Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s Defense Department nominee, answered allegations of sexual assault, alcohol abuse, racism, and other alleged inappropriate behavior during his Senate confirmation hearing.
Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) kicked off the questioning by immediately addressing the elephant in the room. The lawmaker stressed that each of the allegation came from “anonymous sources in liberal media publications” and said he wished to give Hegseth an opportunity to respond.
Hegseth responded, referring to the allegations as a “smear campaign” and asserted that they were intended to impede Trump’s agenda.
What became very evident to us from the beginning, there was a coordinated smear campaign orchestrated in the media against us. That was clear from moment one. What we knew is that it wasn't about me. Most of it was about President Donald Trump, who's had to endure the very same thing for much longer amounts of time, and he endured it in incredibly in different ways.
The nominee indicated that his team knew the media would use the allegations to prevent him from being confirmed, but “didn’t understand the depth of the dishonesty that would come with it.”
From story after story in the media, left-wing media, we saw anonymous source after anonymous source based on second or third-hand accounts. Time and time again, stories would come out, and people would reach out to me and say, I've spoken to this reporter about who you really are, and I was willing to go on the record. But they didn't print my quote. They didn't print any of my quotes.
Hegseth continued, explaining that none of the reporters publishing the allegations reached out to him. “Instead, a small handful of anonymous sources were allowed to drive a smear campaign and agenda about me because our left-wing media in America today, sadly, doesn't care about the truth,” he said.
The nominee further stated that the allegations were intended to destroy him because “I’m a change agent and a threat to them because Donald Trump was willing to choose me, to empower me, to bring the Defense Department back to what it really should be.”
Hegseth concluded his reply by noting that he treats his colleagues “with respect, with dignity. That’s men, that’s women, that’s Black, that’s White, that’s every background.”
"In some ways we knew it was coming. We didn't understand the depth of dishonesty that would come with it."
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) January 14, 2025
Pete Hegseth addresses the coordinated smear campaign against him. pic.twitter.com/Cvi49KwpKi
The sexual assault allegations against Hegseth came to light shortly after Trump announced him as the Defense Department nominee. A woman came forward and claimed Hegseth sexually assaulted her after stealing her phone and locking her in a California hotel room in 2017 during a conference. The police report noted that Hegseth said the encounter was consensual, according to The Associated Press.
Tim Palatore, Hegseth’s attorney, has said the woman who made the allegations was paid an undisclosed sum in 2023 as part of a confidential settlement to head off the threat of what he described as a baseless lawsuit.
The 22-page police report was released in response to a public records request and offers the first detailed account of what the woman alleged to have transpired — one that is at odds with Hegseth’s version of events. The report cited police interviews with the alleged victim, a nurse who treated her, a hotel staffer, another woman at the event and Hegseth.
Investigators were alerted to the alleged assault when a nurse called them to inform them about a female patient who said she believed she had been assaulted five days earlier. She said she could not remember exactly what happened and indicated she could have been drugged against her will.
Police collected the unwashed dress and underwear she had worn that night, the report said.
The woman’s partner, who was staying at the hotel with her, told police that he was worried about her that night after she didn’t come back to their room. At 2 a.m., he went to the hotel bar, but she wasn’t there. She made it back a few hours later, apologizing that she “must have fallen asleep.” A few days later, she told him she had been sexually assaulted.
No charges were ever filed against Hegseth. Parlatore ndicated this was because law enforcement deemed the allegations false.