It would be an overstatement to suggest that Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s scandal-plagued choice to lead the Department of Defense, has never overseen an organization. The Republican might be known to the public as a former Fox News host, but he also ran two advocacy organizations: Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America.
In theory, this might make his prospective Pentagon nomination appear slightly more credible. In practice, it’s not nearly that simple: The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer wrote a brutal new report indicating that Hegseth was forced to step down from his role in both groups “in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.”
A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events. The detailed seven-page report—which was compiled by multiple former C.V.A. employees and sent to the organization’s senior management in February, 2015—states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team. The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization’s female staffers, whom they divided into two groups—the “party girls” and the “not party girls.”
The same report added that Hegseth’s former colleagues complained about his groups operating under hostile workplace conditions and ignoring serious accusations of impropriety. (Neither NBC News nor MSNBC has independently confirmed the allegations in Mayer’s report.)
Mayer also spoke with one person who worked with Hegseth who said, “I’ve seen him drunk so many times. I’ve seen him dragged away not a few times but multiple times. To have him at the Pentagon would be scary.”
The same unnamed source added that when many Concerned Veterans for America employees heard Hegseth was under consideration to serve as secretary of defense, “it wasn’t ‘No,’ it was ‘Hell No!’”
A lawyer representing Hegseth described shared a statement with The New Yorker in which he said a Hegseth “adviser” described the report as “outlandish,” and attributed the allegations to “a petty and jealous disgruntled former associate.” (Hegseth’s attorney declined to comment to NBC News, and the Trump transition team didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.)
The New Yorker report, however, doesn’t rely on a single source. Rather, it follows “a trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues,” which characterizes Hegseth as a predatory racist with a substance abuse problem who badly mismanaged the only two organizations he ever led.
The report also comes just days after The New York Times published a related report on a 2018 email Hegseth’s mother sent to him in which she accused him of routinely mistreating women and displaying a lack of character. (She later disavowed that message and apologized in a subsequent email; neither MSNBC nor NBC News have obtained her emails.)
Whether Trump and his team, who’ve largely rejected the idea of conducting background checks, were aware of any of these allegations is unclear.
Nevertheless, these allegations aren’t the only thing that should doom the prospects for the prospective Pentagon leader. We are, after all, talking about a right-wing television personality who’s argued, as recently as this month, that women in the armed forces shouldn’t be allowed to serve in combat roles. Hegseth has also talked about ousting military leaders from their positions if he considers them “woke.” What’s more, he’s written bizarre and conspiratorial books, condemned the military’s ban on right-wing extremists, and peddled anti-Muslim rhetoric. Perhaps most importantly, a woman accused Hegseth of sexual assault in 2017. He’s denied the allegations, insisting the sexual encounter was consensual. The former Fox News host paid his accuser an undisclosed amount of money in exchange for her staying quiet. (No charges were filed in the case.) By any sane measure, Hegseth is the least qualified and most scandal-plagued Pentagon nominee in American history. In a healthy political environment, he wouldn’t even be considered for such a powerful and important leadership position. He’ll be confirmed anyway unless four Senate Republicans step up and oppose him. Watch this space. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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