A Wastrel, a Drunk and a Predator

Trump’s nomination of Pete Hegseth as Defense Secretary is unraveling fast.

Photo: Tierney L. Cross for The New York Times

Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth, is having a very bad few days. And Trump’s transition team certainly is wishing it had vetted Hegseth better.

The ink has barely dried on the story that Hegseth had sexually assaulted a woman after a Republican conference in California. Trump’s people apparently were caught completely off guard by this report, which should have come up when they asked, “Anything else we should know about?”

As Rolling Stone reported, the transition team is furious.

“How did he not know? Why didn’t he tell us?” a source close to Trump says. “Pete wasn’t interviewing for a job at McDonald’s; this is the fucking Pentagon! … Even if the allegations are fake, it doesn’t matter because he was supposed to tell us what we needed to know so we could be better prepared to defend him — not learn about it from the media.”

(Narrator: The allegations are not fake. Hegseth paid the accuser off to keep her quiet so he wouldn’t get fired from his Fox job, and his behavior is consistent with what you’re about to hear.)

You can almost hear the Trump team’s frustration and disdain. “When we ask, ‘Is there anything else we need to know about?’ that is usually a good time to mention a police report,” one adviser told Rolling Stone. “Obviously he remembered that this all happened and there is no way — I don’t think — he could have believed this wouldn’t come out once he got nominated.”

Then over the weekend, another gut punch hit when Hegseth’s own mother’s email to him surfaced. In a letter written during Hegseth’s (checks notes) second divorce, his mother assailed him for abusing “many” women for years. “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego,” she wrote.

If being put on blast by your own mother wasn’t enough, an even bigger bombshell dropped today from reporter Jane Mayer of The New Yorker. Through painstaking reporting, Mayer unearthed a damning whistleblower report and supporting documentation suggesting Hegseth had been forced out of leadership from two nonprofits over mismanagement of funds, public intoxication and sexual misbehavior.

Yikes.

In today’s piece, I’ll summarize Mayer’s blockbuster reporting, discussing Hegseth’s mismanagement of funds, his well-documented episodes of public intoxication and his sexual predation. In Hegseth’s case, because of the unique importance of the role of Secretary of Defense, the new information is a five alarm fire that could cause at least four GOP senators to withhold their support. But even if GOP opposition doesn’t materialize, this is going to be a damaging and politically costly confirmation, all from unforced errors of appointing someone without having fully researched his very, very bad past.

Mismanagement of funds

Hegseth once ran a conservative veterans’ advocacy group called Concerned Veterans for America (C.V.A.). I should say, rather, he ran it into the ground. He had to resign from the group in 2016 after serious allegations of mismanagement and abuse arose. As an account in Military Times noted, Hegseth had “quietly resigned,” in a decision that was “mutual” with the organization, amid “rumors of a rift between the former C.E.O. and the group’s financial backers.”

Mayer writes, “Hegseth, who had no other job lined up at the time, gave no explanation for his departure, other than saying, ‘Sometimes it just makes sense to make a transition.’” In short, he was forced out. Three sources, including one of the contributors to that damning whistleblower report, confirmed to Mayer that Hegseth was asked to leave.

One email congratulating Hegseth’s successor on getting Hegseth out noted not only that he had an alcohol abuse problem but had “treated the organization funds like they were a personal expense account—for partying, drinking, and using C.V.A. events as little more than opportunities to ‘hook up’ with women on the road.”

As Mayer reports,

The 2015 federal tax filing by C.V.A. has an unusual note saying that “major programs developed in the last fiscal year were paused,” and it describes Hegseth as “President (outgoing).” By the start of 2016, Hegseth, who had been paid a salary of $177,460, was out of his job.

But this wasn’t the first time Hegseth financially mismanaged a nonprofit. In 2007, he became the leader of Vets for Freedom (V.F.F.) an organization that was wholly “astroturfed” by billionaire backers, meaning it was only made to seem like it had wide, grassroots support. Under Hegseth, who admitted to a National Guard publication, “I had no idea what I was doing,” the organization ran up huge debts and was unable to pay its creditors. Mayer reports,

The group’s primary donors became concerned that their money was being wasted on inappropriate expenses, including rumors of parties that “could politely be called trysts,” as the former associate of the group put it. The early sympathizer said, “I was not the first to hear that there was money sloshing around and sexually inappropriate behavior in the workplace.”

The finances of the V.F.F. quickly grew more dire, and the donors moved to take control, hiring a forensic accountant to review its books. What the review revealed was shocking:

In January, 2009, Hegseth sent a letter to the donors admitting that, as of that day, the group had less than a thousand dollars in the bank and $434,833 in unpaid bills. The group also had run up credit-card debts of as much as seventy-five thousand dollars. Hegseth said that he took full responsibility for the mess, but added that, unless the donors gave him more funds, V.F.F. would have to file for bankruptcy and close down.

A donor initially stepped up but then decided, “Let’s shut this thing down. Pete can get another job.”

Those who interacted with Hegseth in that period, including Margaret Hoover, a Republican political commentator and political strategist who worked as an adviser to V.F.F. between 2008 and 2010, now have deep concerns about his ability to run the Pentagon.

“I watched him run an organization very poorly, lose the confidence of donors,” Mayer notes Hoover told CNN in an interview. “The organization ultimately folded and was forced to merge with another organization who individuals felt could run and manage funds on behalf of donors more responsibly than he could. That was my experience with him.”

V.F.F. was a small organization with fewer than ten employees and a budget of between five and ten million dollars. “And he couldn’t do that properly, I don’t know how he’s going to run an organization with an 857 billion dollar budget and three million individuals.”

Public intoxication

In its seven pages, a damning whistleblower report against Hegseth contains numerous specific allegations about his public drunkenness. It raises very serious questions about whether Hegseth has a current alcohol abuse problem that could impair his critical functions as Defense Secretary. It also makes clear that many people have witnessed Hegseth inebriated and even passed out in public—not very reassuring about someone who will be the other party besides Trump with the nuclear codes.

Hegseth was the president of C.V.A. from 2013 to 2016. The report was compiled by multiple employees of C.V.A. and sent to senior management in February 2015. It documents at least the following incidents:

• Several top managers were involved in drunken episodes, including an altercation at a casino and a hotel Christmas party at which food was thrown from the balcony.

• On Memorial Day weekend in 2014 at Virginia Beach, Hegseth was “totally sloshed” and needed to be carried to his room because “he was so intoxicated.”

• In June 2014, during an event in Cleveland, Hegseth, who had gone with his team to a nearby bar, was “completely drunk in a public place.” Further, “several high profile people” who attended the event “were very disappointed to see this kind of public behavior.”

• On the evening before the November 2014 election, Hegseth, who had been out with three young female staff members, was so inebriated by 1 a.m. that a staffer requested assistance to get Hegseth to his room. “Pete was completely passed out in the middle seat, slumped over” said a female staff member. It took two male staff members to get Hegseth into the hotel. A team member had to wake Hegseth the next morning so he didn’t miss his flight.

• That same month, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from dancing on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team. A female C.V.A. associate “had to get him off of the stage,” adding, “She had to intervene with security to prevent him from getting thrown out.”

• In December 2014, the group held an office Christmas party at the Grand Hyatt in Washington. Once again, according to the report, Hegseth was “noticeably intoxicated and had to be carried up to his room.”

Mayer also spoke personally to two employees of C.V.A. who contributed to the report. One told her, “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,” adding, “When those of us who worked at C.V.A. heard he was being considered for SecDef, it wasn’t ‘No,’ it was ‘Hell No!’”

Mayer also obtained a troubling separate letter, which was emailed by a staffer on November 2015 to Hegseth’s successor. The letter recounted how Hegseth and someone travelling with the group’s Defend Freedom Tour closed down the bar at the Sheraton Suites Hotel. The duo yelled “Kill All Muslims” multiple times, in what the staffer described as “a drunk and a violent manner.” Hegseth’s “despicable behavior,” he wrote, “embarrassed the entire organization.” He went on, “I personally was ashamed and . . . others were as well.”

The staffer’s letter cited a second incident when Hegseth “passed out” in the back of a party bus, then urinated in front of a hotel where C.V.A.’s team was staying. “I tell you this because it’s the truth,” the letter concluded. “And I sincerely care about the mission of C.V.A. and the future of my kids and the country.”

Mayer notes that the author of the letter now wants to disown having ever sent it. “If you print that, I will deny I wrote it,” he now says. When reminded it was from the same email account he still uses, the letter writer said, “I don’t care. I’ll just say it never happened.”

Sexual predation

It wouldn’t be a Trump nominee if there weren’t serious and credible allegations of sexual assault and misconduct, and Hegseth is up there with Matt Gaetz and Brett Kavanaugh. And as with those two, the presence and overuse of alcohol plays a strong role, as the above described whistleblower report demonstrates.

Under Hegseth’s leadership, the C.V.A. became a hostile environment for female employees. Hegseth and other members of his management team even divided the female workers into two groups—the “party girls” and the “not party girls.” It was an environment where serious sexual harassment and even assault could and would occur.

During the strip club incident detailed in the report, for example, a female staffer was sexually assaulted by a male employee. Her manager was dismissive of the claim arguing that her attacker had been drunk and therefore shouldn’t be held accountable.

She filed a complaint and settled with the C.V.A. for an undisclosed amount under an NDA. But because she had spoken up, she was ostracized and retaliated against. This wasn’t an isolated case. As Mayer reports,

Another female staff member was also described as having been sexually harassed by a colleague, but was too intimidated to come forward “because she desperately needs her job.” The report declared, in bold print, “Fear of reprisal looms over every woman associated with the organization.”

Mayer also adds key reporting to the sexual assault victim’s claim out of Monterey, California, from October of 2017. The victim accused Hegseth of drugging her and raping her after a conference, while Hegseth claims, without much credibility, that the encounter was consensual.

Hegseth’s lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, is now claiming that the accuser is a liar and a blackmailer, and that’s why charges were never filed. Mayer writes,

He also claimed that “sources,” whom he declined to identify, told him there was a shocking reason law-enforcement authorities hadn’t charged Hegseth: their investigation had discovered that his accuser had previously brought a false rape charge against someone else, thus undermining her credibility. Parlatore made the same allegation in the New York Post, which quoted Hegseth demanding that Monterey County law-enforcement officials release their investigative records on the accuser.

This is a transparent attempt at disinformation and victim blaming. Mayer filed a public records request with the Monterey County District Attorney’s office asking for anything that would support Hegseth’s lawyer’s claim that the alleged victim had made sexual assault claims against others.

“The answer came back promptly and definitively,” Mayer writes. “The claim is spurious. The office had no such evidence.”

Taking down Hegseth

In the past, nominees with serious alcohol and sexual abuse issues have withdrawn or lost their confirmation votes before the Senate. Back in 1989, George H. W. Bush nominated the powerful Texas senator John Tower, who was head of the Armed Services Committee, as Secretary of Defense. But that nomination ran into opposition as reports emerged of Tower’s heavy drinking and womanizing. It was the first time the Senate had ever rejected the cabinet nominee of an incoming president, largely on a party line vote.

More recently, you may remember that Trump’s personal physician, Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), also lost his position for being a notorious drunk. In his first term, Trump nominated Jackson to be head of the Department of Veterans Affairs, but Jackson withdrew from consideration after reports emerged that he had been repeatedly drunk on duty and had even allegedly crashed a government car while intoxicated.

If the Hegseth nomination proceeds, you can expect much of what is contained in Mayer’s reporting to come out at his confirmation hearing. And that will be a big deal, drawing significant attention to the unsuitability and inexperience of Hegseth, to say nothing of his alcohol use and sexual misconduct. The GOP will be stuck having to defend someone truly horrible for the position he is being entrusted with.

Democrats are ready for that fight. Mayer interviewed Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, who is the senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee that will review Hegseth’s nomination. He found the reports of Hegseth’s drinking as “alarming and disqualifying.”

Blumenthal told Mayer in a phone interview, “Much as we might be sympathetic to people with continuing alcohol problems, they shouldn’t be at the top of our national-security structure.” He went on, “It’s dangerous. The Secretary of Defense is involved in every issue of national security. He’s involved in the use of nuclear weapons. He’s the one who approves sending troops into combat. He approves drone strikes that may involve civilian casualties. Literally life-and-death issues are in the hands of the Secretary of Defense, and entrusting these kinds of issues to someone who might be incapacitated for any reason is a risk we cannot take.”