnick “will lead our tariff and trade agenda, with additional direct responsibility for the Office of the United States Trade Representative.”

Over the past two years, Mr. Lutnick has donated $1 million to Mr. Trump’s super PAC, according to federal election records, and hosted a fund-raiser at his Bridgehampton, N.Y., home that raised $15 million. All told, he donated or raised more than $75 million for groups supporting Mr. Trump in the 2024 cycle, according to someone familiar with his fund-raising who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic figures.

Mr. Lutnick has been an ardent defender of Mr. Trump’s plans for imposing tariffs on imports. He has suggested, however, that they should be used to negotiate trade deals with other nations and that goods that the United States does not produce should not necessarily face tariffs.

“Donald Trump is here to protect the American worker,” Mr. Lutnick told CNBC earlier this year.

Mr. Lutnick had been under consideration to serve as Mr. Trump’s Treasury secretary and had garnered support from Elon Musk, who has become an influential adviser to the president-elect.

But the competition for that job has been fierce, with one person describing the battle as a knife fight. Mr. Trump also privately expressed frustration that Mr. Lutnick had been trying to manipulate the transition process.

If confirmed, Mr. Lutnick would join a long line of commerce secretaries who have been chosen from among a president’s biggest donors. But the Commerce Department — which has an $11 billion budget and roughly 51,000 workers — has grown in importance in its own right in recent years.

The agency is the nation’s primary advocate for the commercial interests of U.S. businesses globally. However, it also oversees an increasingly important system of technology restrictions, which bar exports of certain technology, including semiconductors, to China, Russia and elsewhere, for national security reasons.

It is also charged with dispensing tens of billions of dollars of subsidies to U.S. chip manufacturers under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, and regulating artificial intelligence. Because of this, it is considered one of the most critical parts of the government in determining whether China or the United States will dominate industries of the future.

Under the current secretary, Gina Raimondo, the Commerce Department has signed preliminary term sheets agreeing to grant many U.S. chip manufacturers money, but it has not disbursed many of the funds. It remains to be seen whether the Trump administration follows through with those plans, or tries to make major changes to that program.

Mr. Lutnick will also inherit an effort by the Biden administration to provide broadband internet access to at least 6.25 million households and locations across the country by 2025.

The department has a sprawling array of other responsibilities and is sometimes jokingly referred to as the “hall closet” of government. Its other roles include counting the U.S. population during the census, overseeing America’s fisheries, forecasting the weather and helping to develop global technological standards.

Bureaus within the department promote American businesses owned by minorities, grant patents and trademarks, and oversee business activity in space. The department also analyzes the world’s oceans and atmosphere, researches the effects of climate change and provides much of the data that the country uses for weather forecasting and severe weather warnings.

In addition to being chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, Mr. Lutnick is also chairman of BGC Group Inc., a brokerage and financial technology company, and of Newmark Group, a commercial real estate service provider. He could face questions during the confirmation process about his finances and potential conflicts of interest.

His companies are involved in nearly every sector in the U.S. economy. Newmark Group consults on commercial real estate around the world. Cantor and BGC clients could be affected by a broad array of government policies and regulations, including tariffs, the corporate tax rate, or the Food and Drug Administration’s approval or rejection of new drugs.

Mr. Lutnick, who was orphaned in his teens, made his fortune as a trader of U.S. government bonds on Wall Street. He earned a reputation as a ruthless competitor, battling his mentor as he lay on his deathbed for control of Cantor Fitzgerald.

Mr. Lutnick narrowly escaped death during the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when he was a young chief executive. The offices of Cantor Fitzgerald were high in the World Trade Center towers, and 658 of the company’s employees, including Mr. Lutnick’s brother, Gary, perished. They represented almost a quarter of the people killed in the attack on New York. Mr. Lutnick, who had taken his son to school that morning, was not at the office.

Almost all of the company’s brokers were at their desks when the flight hit the tower. Even after losing so many brokers, Cantor Fitzgerald was able to stay in business in part because Mr. Lutnick had been pushing an electronic trading system that did not require as much human input. Mr. Lutnick now runs a charity aimed at helping the victims of terrorism and natural disasters.

During his first term, Mr. Trump rarely read the President’s Daily Brief, a collection of articles prepared by the various intelligence agencies and assembled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

But until the very end of his administration, Mr. Trump regularly took an oral briefing delivered by senior intelligence officers.

Intelligence officials shaped the briefing based on Mr. Trump’s interests, frequently emphasizing trade and economic intelligence. Former officials said they did not shy away from giving him important intelligence on Russia, but would often package it with assessments of what China was doing.

Mr. Trump was particularly interested in intelligence agencies’ assessments of world leaders. Former officials said Mr. Trump was often drawn to topics that had clear narratives, personal elements or visual components.

At least once, Mr. Trump took a picture of a highly classified image taken by a spy satellite and posted it on social media. The picture allowed experts to quickly identify the satellite that took the image.

While intelligence briefings for an incoming president are not ordinarily remarkable, the Biden administration made clear they were cutting Mr. Trump off when he left office. In 2021, President Biden said there was “no need” for Mr. Trump to get intelligence briefings sometimes offered former presidents.

The resumption of the intelligence briefings was first reported by The Washington Post.

A spokeswoman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment directly. But in a statement, the spokeswoman said the office “is acting consistent with the tradition, in place since 1952, of providing intelligence briefings to the president-elect.”

But it is not clear whether Republican senators would go along with that plan by going out of session at Mr. Trump’s request. Some of them have raised particular alarm at the selection of former Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, the ethics-challenged, hard-right firebrand who has a habit of insulting fellow Republican lawmakers, for attorney general.

Mr. Trump could try to force the issue, invoking an untested clause of the Constitution that could be challenged and even end up before the Supreme Court.

Here’s how it works.

Recess appointments were meant to be a logistical fail-safe.

Article II of the Constitution says that the president can name officials “by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.” That has been interpreted for centuries to mean that the chamber is responsible for vetting and ultimately confirming the president’s nominees.

But when the Constitution was written in the country’s early days, travel was by horse, and the Senate often was out of session for weeks or months at a time. If a critical vacancy arose, senators could not necessarily convene quickly to confirm a replacement. So the founders included an exception that allowed the president to fill vacancies that arose during a recess without any action by the Senate.

That is known as a “recess appointment.” There is far less need for it in the era of cars and air travel, but presidents have invoked it in modern times as a matter of convenience and political expediency.

Recess appointments are common, but usually for lower-level officials.

Several presidents have used recess appointments. President Bill Clinton made 139 recess appointments, and President George W. Bush made 171, although neither used the maneuver to fill cabinet positions as Mr. Trump wants to do.

President Barack Obama filled 32 positions using recess appointments, including the assistant attorney general and several under secretary roles at various departments.

Because recess appointments were never designed to be permanent, the appointee’s term expires at the end of the next congressional session. There are also limitations on how and when a recess appointee can be paid.

Because of a constitutional quirk, neither chamber recesses for long.

Both the House and Senate frequently take long breaks. But to comply with a constitutional requirement that neither chamber adjourn for three days or more without the consent of the other, they typically convene for a brief period every three days.

Little business, if any, is conducted during these meetings, called “pro forma” sessions. They are also used to prevent recess appointments or pocket vetoes, a way of allowing a bill to die if it is left unsigned by the president when Congress adjourns. The sessions usually involve the saying of a prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance before a single member bangs the gavel to adjourn and restart the three-day clock.

In 2014, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Mr. Obama had violated the Constitution by making recess appointments during a break in the Senate’s work when the chamber was convening pro forma sessions. Those breaks were too short to be considered recesses, the justices ruled.

They said the Senate must be out for at least 10 days for it to count as a recess for the purpose of the president’s appointment power.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader who is stepping down from his leadership role in the next Congress, filed an amicus brief in that case.

Trump could try to force a recalcitrant Senate to recess, but the power is untested.

Article II of the Constitution allows a president to adjourn one or both chambers of Congress under certain circumstances, including if the House and Senate disagree about when to be in session.

In that scenario, the Republican-led House could pass an adjournment resolution and if the Senate refused to approve it, Mr. Trump could, as the Constitution says, “adjourn them to such a time as he shall think proper.” In theory, he could then make recess appointments. It appears that no president has ever tried that particular maneuver.

Edward Whelan, a conservative scholar, wrote in a recent Washington Post opinion piece that the scenario was a “cockamamie scheme” that Speaker Mike Johnson should denounce and refuse to implement.

Even if he went along, it is highly likely that Democrats would follow Mr. McConnell’s example and challenge Mr. Trump’s move as unconstitutional, almost certainly landing the question before the Supreme Court. Such a case, however, could take a long time to be adjudicated. By then, a theoretical Attorney General Matt Gaetz could have run the Justice Department for months or years.

But acknowledging the unprecedented nature of the case — Mr. Trump would be the first felon to serve as president — the prosecutors raised the prospect of a four-year freeze so that he will not be sentenced for his crimes until he is out of office.

The judge, Juan M. Merchan, will decide in the coming weeks whether to freeze the case or dismiss it outright, a momentous ruling that will shape the outcome of the only one of Mr. Trump’s four criminal cases that made it to trial. Dismissing the case would further embolden Mr. Trump as he enters his second presidential term, solidifying an aura of invincibility around him.

In their letter, the prosecutors spoke out against a dismissal, urging the judge to balance the interests of the presidency with “the integrity of the criminal justice system.”

“The people deeply respect the office of the president, are mindful of the demands and obligations of the presidency, and acknowledge that defendant’s inauguration will raise unprecedented legal questions,” the prosecutors wrote. “We also deeply respect the fundamental role of the jury in our constitutional system.”

In a recent letter to the district attorney’s office, Mr. Trump’s lawyers requested that the prosecutors proactively move to dismiss the case.

Doing so, they argued, would “avoid unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern,” citing the “complex, sensitive and intensely time-consuming” presidential transition process.

The district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, a career prosecutor and elected Democrat, took a week to deliberate before delivering Tuesday’s much-anticipated response. His prosecutors ultimately determined that there was no law requiring the dismissal of a jury conviction obtained well before a defendant was elected president.

But Mr. Trump, eager to clear his criminal record, will now take his request to Justice Merchan, setting in motion a legal battle that could cast a shadow on his second presidential term and ultimately reach the Supreme Court. That fight will almost certainly delay Mr. Trump’s sentencing, which had been scheduled for next week.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump, Steven Cheung, celebrated the delay, calling it “a total and definitive victory for President Trump and the American people.”

He added: “The lawless case is now stayed, and President Trump’s legal team is moving to get it dismissed once and for all.”

Mr. Bragg’s options were limited and unappealing: He could have either dropped the case, a move that would have voided the jury’s verdict and alienated his liberal Manhattan base, or suggested some way to pause it, potentially intensifying Mr. Trump’s ire and drawing a legal challenge.

His prosecutors did not exactly propose the four-year freeze. Instead, they raised it as a preferable alternative to a dismissal, citing “the need to balance competing constitutional interests.”

They also asked Justice Merchan to put the case on hold while both sides submit formal arguments in the battle over a potential dismissal.

Those arguments will tee up a legally and politically fraught decision for Justice Merchan, the no-nonsense judge who presided over Mr. Trump’s seven-week trial this year.

Even as Mr. Trump has accused Justice Merchan of being “biased” and “corrupt” — and leveled personal attacks at his daughter, a Democratic political consultant — the judge has vowed to apply “the rules of law evenhandedly.”

It is unclear how Justice Merchan will eventually rule as he balances the weight of a jury verdict against the extraordinary status of the defendant.

A former prosecutor known for his law-and-order leanings, Justice Merchan might be hesitant to throw out the verdict. Instead, he could be more amenable to freezing the case, having already postponed the sentencing twice.

Long sentencing delays are not unheard-of. When defendants are ill — or cooperating with prosecutors against other defendants — it can take months or years for them to be sentenced.

But another delay for Mr. Trump, this one lasting four years, would underscore the sharp reversal in his legal fortunes. Just a few months ago, Mr. Trump was facing the prospect of time behind bars in New York, as well as trials in three other criminal cases.

Now, all four cases may unravel. In July, a judge Mr. Trump appointed during his first term dismissed his federal classified-documents case in Florida in its entirety. The same month, his federal election-interference case in Washington was upended after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision granting him broad immunity for official actions taken as president.

While the federal special counsel who brought those cases sought to revive them, Mr. Trump’s victory thwarted those plans. The judge overseeing his election-interference case in Washington recently paused all filing deadlines while the special counsel, Jack Smith, weighed whether to drop the case.

The future is less clear in Georgia, where Mr. Trump’s state racketeering case has been on hold for months while an appeals court weighs whether to disqualify the prosecutor. At some point, Mr. Trump’s lawyers are expected to call for a long delay, if not an outright dismissal.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers will not settle for a delay in Manhattan, and should Justice Merchan decide against a dismissal, he will not have the final word.

The former and future president could appeal the judge’s decision in either state or federal court. If he loses, the case might wind its way to the Supreme Court, where the 6-to-3 conservative majority includes three justices Mr. Trump appointed.

As he gears up for a legal dogfight, Mr. Trump might eventually revamp his legal team. Last week, he picked two of the lawyers who represented him at trial, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, for senior roles at the Justice Department, most likely creating an opening for a new group of appellate lawyers to take over.

A new legal team could also inherit Mr. Trump’s separate effort to overturn his conviction based on the Supreme Court’s immunity decision. Within hours of the ruling in July, Mr. Trump’s lawyers had moved to throw out the verdict.

Manhattan prosecutors have argued that the immunity ruling had “no bearing” on their case, noting that Mr. Trump’s cover-up of the sex scandal was unrelated to his presidency. Justice Merchan was poised to rule on the matter last week but shelved the decision in light of Mr. Trump’s new bid to have the case dismissed.

Mr. Trump’s two-pronged attack on the Manhattan case — wielding both the immunity ruling and the election results — demonstrated his expansive view of presidential power.

In arguing that the case should be dismissed because of his election, Mr. Trump’s lawyers are likely to rely on broad interpretations of a 1963 law that enshrined the importance of a smooth transition into the presidency, as well as a longstanding Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot face federal criminal prosecution.

That policy undoubtedly applies to both of Mr. Trump’s federal criminal cases, but its authority over Mr. Bragg, a local prosecutor who secured Mr. Trump’s conviction before the presidential election, is an open question.

The stakes remain high for Mr. Trump. He faces up to four years in prison after he leaves the White House, though he would most likely be sentenced to far less time or to probation.

A New York Times examination found that over the past decade in Manhattan, more than a third of convictions for falsifying business records resulted in jail or prison time for the defendants.

Mr. Trump has maintained his innocence and blasted Mr. Bragg for bringing the charges against him, which culminated in May with a jury of 12 New Yorkers handing down a guilty verdict on 34 counts of falsifying business records.

The case arose from the porn star Stormy Daniels’s account of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, which threatened to derail his first presidential run in 2016. To keep the story under wraps, Mr. Trump’s fixer, Michael D. Cohen, reached a $130,000 hush-money deal with Ms. Daniels.

Mr. Trump eventually repaid Mr. Cohen, who later broke with his boss and became a star witness at his trial. The former president, Mr. Cohen testified, orchestrated a scheme to falsify records and hide the true purpose of the reimbursement.

That mix of qualities is not easy to find.

“I think Trump has a problem in that he wants two different things,” said Lawrence H. Summers, who served as Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration. “He wants somebody who will be deeply loyal, and he wants someone who will be deeply reassuring to markets. Since markets are fearful of the tariff agenda, it’s hard to square both things.”

In recent days, Mr. Trump has been considering several candidates for the job, and their prospects have been rising and falling by the hour, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

The current front-runners are Scott Bessent, the billionaire hedge fund manager, and Kevin Warsh, a former Federal Reserve governor. Marc Rowan, the chief executive of Apollo Global Management, is also in the running, while Howard Lutnick, Mr. Trump’s transition co-chairman and the chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, appeared to fall out of favor for that post and was tapped on Tuesday to serve as commerce secretary instead.

Mr. Trump has made unorthodox choices for some cabinet posts. But a Treasury secretary pick who is seen as unserious could rattle markets and impede his ability to deliver on his economic promises. For that reason, Mr. Trump needs a secretary who is respected in corporate America and can strike a balance between supporting tariffs while not seeming eager to start a trade war that could tank the global economy.

“Investors are on edge regarding the Trump Treasury secretary pick and what it might signal about the balance of power within the administration on economic policy, the mix of market-friendly versus -unfriendly policies, and how less market-friendly trade and immigration policies plus deficits will be calibrated to mitigate adverse impacts,” analysts at Evercore ISI wrote in a note to clients this week.

Analysts at the research group Beacon Policy Advisors theorized on Tuesday that Mr. Trump had the stock market in mind as he considered his decision. They noted that one reason Mr. Trump had not selected Robert Lighthizer, his trusted former trade representative and the architect of the tariffs in his first term, was that the president-elect was mindful of the effect that the choice would have on markets.

“Ultimately, Trump will likely select a nominee who can sell his tariffs to the markets rather than mitigate them,” they wrote in a report analyzing the stakes of the decision. “When it comes to Trump, tariffs can be seen as an end goal in themselves.”

Although the Treasury secretary does not direct trade policy or enact tariffs, the person in the role is generally the economic face of an administration whose goal is to instill confidence in the U.S. economy. The Treasury secretary is expected to explain America’s economic policies to companies and investors around the world, helping to ensure that investment flows into the United States and investors continue to see its debt as a solid investment.

The Treasury Department is at the core of the federal government and issues debt to fund the nation’s operations and pay its bills, including paying Social Security and veterans’ benefits. Although the American economy is the strongest in the world, the national debt is approaching $36 trillion, and prices remain high after two years with record levels of inflation.

“Whoever becomes Treasury secretary will face a full plate and daunting challenges, including making the case for large tax cuts, which will cause a huge explosion in debt and deficits, dealing with the Fed — and perhaps combatively so — on behalf of the president,” said Mark Sobel, a longtime former Treasury official.

He added that Mr. Trump’s Treasury secretary will also have to deal with “jousting over the dollar and exchange rate policy with noisy White House and trade teams calling for devaluation.”

Mr. Trump has often said that, for the sake of U.S. exports, he would prefer to see the dollar weaken because that would make American goods cheaper to buy overseas. But most economists expect his plans to impose tariffs on imports and cut taxes, among other actions, to have the opposite effect.

The day after the election, the dollar rose the most it had in years against a basket of other major currencies. And it has continued to rise, hitting a fresh high for the year last week.

Mr. Trump’s victory also has led to unease among bond investors, who worry about government largess and the resurgence of inflation under the president-elect. That has led to a rise in bond yields, which means investors expect to be paid more in interest in exchange for lending to the government.

A booming stock market is another priority for Mr. Trump, who sees stock prices as a critical indicator for the health of the economy. However, during Mr. Trump’s first term, each new round of tariffs that he imposed on Chinese imports sent stocks falling.

That dynamic is likely to play out again, as Mr. Trump has called for blanket tariffs as high as 50 percent on imports and even higher tariffs on goods from certain countries.

“Tariffs are going to increase costs on a lot of U.S. multinationals” said Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The conventional wisdom is that would make many in the market nervous.”

Mr. Setser, who served as the deputy assistant secretary for international economic analysis at the Treasury Department from 2011 to 2015, said that the desire for a rising stock market and higher tariffs were “somewhat in tension” and that Mr. Trump’s Treasury secretary will have to grapple with those crosscurrents.

As Mr. Trump and his advisers have been considering that pick, a belief in the merits of tariffs has been a priority. Mr. Trump’s first Treasury secretary, Steven T. Mnuchin, often argued against increasing tariffs on China and warned about the potential market implications.

That has put the views of the current group of front-runners in focus.

Mr. Warsh argued in a 2011 Wall Street Journal essay written with Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor who ran against Mr. Trump in 2016, that “we must find our voice to resist the rising tide of economic protectionism.”

Mr. Bessent has suggested recently that Mr. Trump’s tariff threats are a “maximalist” negotiating strategy to secure better free trade deals, and he has expressed concern about flouting World Trade Organization rules. Those comments led some of Mr. Bessent’s detractors to argue that he is not a true believer in tariffs or, as the increasingly influential billionaire Elon Musk recently said, is “a business-as-usual choice.”

“Business-as-usual is driving America bankrupt, so we need change one way or another,” Mr. Musk, who expressed support for Mr. Lutnick to get the job, wrote on social media on Saturday.

For Mr. Trump, the decision could come down to whom he most trusts to be loyal.

Stephen Moore, a Heritage Foundation economist who advised Mr. Trump’s first campaign, said that Mr. Trump benefits from aides who will try to steer him away from making mistakes but that he has learned to prioritize hiring people who believe in his policies. That is especially true, he said, when it comes to tariffs.

“If you’re going to go in and work for Trump, you’ve got to be on board with the agenda,” Mr. Moore said.

Marc Rowan, who is being considered by President-elect Donald J. Trump to serve as Treasury secretary, was in Hong Kong on Tuesday speaking at a financial summit where China’s vice-premier, He Lifeng, was also in attendance. The appearance of Rowan, the chief executive of Apollo Global Management, was notable because whomever Trump picks for the position will be at the center of his push for hefty tariffs on Chinese goods and engaging in diplomatic relations with Chinese officials.

In his own remarks, the vice premier told the audience of global financiers that in the face of “external environment changes,” China would respond with “self assertiveness.”

The information was downloaded by a person using the name Altam Beezley at 1:23 p.m. on Monday, according to the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly. A lawyer connected to the case sent an email to the address associated with Altam Beezley, only to be informed in an automated reply that the recipient does not exist.

The material does not appear to have been made public by the hacker.

The documents include information that is under seal with the Justice Department, which investigated Mr. Gaetz but did not file charges, and the House Committee on Ethics, which has completed its own inquiry into the former congressman. The Ethics panel’s members are scheduled to meet on Wednesday to decide on whether to vote to release material it has gathered.

But the hacked trove of documents stems from an altogether different source: a civil suit being pursued by a friend of Mr. Gaetz’s, Christopher Dorworth, a Florida businessman. Mr. Dorworth filed the suit against both the woman who says she had sex with Mr. Gaetz when she was a minor and Joel Greenberg, an erstwhile ally of Mr. Gaetz who is serving an 11-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to federal sex trafficking charges involving the woman.

Mr. Dorworth has claimed that he was defamed by Mr. Greenberg and the woman, both of whom had told federal authorities that Mr. Dorworth hosted parties where he, they, Mr. Gaetz and others took drugs and openly had sex.

In mustering their defense, lawyers for Mr. Greenberg and the woman have solicited sworn statements from others who they say were witnesses. The 24 exhibits were attached to a motion prepared by lawyers for Mr. Greenberg and the woman in response to Mr. Dorworth’s suit.

The hacked information also includes sworn testimony from Mr. Dorworth and his wife, as well as testimony from Michael Fischer, Mr. Gaetz’s former campaign treasurer, who is also said to have attended the party. It also contains various supporting material, such as the gate logs showing who entered the property of the Dorworth home on the evening in July 2017 when the two women said the sexual encounter with Mr. Gaetz occurred.

The material apparently taken is unredacted and includes the names and other personal information of the witnesses but is otherwise said to be more damaging to Mr. Gaetz than to his accusers, according to the person familiar with the hack. The hacker had not contacted the lawyers as of Tuesday morning, and it was not clear what motive the person might have.

Mr. Gaetz resigned last week shortly after President-elect Donald J. Trump announced he planned to nominate the Florida lawmaker to be his attorney general, despite having been investigated by the Justice Department previously.

After the resignation, Speaker Mike Johnson announced that he would not make public the committee’s report because Mr. Gaetz was no longer in office.

Mr. Leppard, speaking to ABC News, said one of the women testified that “in July of 2017, at this house party, she was walking out to the pool area, and she looked to her right, and she saw” Mr. Gaetz “having sex with her friend, who was 17.”

He told CNN that Mr. Gaetz later discovered the girl was underage.

Both women also told the committee that they were paid for sex using Venmo, Mr. Leppard said.

Mr. Gaetz has previously denied the allegations.

Alex Pfeiffer, a spokesman for the Trump transition, said, “Matt Gaetz will be the next Attorney General. He’s the right man for the job and will end the weaponization of our justice system. These are baseless allegations intended to derail the second Trump administration.”

Mr. Gaetz is one of several controversial nominees whom Mr. Trump has announced he will submit for Senate confirmation. But he is the one who has provoked the most negative reactions from Republican senators.

In a statement announcing his choice, Mr. Trump praised Mr. Duffy as a “tremendous and well-liked public servant” with the experience needed to lead the department, which has an annual budget of more than $100 billion and a vast work force.

“Sean will use his experience and the relationships he has built over many years in Congress to rebuild our nation’s infrastructure and usher in a golden age of travel,” Mr. Trump said in a statement.

Mr. Duffy served in Congress from 2011 to 2019 as a Republican. He resigned in September 2019 to help care for a newborn daughter with a birth defect, according to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Mr. Duffy departed Fox News Media on Monday, according to a spokeswoman for the network. He had joined as a contributor in 2020, offering political analysis across all Fox News Media platforms, and had hosted “The Bottom Line” on Fox Business with Dagen McDowell since 2023. He is not Mr. Trump’s only cabinet choice to come from Fox: Pete Hegseth, his pick for defense secretary, is a host on “Fox & Friends.”

Mr. Duffy originally rose to fame in the late 1990s on the MTV reality show “The Real World: Boston.” He also appeared on its sister show, “Road Rules: All Stars,” where he met his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, who is now a Fox News host herself.

If confirmed, Mr. Duffy will oversee a Federal Aviation Administration struggling with air traffic control and a Federal Railroad Administration still pushing for safety reforms after a fiery derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, in 2023. He will also be in charge of assessing how to rebuild the country’s crumbling infrastructure.

Mr. Duffy would also be managing remaining funds from the 2021 $1 trillion infrastructure law, a cornerstone of the Biden administration’s efforts to prioritize rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, and would help to shape its priorities.

Mr. Duffy’s nomination did not appear to set off the sort of opposition that some of Mr. Trump’s other cabinet picks have.

“Transportation policy has a long bipartisan history,” said Representative Rick Larsen of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Transportation Committee, “and I look forward to continuing to maintain the tradition under former Representative Sean Duffy’s leadership and working together to pass the next surface transportation authorization, creating more jobs, if he is confirmed.”

Airlines for America, which represents the country’s largest airlines, praised Mr. Duffy’s nomination. In a statement, Nicholas E. Calio, the president and chief executive of the trade group, said, “Congressman Duffy has a proven track record for getting things done, and we are eager to collaborate with him on key issues impacting the U.S. airline industry.”

A Wisconsin native, Mr. Duffy began his political career as a district attorney for Ashland County, in the northern part of the state. He resigned after winning his congressional election. During his time in Congress, Mr. Duffy served on the House Financial Services Committee.

Mr. Trump credited Mr. Duffy with clearing “extensive Legislative hurdles to build the largest road and bridge project in Minnesota History.” Mr. Duffy was a co-sponsor of bipartisan legislation, led by Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, to support the St. Croix River bridge project, which connects Wisconsin and Minnesota.

As a Fox News contributor, Mr. Duffy was critical of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. On the “Tucker Carlson Tonight” program in December 2022, Mr. Duffy said the holiday airline travel chaos at the time had been foreseeable, adding: “What’s striking is how often this happens. There’s a crisis, and Pete Buttigieg decides to ignore it.”

Before his stint at Fox, Mr. Duffy joined CNN in 2019 as a political commentator. He provoked pushback from his on-air colleagues by embracing Mr. Trump’s position on immigration and promoting a debunked conspiracy theory about the special counsel investigation of Russian election interference.

Mr. Trump’s choice to lead health and human services has made baseless claims about vaccines. His selection for defense secretary is a former Fox News host whose leadership experience has been questioned. His nominee for the director of national intelligence is a favorite of Russian state media.

“Donald Trump is a blunt-force instrument applying blunt-force trauma to the system,” said Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist who remains close to him and was recently released from federal prison for defying a subpoena in the congressional investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Presidents do not normally approach cabinet selections this way. Historically, they work with their teams to figure out in advance what the system will tolerate, eliminating the possibility that skeletons in the closet of a nominee might emerge during Senate hearings.

Mr. Trump largely followed this risk-averse approach at the start of his first term. He appointed people like the four-star general Jim Mattis, who was confirmed with a 98-to-1 bipartisan vote to be Mr. Trump’s first defense secretary.

But this time, emboldened by victory and the submission of the Republican Party, Mr. Trump is innovating. He is using an approach that has been discussed in the past for judicial nominees, which is nominating so many extreme choices that they cannot all be blocked. The strategy has never been used for cabinet picks.

It is possible that enough Republican senators are willing to risk their careers to oppose Mr. Gaetz, although it is unclear what the backup plan would be should Mr. Gaetz falter. Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and pick for deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, is seen as a possibility.

It is also possible that Mr. Gaetz is confirmed, along with the three other nominees who have raised such a furor in Washington. Mr. Trump has wasted no time in barreling ahead and putting personal pressure on senators.

One thing is certain: His four choices would have had virtually no chance of confirmation in a Republican-held Senate in the Washington that existed before 2024.

The president-elect’s choice to lead the Defense Department, Pete Hegseth, is facing an allegation that he sexually assaulted a woman, which he has denied. Beyond that, Mr. Hegseth, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has faced questions about having the requisite experience to run a department with an $850 billion annual budget, three million employees and 750 military bases around the world.

Mr. Trump’s choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is not only a vaccine skeptic but also a supporter of abortion rights who has all but declared war on the pharmaceutical and food industries that have long funded the Republican Party.

And his choice for intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, has blamed the United States and NATO for provoking Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Then there is Mr. Gaetz, who helped orchestrate the ouster of the previous Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy. Mr. Gaetz has been under a yearslong investigation by the House Ethics Committee into allegations that he engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.

Hours after Mr. Trump announced his selection as attorney general, Mr. Gaetz resigned from his seat as a House member from Florida, which effectively ended the investigation. But there is building pressure on the Ethics Committee to release a report on the inquiry.

The question has repeatedly come up in Washington about the vetting done for Mr. Trump’s nominees. The question misses the point. Little more than a cursory Google search would have shown that Mr. Gaetz, Ms. Gabbard and Mr. Kennedy would draw all kinds of protests. Mr. Trump nominated them anyway.

The Trump team, people briefed on its activities say, did engage in vetting for some of his choices, such as Mr. Hegseth. But the sexual assault allegation did not show up because it involved a private settlement agreement with the woman in question, the people briefed on it said.

That left the team dealing with the one thing that Mr. Trump tends not to like: information that he was unaware of, which became an unwanted headline in the media. Still, he has told aides he is firmly behind Mr. Hegseth.

Karoline Leavitt, the incoming White House press secretary, said Mr. Trump had won with “a resounding mandate from the American people to change the status quo in Washington.” She said he had picked “brilliant and highly respected outsiders to serve in his administration, and he will continue to stand behind them as they fight against all those who seek to derail the MAGA agenda.”

For much of the past decade, Mr. Trump has repeatedly swamped the system with provocations. Mr. Bannon memorably stated that their strategy for dealing with the news media was to “flood the zone” with manure.

The strategy has ensured that little focus stays on any single scandal. The caravan moves quickly on to the next, and the next, creating an overall blurring and flattening effect. He has survived them all, including 34 felony convictions and being held liable for sexual abuse.

He has already driven into retirement or primary defeat most of the congressional Republicans who opposed him in his first term. And since defeating Vice President Kamala Harris and becoming the first Republican to claim the popular vote since 2004, Mr. Trump has made clear he will tolerate little dissent from the G.O.P. majorities in the House and the Senate.

He has demanded that the next Senate majority leader, John Thune, allow recess appointments that would let Mr. Trump push through appointees who would otherwise be deemed unfit, making such an agreement a condition for anyone who wanted to be leader.

Liam Donovan, a former National Republican Senatorial Committee aide, said that “we’re on a collision course between traditional senatorial prerogatives and the unique power dynamics of the Trump restoration.”

Now, as Mr. Trump prepares to take office for the second time, he is demonstrating how confident he is that the branches of government will bend even further to accommodate him.

He plans to test just how far he can go.