After the recent revelation that Pete Hegseth secretly paid a financial settlement to a woman who accused him of raping her in 2017, President-elect Donald Trump stood by his choice of Hegseth to become the next Secretary of Defense. Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheungreleased a statement noting that Hegseth, who has denied any wrongdoing, has not been charged with any crime. “President Trump is nominating high-caliber and extremely qualified nominees to serve in his administration,” Cheung said.
But Hegseth’s record before becoming a full-time host on Fox News TV, in 2017, raises additional questions about his fitness to lead the world’s largest and deadliest military force. A series of documents, corroborated by accounts from former colleagues, indicate that Hegseth was forced to resign by the two nonprofit advocacy groups he led – Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America – in the face of serious allegations of financial problems. mismanagement, sexual impropriety and personal misconduct.
An undisclosed whistleblower report on Hegseth’s tenure as president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 to 2016, describes him as having been repeatedly drunk while acting in his official capacity, to the point of having to be sidelined from organizational events. . The detailed seven-page report, compiled by several former CVA employees and sent to the organization’s senior management in February 2015, states that at one point Hegseth had to be restrained, while intoxicated, from join the dancers on stage at a show. Strip club in Louisiana, where he brought his team. The report also states that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization’s female employees, whom they divided into two groups: “party girls” and “non-party girls”. Additionally, the report claims that under Hegseth’s leadership, the organization became a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by an employee that another employee on staff Hegseth had attempted to sexually assault her at the Louisiana strip club. . In a separate letter of complaint, sent to the organization in late 2015, another former employee described Hegseth being at a bar early on the morning of May 29, 2015, during an official tour in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, drunk, chanting “Kill all Muslims!” Kill all Muslims! »
In response to questions from this magazine, Tim Parlatore, Hegseth’s attorney, responded with the following statement, which he said came from a Hegseth “adviser”: “We are not going to comment on the wild claims being whitewashed through The New Yorker by a disgruntled, petty and jealous former associate of Mr. Hegseth. Come back to us when you make your first attempt at real journalism.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the report on Hegseth’s drinking alarming and disqualifying. In a telephone interview, Blumenthal, who currently heads the Senate committee considering Hegseth’s nomination, told me: “While we sympathize with people with persistent alcohol problems, they should not be at the top of our national security structure. .” Blumenthal continued: “It’s dangerous. The Secretary of Defense is involved in all matters of national security. He is involved in the use of nuclear weapons. He is the one who approves the sending of troops into combat. He approves of drone strikes that could cause civilian casualties. Matters of life and death are literally in the hands of the Secretary of Defense, and entrusting these kinds of matters to someone who might be incapacitated for whatever reason is a risk we cannot take .
Blumenthal noted that a previous nominee for secretary of defense, Sen. John Tower, a Republican from Texas, was rejected by his Senate colleagues in 1989 because of concerns about his drinking and feminine activities. . It was the first time that the Cabinet choice of a newly elected president, George HW Bush, had been rejected by the Senate. “John Tower was destroyed for the same kind of issues,” Blumenthal said. “I don’t think it’s a partisan issue.”
In January 2016, Hegseth resigned from Concerned Veterans for America, under pressure. An account in the Military times said Hegseth had “quietly resigned,” in a “mutual” decision with the organization, amid “rumors of a rift between the former CEO and the group’s backers.” Hegseth, who had no other job lined up at the time, offered no explanation for his departure, saying only, “Sometimes it just makes sense to transition.” CVA, for its part, issued a statement saying it thanked Hegseth “for his many contributions” and wished him well. But, according to three informed sources, one of whom contributed to the whistleblower report, Hegseth was forced to resign from the organization in part because of concerns about its mismanagement and alcohol abuse on the job. .
“Congratulations on removing Pete Hegseth” is the subject line of an email, obtained by The New Yorkerwhich was sent to Hegseth’s successor as chairman of the group, Jae Pak, on January 15, 2016. The email, sent under a pseudonym by one of the whistleblowers, included a copy of the report and continued to say: “Among the staff, disgust for Pete was quite high. Most veterans don’t think he represents them or their high level of excellence. The email also stated that Hegseth had a “history of alcohol abuse” and had “treated the organization’s funds as if they were a personal expense account – for partying, drinking and using CVA events as nothing more than opportunities to “connect.” with women on the road.
Pak, who had been CVA’s operations director before taking over as president and no longer works there, declined to comment. A spokesperson for Americans for Prosperity, the umbrella political group led by the far-right billionaire Koch family— under whose auspices Concerned Veterans for America was launched in 2011 — confirmed that Hegseth had resigned but declined to comment further on personnel matters. Breitbart News, a publication that serves as Trump’s publicist, attempted to discredit this article before publication by claiming that it cited a “speech” about Hegseth written by a “jealous former colleague” who had been “fired.” In fact, the report disclosed in this article is not the same document, although there are some overlaps. (Nearly a dozen employees were fired by CVA during Hegseth’s time there, and the proliferation of critical memos and letters to the group’s management speaks to the high level of discontent within the organization. )
The whistleblower report contains numerous allegations. It describes several senior executives involved in drunken episodes, including an altercation at a casino and a hotel Christmas party during which food was thrown from the balcony. Hegseth, he said, was “seen drunk at several CVA events” between 2013 and 2015, a time when the organization was engaged in an ambitious national effort to mobilize veterans to vote for conservative candidates and causes. The project gave Hegseth and his team the opportunity to travel far from the organization’s headquarters in northern Virginia. Hegseth and his team gave speeches, aided conservative campaigns and collected election data valuable to the Kochs’ political operations. As a decorated veteran who, by 2014, had become an on-air contributor to Fox News, Hegseth was the public face of the group’s mission, leading a tour with his team from city to city, organized by CVA under the name from Defend Freedom Tour. .
I spoke at length with two people who identified themselves as contributors to the whistleblower report. One said of Hegseth: “I’ve seen him drunk so many times. I saw him taken away several times, but multiple times. Having him in the Pentagon would be scary,” adding, “When those of us who worked at CVA found out he was being considered for SecDef, it wasn’t ‘No,’ it was ‘No! » According to the complaint, at one such CVA event in Virginia Beach on Memorial Day weekend in 2014, Hegseth was “totally drunk” and had to be carried to his room because “he was so drunk.” . The following month, at an event in Cleveland, Hegseth, who had gone with his team to a bar around the corner from their hotel, was described as “completely drunk in a public place.” According to the report, “several personalities” who attended the organization’s event “were very disappointed to see this type of public behavior,” although the report did not identify them.
In October 2014, CVA instituted a “no alcohol” policy at its events. But the next month, according to the report, Hegseth and another official lifted that policy while overseeing a field operation to turn out Republican candidates in North Carolina. According to the report, the day before the election, Hegseth, who had gone out with three young female employees, was so drunk by 1 am. that an employee who had driven him to his hotel, in a van filled with other drunk employees, had asked for help to get Hegseth to his room. “Pete was completely passed out in the middle seat, slumped over” a young female employee, the report states. It took two male staff members to get Hegseth into the hotel; after one young woman vomited in some bushes, another helped her to bed. In the morning, a team member had to wake Hegseth up so he wouldn’t miss his flight. “All of this occurred in public,” the report said, while the CVA was “embedded” in the Republican get-out-the-vote effort. “Everyone who saw this was disgusted and shocked that the team leader was so drunk.”