Trump transition live updates: Johnson says he, Trump didn't discuss Gaetz Ethics Committee report

Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump's pick for defense secretary, paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017 as part of a settlement agreement, an attorney for Hegseth said in a statement on Saturday.

Tim Parlatore, a lawyer for the Fox News star, said in the statement that Hegseth settled in December 2020 only because he feared his career would suffer if her allegations were made public. Parlatore said Hegseth was the victim of "blackmail" and "false claims of sexual assault" by an unidentified woman after a Republican women's convention in California on Oct. 7, 2017.

"Knowing that it was the height of the MeToo movement and any public accusation would result in his immediate termination from Fox, Mr. Hegseth ultimately decided to enter into a settlement for a significantly reduced amount," according to the statement.

In Parlatore's telling, Hegseth met the woman an event afterparty, where he became "visibly intoxicated." The woman "led him by the arm to his hotel room" where the two engaged in a "consensual sexual encounter."

"The complainant was the aggressor in initiating sexual activity," Parlatore wrote.

Read more on this report here.

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday maintained that he had not discussed the House Ethics Committee's report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz with Trump.

Asked on CNN's "State of the Union" if Trump encouraged him to change his position and "squash" the committee's report on the president-elect's attorney general pick, Johnson replied, "No, he did not."

"The president and I have literally not discussed one word about the Ethics report, not once. And I have been with him quite a bit this week between Washington and Mar-a-Lago and last night in Madison Square Garden."

Johnson said the speaker of the House is not involved with the Ethics Committee - " can't be, shouldn't be, because the speaker can't put a thumb on the scale or have anything to do with that."

The speaker told CNN's Jake Tapper that he had no idea of what was in the report.

"I didn't even know about it, Jake, until the middle of this week, when it was announced in the press," he said.

But Johnson said the report shouldn't be released because Gaetz had resigned from the House.

"There's a very important protocol and tradition and rule that we maintain that the House Ethics Committee's jurisdiction does not extend to non-members of Congress," he said. "I think that would be a Pandora's Box."

-ABC News' Fritz Farrow

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles and Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani held a press conference Sunday following their trilateral defense ministers meeting in Darwin, Australia.

The three leaders were asked about how they think President-elect Donald Trump's administration will affect the war in Ukraine, defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth's qualifications to lead the Department of Defense and the North Korean troops deployed to fight alongside the Russian military in Ukraine.

Marles said he looks "forward to building a relationship" with Hegseth, calling the defense secretary position a "huge global role," and said the Fox News host has "an enormous challenge ahead of him."

"Everything that I've heard about Pete Hegseth since his name became public, is in terms of in the context of becoming the secretary of defense, has been positive, and I approached the prospect of getting to know Pete Hegseth and working with him with enormous optimism," Marles said.

Austin said, "it's the prerogative the president elect to nominate whoever he deems appropriate to serve on his cabinet," and that the Pentagon is "focused on a smooth and an effective transition."

-ABC News' Nathan Luna

President-elect Donald Trump announced Saturday that Chris Wright is his nominee to lead the Department of Energy.

Wright, who must be approved by the Senate, is the chief executive of Liberty Energy - the world's second-largest fracking services company - and is one of the industry's most outspoken critics of the effort to combat climate change.

"There is no climate crisis, and we're not in the midst of an energy transition either," Wright said in a video posted to LinkedIn last year.

A 2021 study published in the environmental journal Environmental Research Letters, found that 99% of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change.

"I think by far the biggest challenge with climate change today is policies pursued in the name of climate change that make energy more expensive and less reliable," Wright told the Heritage Foundation last year.

According to the World Resources Institute, "solar and wind now provide the cheapest power for 67% of the world" and in the United States, wind is the cheapest source of new bulk electricity per megawatt-hour.

"As Secretary of Energy, Chris will be a key leader, driving innovation, cutting red tape, and ushering in a new 'Golden Age of American Prosperity and Global Peace,'" Trump said.

-ABC News' Lalee Ibssa, Peter Charalambous and Matthew Glasser