A woman alleged that Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, prevented her from leaving his hotel room, took her phone and sexually assaulted her, according to a detailed police report made public Wednesday.
The complainant, whose name was redacted from the report, later sought a sexual assault examination at a hospital, leading to a nurse reporting the 2017 incident to law enforcement.
Hegseth, who is tapped to lead the military and the nation’s largest federal bureaucracy, has vehemently denied the sexual assault allegation, describing the sexual encounter with the married woman as consensual. He told police he repeatedly sought the woman’s consent throughout the interaction and insisted she appeared willing. Video footage cited in the report showed the two leaving a hotel bar earlier that evening with their arms linked, appearing friendly.
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“I’ll keep this very simple, the matter was fully investigated, and I was completely cleared, and that’s where I’m going to leave it,” Hegseth told reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday after meeting with several Republican senators.
The former Fox New personality has a history of infidelity, including an extramarital affair with a woman who would become his third wife when he was still married to his second. A checkered sexual history can bring extra scrutiny to security clearances granting access to the military’s most cloistered secrets, and could be viewed as a vulnerability that could be exploited by adversaries.
But in practicality, Trump and the executive branch could waive any issues that arise with Hegseth’s background check, if he is confirmed to lead the Pentagon.
The sexual assault allegation, which was disclosed by local authorities in California after Hegseth’s nomination by Trump, has become a potential political liability, as he seeks support in the Senate, which vets and approves presidential nominees. Another Trump nominee, Matt Gaetz, who was tapped to be U.S. attorney general, withdrew from consideration Thursday amid allegations he paid women for sex, had sex with an underage teenager and did illegal drugs.
The alleged incident involving Hegseth occurred in October 2017, during a Republican women’s conference in Monterey, California, at a Hyatt hotel. The woman told police she drank with Hegseth at the hotel bar and said her memory started to become hazy. She recalled being in Hegseth’s hotel room, saying she remembered repeatedly saying “no.”
After the sexual act, the woman told Hegseth that she would tell her husband — who was staying at the same hotel — that she fell asleep on a couch in someone else’s room. Hegseth told her she did not have to worry about him saying anything but told authorities she “showed early signs of regret.”
Hegseth paid the woman an undisclosed amount of money as part of a nondisclosure agreement in 2020, according to his attorney, Tim Parlatore, who told Military.com that the sex was consensual and that the now-former Fox News host was a victim of blackmail.
Military.com reached out to Parlatore regarding the details in the police report but did not hear back in time for publication.
Before his nomination, Hegseth was best known as a former co-host of “Fox and Friends Weekend” and by his other frequent appearances on Fox News. The channel notified Military.com on Monday that Hegseth was no longer employed there. He also served 13 years in the National Guard, with several breaks in service, and left as a major in 2021.
After the 2017 incident, the woman told police she did not recall how she ended up in Hegseth’s bedroom, only remembering his military dog tags hanging off his neck and over her head.
She could not recall to authorities how much alcohol she consumed but told a hospital nurse her drink may have been drugged because her memory was hazy. Witnesses told police she had no clear hangover symptoms the following day.
Charges were never filed against Hegseth, but local police did not say the allegations were false. Meanwhile, some Republicans on Capitol Hill were downplaying the sexual encounter on Thursday, as Hegseth and Vice President-elect JD Vance were visiting offices in an attempt to whip up support for the nomination.
“I don’t think there’s any way in the world you can say that this was a sexual assault,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters after his meeting with Hegseth. “You can read the report yourself. If you read it, you can clearly see that it was two people flirting with each other. … There’s a reason why there were no charges set.”
Asked whether the alleged assault and history of infidelity makes Hegseth a security risk, Mullin dismissed the concern.
“Infidelity? He wasn’t married at the time” of the alleged assault, Mullin said.
Court records however, dispute that assertion.
Two months before the incident, in August 2017, Hegseth had a daughter with Fox News producer Jennifer Rauchet, according to social media posts from the pair. A month later, Hegseth’s second wife, Samantha, filed for divorce, according to Minnesota court records. That divorce wasn’t finalized until July 2018, the records show.
The incident is also not the first time Hegseth has been found to be unfaithful.
Hegseth’s first marriage to Meredith Schwarz ended when she filed for divorce in 2008, according to Minnesota court records. Numerous outlets reported, citing the divorce judgment, that the marriage ended over Hegseth’s infidelity.
However, none of those things stopped Hegseth’s rise into Trump’s orbit.
In the years that followed the sexual assault allegation, Rauchet and Hegseth married at Trump National Golf Club Colts Neck in New Jersey, and he successfully lobbied the then-President Trump to exonerate two Army officers accused of murder while serving in Afghanistan and lessen the punishment of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who was accused of fatally stabbing a teenage ISIS prisoner.
Hegeseth was also considered to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs before the first Trump term ended.
However, Hegseth’s nomination this month came as a surprise choice to lead the Pentagon, due to his lack of experience in defense policy and his modest level of military experience. He capped his military career with a brief stint in the Washington D.C. National Guard serving as a midlevel part-time official, which would have not exposed him to high-level military planning or operations.
He has also long argued against allowing women in military combat roles, which could affect thousands of troops if acted on as defense secretary, and questioned whether women in the military make the country safer.
Related: Thousands of Women Serve in Combat Roles. Pentagon Nominee Hegseth Says They Shouldn’t.
