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Trump Team Blindsided by Latest Details of Sexual-Assault Allegations Against Hegseth

The president-elect is still behind his pick for defense secretary, but the transition team is growing frustrated with the candidate.

Defense-secretary nominee Pete Hegseth was on Capitol Hill on Thursday. Photo: nathan howard/Reuters

Defense-secretary nominee Pete Hegseth was on Capitol Hill on Thursday. Photo: nathan howard/Reuters

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team was blindsided by the latest details to emerge about a 2017 sexual-assault allegation against Pete Hegseth, increasing their frustration with the man nominated to lead the Pentagon, according to people familiar with the matter.

The transition team, which hadn’t been told about the original allegation before announcing Hegseth, was surprised again late Wednesday night when the Monterey, Calif., city police released a report about the 2017 allegations. The heavily redacted report details a boozy night at a hotel in California, a poolside argument and two conflicting versions of what ultimately took place inside Hegseth’s hotel room.

The transition team wasn’t told that a copy of the police report had been released to Hegseth previously, the people familiar with the discussions said. The Monterey police said a redacted version of the report had been released to Hegseth on March 30, 2021.

“This is another instance of people being blindsided, so I think there’s rising frustration there,” said a person familiar with the transition. While the president-elect is still behind Hegseth for now, “if this continues to be a drumbeat and the press coverage continues to be bad, particularly on TV, then I think there is a real chance that he loses Trump’s confidence.”

Hegseth told reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday after meetings with senators that “the matter was fully investigated and I was completely cleared.” Through his lawyer, he has acknowledged the sexual encounter but said it was consensual, while the woman who made the allegation hasn’t spoken publicly.

Officially, Trump’s transition team is standing by Hegseth. “This report corroborates what Mr. Hegseth’s attorneys have said all along: the incident was fully investigated, and no charges were filed because police found the allegations to be false,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump’s transition team, said in a statement.

The details about the incident contained in the report, which was released to media the evening before Hegseth was set to meet with a number of senators on Thursday, are likely to draw renewed scrutiny to the allegations at a pivotal moment for his nomination. Hegseth was already bracing for a bruising confirmation hearing next year amid questions about the alleged sexual misconduct and his qualifications for the job.

With a 53-47 majority in the new Senate, Republicans can afford only three defections, assuming all Democrats are opposed. So far, there were no public breaks with the pick.

Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.), who will become the No. 2 Senate Republican in January, called Hegseth “a strong nominee” after their morning meeting. “Pete pledged that the Pentagon will focus on strength and hard power—not the current administration’s woke political agenda.”

“I think he can explain a lot of the situations. I think he’s going to be just fine,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R., Okla.) said about the allegations. Regarding the police report, he said, “If you read it, you can clearly see that it was two people flirting with each other.”

 

 

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen former Fox News host and combat veteran Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense. Photo Illustration: Ryan Trefes

“This police report confirms what I have said all along that the incident was fully investigated and police found the allegations to be false, which is why no charges were filed,” Hegseth’s lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, said.

The 22-page police report, which cites video-surveillance footage, text messages and interviews with witnesses, is unlikely to settle the question of exactly what happened on the evening of Oct. 7, 2017, but offers a detailed, lurid and often conflicting portrayal of the events leading up to the alleged assault. It also reveals that the police involvement was sparked by a request from the woman for a sexual-assault examination at a hospital four days after the encounter.

At the time, the woman told the nurse she believed something had been slipped into her drink before the incident.

No charges were ever filed against Hegseth, who at the time was a rising star at Fox News. In 2020, fearing that a lawsuit would end his job at the network, Hegseth paid the woman as part of a nondisclosure agreement, Parlatore told The Wall Street Journal.

The investigation started on Oct. 12, 2017, after the woman, identified in the report as Jane Doe, went to a medical clinic requesting a sexual-assault examination, prompting a nurse to contact the police.

Both Hegseth and the woman said they attended a party following a conference held by the California Federation of Republican Women at the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel and Spa. Hegseth, then a Fox News commentator, had given the keynote address. After the party, she went to the hotel’s Knuckles Sports Bar with a group of women, she told police.

“That’s when things got fuzzy,” she said, according to the report. 

Police later found video-surveillance footage showing the woman, Hegseth and another woman walking into the hotel lobby toward the bar before midnight. The three didn’t appear inebriated, the report said.

At the bar, the woman told police she witnessed Hegseth acting “inappropriately,” including rubbing women on their legs. After leaving the bar, the two got into an argument about Hegseth’s behavior toward women at the conference, she said.

The argument was apparently loud enough to spark a complaint from other guests about a disturbance near the pool, according to a hotel employee interviewed by police. When the employee went to respond, Hegseth began to curse, saying he had freedom of speech, and the woman intervened, apologizing for Hegseth’s actions, according to the report.

The employee told police that Hegseth was “very intoxicated,” while the woman was “standing on her own and was very coherent.” Hegseth told police that he was “buzzed” but not intoxicated.

Hegseth and the woman then went to his hotel room, and from there the accounts diverged.

The woman told police that Hegseth asked her who she was texting and took her phone. The police report showed she was texting her husband, who was staying at the hotel with her and their small children, until around 2 a.m.

When she tried to leave the room, Hegseth blocked the door, she told police. She recalled saying “no” repeatedly, but didn’t remember much else, according to the report.

Hegseth, who was in the midst of getting a divorce from his second wife after fathering a child with a producer at the network, told police that it was a consensual encounter and that they had both acknowledged it was something they shouldn’t be doing. She told him she would tell her husband she had fallen asleep in another hotel room, Hegseth recounted to police.

Her husband told the police that when she stopped responding to texts and calls, he went to look for her, but came back to their room after he couldn’t find her. The woman returned to their hotel room in the early morning hours, according to her and her husband.

She didn’t remember the interaction with Hegseth until days later, she said. Her husband told police she told him that she had been sexually assaulted three days after the incident, and that she suffered nightmares and “out of the blue she would cry.”

Hegseth, meanwhile, was back in his seat at Fox & Friends the following week, and on Oct. 23 attended a small, private dinner in the East Wing of the White House with Trump.

Vivian Salama contributed to this article.

Write to Lara Seligman at lara.seligman@wsj.com, Vera Bergengruen at vera.bergengruen@wsj.com and Nancy A. Youssef at nancy.youssef@wsj.com

Author: Editors Desk, Lara Seligman, Vera Bergengruen and Nancy A. Youssef

Source: WSJ:

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