Pete Hegseth thought he ‘had’ to pay a woman who accused him of rape because he was married and ready for a new job, and he wanted to clear up the accusations.
A series of disturbing reports have cast doubt on whether Hegseth will remain Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Defense Department.
A woman accused Hegseth, 44, of raping her at the Republican Women’s Conference in California in 2017. No charges have been filed, but there is a police report of the allegations.
It was the middle of the #MeToo movement, and Hegseth’s attorney said he feared losing his position at Fox News if the allegations became public. So he paid the woman as part of a non-disclosure agreement that was first reported by the Washington Post last month.
Speaking to Megyn Kelly on her show on Wednesday, Hegseth declined to reveal how much he paid the woman.
“I paid her because I had to, or at least that’s what I thought at the time,” Hegseth says.
“She has lawyers who contacted me and said, ‘If you don’t come forward, and if you don’t pay money, we’re going to end up arresting him.’ We were in the middle of a #MeToo movement. I had a great job at Fox and a wonderful marriage.”
He continued, “This is not what I should have done… I did it to protect my wife. I did it to protect my family, and I did it to protect my job, and it was a negotiation purely to avoid that.”
Hegseth admitted on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Show that there is some truth to the flood of damning reports.
Pete Hegseth went on The Megyn Kelly Show on Wednesday to once again defend himself against a slew of scathing reports about him — and admitted that there are “kernels of truth” in some of the stories. He also explained that he paid a woman who accused him of rape because he was afraid it would hurt his career and his wife
Hegseth also wrote in an op-ed about his time at Vets for Freedom: “Like veterans returning from any war, we drank beer to face the reality of what we had experienced. But we never did anything inappropriate and we treated everyone with respect.”
The former Fox News host said he received words of encouragement from Trump when they spoke Wednesday morning amid a barrage of news reports with accusations against Hegseth.
From the start, Hegseth was a controversial choice, in part because of his more fringe views, such as saying that women should not serve in combat roles in the military.
But other, more worrying reports have emerged in the past two weeks, including claims of sexual harassment; allegations that he was transported to events on work trips because he was too drunk and regularly drank on the job; and a New York Times report that published a 2018 email from his mother calling Hegseth a “woman abuser.”
Hegseth told Kelly that there are “kernels of truth,” and some reports that he claims were blown into something that now looked more like a lie.
He also published one op-ed at the Wall Street Journal where he admitted that he sometimes drank some alcohol with other military members “to cope with the reality of what we had experienced in war zones.”
Speaking to Kelly on Wednesday, Hegseth described his conversation with Trump and said he received words of encouragement from the president-elect to continue his Capitol Hill campaign and lobby senators to vote for his confirmation in the new year.
‘He supports me. We talked,” Hegseth said of his conversation with Trump. “He said: you go meet those senators and I will support you.”
The father of seven also recalled to Kelly how Trump said, “Pete, I have your back. It’s a fight, they’re coming after you. Go after it.’
Kelly asked Hegseth if he felt he received the same media treatment as Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation process.
“Not even 45 minutes ago, I had a member privately look me in the eye, just him and me, and say, ‘That’s what they’re trying to do to you.’
”That’s their playbook, prepare for more. And they’re going to make it right, just like they have done so far. All anonymous, all innuendo, all hearsay, nothing sourced, no verification. And they’ll just keep doing it. Because you are a threat to them,” he continued, recalling what a Republican lawmaker told him.
Hegseth was joined by his wife Jennifer Rauchet at rallies on Capitol Hill on December 4, 2024, as he continues to meet with senators and lobby for their confirmation vote next year
Hegseth’s mother Penelope went on Fox & Friends Wednesday morning to counter the New York Times after it published a 2018 email she sent to her son in the midst of his divorce, calling him a “wife abuser”
However, Hegseth praised the Trump nominee who was subsequently confirmed: “Kavanaugh stood up, he fought and he won. And hopefully Republicans have learned that lesson.”
“Trump had his back,” he added. ‘What you see with me now is the art of the smear test.’
“Take whatever little kernel of truth you have – and there are very little kernels in there – and blow it up into a masquerade of a story about someone who is definitely not me,” Hegseth concluded.
Some of the most damning reports claim that Hegseth routinely got drunk or drank excessively while working at veterans organizations and while hosting Fox News.
In the Journal op-ed written Wednesday, Trump’s Pentagon chief acknowledged that he wasn’t always perfect when he helped lead the initiative at Vets for Freedom and that at times he may have had a few too many beers.
“We weren’t perfect, but we were always honest and serious,” he admitted. “We raised money honestly and spent it earnestly – to further our cause. We were not political experts, but patriotic believers.”
“Like veterans returning from any war, we drank beer to face the reality of what we had experienced,” he wrote. “But we never did anything inappropriate and we treated everyone with respect. We had a new mission and we fought for it.”
When Trump told the veteran he would nominate him as the next secretary of defense, Hegseth claimed he told him, “You’re going to have to be tough.”