Megyn Kelly has issued a scathing assessment of Pete Hegseth amid reports he sexually assaulted a woman in 2017.
Kelly, 54, who worked with Hegseth, now 44, at Fox News, joined The Charlie Kirk Show and gave her thoughts on the accusations swirling around Donald Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense.
When Kirk asked about the “smear campaign” against Hegseth, Kelly, who said she was “the reason” he became a Fox News contributor, admitted that she does not “recommend marrying him.”
‘I’ll be honest: when I look at his marital history, it is not an example of faithfulness. Okay, so I’m just going to be honest and admit that up front.
Still, the former NBC News anchor defended Hegseth — a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan with a handful of military medals, including two Bronze Stars.
“Having problems in one’s personal relationship, especially after doing two tours — and it’s not uncommon for these combat vets to come back and not be able to manage their love life very well — is very different from being a rapist,” she added.
Kelly then said the woman’s allegations against Hegseth for allegedly assaulting her on October 8 of that year seemed suspicious to her.
“And this woman’s story stinks,” Kelly said, holding up a copy of the police report — full of Post-It notes and highlighter marks — that she had gone through “line by line.”
Megyn Kelly has offered her own assessment of the alleged sexual assault involving her former Fox News colleague Pete Hegseth
The alleged attack in October 2017 never led to charges, as Hegseth admitted to paying off the 30-year-old woman to protect his job. (photo: Hegseth after a rally on Capitol Hill on Thursday)
It is this alleged attack – which never resulted in charges – that puts Hegseth’s nomination for a seat in Trump’s Cabinet in jeopardy.
A police report released this week by the city of Monterey, California, shows that a then 30-year-old woman was drinking champagne with coworkers during a business trip when things “got hazy” and she suddenly found herself in a room with Hegseth.
Timothy Parlatore, a lawyer representing Hegseth, has admitted that his client paid the woman for her silence because he did not want to lose his job, while dismissing the allegations as “unfounded” and amounting to a “successful extortion ‘.
Along with Parlator, Kelly also does not believe the alleged attack happened, as she warned that media reporting on these allegations will not give people the “facts.”
“You will find out that they were together at a conference in Monterey, in October 2017, and that she claims that he (Hegseth) may have given her a date rape drug and raped her, and that he claims that it was a was a matter of mutual consent,” Kelly said.
She added that Hegseth paid her to keep quiet a few years later after she “started rattling his cage about a possible lawsuit against him.”
Hegseth is a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan with a handful of military medals, including two Bronze Stars. (photo: Hegseth with his second wife Samantha)
Kelly then dug into the police report, which she said placed the woman in a bar with Hegseth while her husband and children “sat in the lobby of the hotel room.”
After the Republican women’s conference that night, “others said she was flirting with him,” Kelly said.
“She touched his leg, etc. Flirted with him. That he seemed more focused on another woman, not this one. That Pete would later tell police that he never thought about hooking up with this woman, who he apparently had no interest in whatsoever,” Kelly said, referring to the report.
The podcaster said the woman then “escorted” Hegseth out of the bar to return with him to his hotel room, according to the report.
“And at 12:30 in the morning she was seen on videotape, which police reviewed and reported the following facts: She was fine, she did not stumble,” Kelly said, adding that it was Hegseth who “was there drinking looked’. .’
She then described an incident where hotel security had to intervene after two guests reportedly reported a “fight at the pool” after filing a noise complaint.
Kelly continued, “First of all, that’s completely inappropriate. She told police they had an argument about his treatment of women? What? You’re supposed to be his chaperone for the conference and you get into a personal spat with him over his treatment of women?
Newly elected President Donald Trump announced 44-year-old Hegseth as his nominee for Secretary of Defense on November 14. (photo: Hegseth and his third wife Jennifer Rauchet with Trump)
Part of her job at the conference was to make sure Hegseth would get out of bed in time to catch his flight home the next morning.
‘So loud and belligerent that hotel guests call security? You have crossed your limit. You are behaving inappropriately, ma’am.’
Kelly then noted that the woman and others at the bar that night said she had only had one glass of champagne, and that “she was fine, she didn’t stumble, she didn’t make any ambiguities.”
‘Piet was drunk. She was doing well,” she added.
After the alleged incident, Hegseth and his accuser were then seen on surveillance footage leaving the pool back to the hotel, Kelly said, according to the police report.
“Their arms are locked like a boyfriend and girlfriend might be. She’s smiling, she doesn’t seem drunk,” Kelley said, adding that four witnesses “saw her in person or on video.”
‘She goes back to her hotel room, sometime between half past twelve and two in the morning. During this time, she texts her husband. She sounds great in these lyrics, it doesn’t sound like she’s drunk or crazy at all,” Kelley explained.
Hegseth, who was divorced from his second wife at the time of the alleged rape, has not been charged in any criminal case or named as a suspect in a civil lawsuit.
According to the report, Kelly said the text messages between the woman and her husband then “stopped” before the woman had an “unstated period of time from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m.”
‘The man called her twice during that period. The man gets out of bed to check the hotel bar, looking for his wife, wondering where the heck she is. There’s no one at the bar called ‘knuckles’ at the Hyatt Regency,” Kelly explained.
The commenter said, according to the report, that the man then went back to his hotel room where he attempted to contact her again before she finally arrived at 4 a.m.
‘She’s doing well. She doesn’t stumble, she doesn’t make slurs,” Kelley said.
‘When was she drugged? When was she drugged? Did Pete take her back to the hotel room? Give her a mickey at 2am, take advantage of her and take her back to her hotel room at 4am, fine?”
A complaint from an unnamed woman with extensive knowledge of the alleged rape, sent to Trump’s staff, explained the story police were told at the time.
The other woman’s memo claimed she “didn’t remember anything until she was in Hegseth’s hotel room and then stumbled to find her hotel room.”
The six to nine hours following his intervention in Hegseth’s flirting with the other women were “very blurry,” the memo said.
When she got home, she “had a moment of vague memory of the rape the night before and had a panic attack,” the memo said.
That’s when she went to the ER and had a rape kit taken that came back positive for semen.
Local police investigated the alleged assault involving Hegseth, which was reported four days later, the city said.
According to the statement, no weapons were involved, but there were injuries: “bruises to the right thigh.”
Hegseth, who was separated from his second wife at the time of the alleged rape, has not been charged in any criminal case and has not been named as a suspect in any civil lawsuit.