The Fox News commentator has previously been accused of sexual assault.
President-elect Trump has tapped Pete Hegseth as the forthcoming nominee for United States Secretary of Defense. “I am honored to announce that I have nominated Pete Hegseth to serve in my Cabinet as The Secretary of Defense,” Trump said in a statement. “Pete has spent his entire life as a Warrior for the Troops, and for the Country. Pete is tough, smart and a true believer in America First. With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice — Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down.”
An Army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hegseth, 44, is most recently known for co-hosting the TV show Fox & Friends Weekends. What qualifies Hegseth for the position, which requires him to manage 1.3 million active-duty service members and about 1 million civilians who are also employed by the military? We’ll get into that, plus fresh details about the grim sexual assault allegation that’s been made against him.
Who is Pete Hegseth?
Hegseth, a longtime Conservative and army veteran, is originally from Minnesota. He has an undergraduate degree from Princeton and a master’s degree from Harvard. In 2024, he authored the bestselling nonfiction book The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, which criticized the “warped, woke, and caustic policies of our current military.”
Pete Hegseth’s wife and kids
Hegseth is married to Fox Nation producer Jennifer Rauchet, his third wife. The pair have a daughter together, and each has three children from previous marriages.
Reportedly, Hegseth was dating Rauchet while still married to his previous wife, Samantha Deering. Deering filed for divorce after Hegseth and Rauchet had their child. Hegseth’s first marriage ended in 2009, also after infidelity by Hegseth, according to court records.
Those controversial tattoos
Hegseth has a number of patriotic and Christian tattoos, some of which arguably resemble white supremacist symbology. In a post on X, Hegseth claimed that these comparisons were “Anti-Christian bigotry.”
“They can target me — I don’t give a damn,” Hegseth continued, “but this type of targeting of Christians, conservatives, patriots, and everyday Americans will stop on DAY ONE at DJT’s DoD.”
Pete Hegseth’s military background
Hegseth is an army veteran, though he has not gained senior military or national security experience.
After graduating from Princeton University in 2003, Hegseth became an infantry officer in the Army National Guard. He served in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay.
Hegseth left the military in 2021 after being reported as a potential “insider threat” due to one of his controversial tattoos.
Pete Hegseth’s political views
Hegseth has openly stated that women shouldn’t serve in combat roles.
“Everything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated, and complication in combat means casualties are worse,” Hegseth commented during an interview on The Shawn Ryan Show podcast. “I’m straight up just saying that we should not have women in combat roles — it hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.” For context, 3,800 women currently serve in Army combat roles.
In The War on Warriors, he opined that “woke” generals have weakened the U.S. military and that the military has been left “effeminate” because of a recent focus on diversity and equity. Hegseth also argues that the military is now alienating potential recruits.
“America’s white sons and daughters are walking away, and who can blame them,” he writes in The War on Warriors.
“The next commander in chief will need to clean house,” he writes.
The sexual assault allegations against Pete Hegseth
Like many of Trump’s cabinet picks, Hegseth has been accused of sexual assault. The alleged misconduct took place during the 2017 California Federation of Republican Women conference in Monterey, California. Hegseth’s accuser, who remains anonymous, filed a police report alleging that Hegseth had assaulted her on Oct. 7, 2017. A local district attorney declined to bring charges.
On November 20th, a police report was released detailing the unnamed accuser’s account of what happened that evening.
The alleged victim, referred to as Jane Doe, told police that she’d spotted Hegseth earlier in the day, and hadn’t liked how he was behaving toward the women. She said she’d observed him rubbing women’s legs. She texted someone to say he was “giving off a ‘creeper’ vibe.”
In the evening, Doe went to a bar attached to the hotel as part of a group of women, and “that’s when things got fuzzy,” she said. According to the police report, another attendee said that Hegseth had invited her to his hotel room, and she attracted the attention of Jane Doe in the hope that her “presence would detour Hegseth’s attempt to have sex.” Doe noted that she’d had more to drink than usual that day. She later told a hospital nurse she believed someone had put “something” in her drink.
Doe told police that she ended up in Hegseth’s hotel room. She alleged that Hegseth took her phone, blocked the way to the door, and sexually assaulted her, ejaculating on her stomach. She said she “remembered saying ‘no’ a lot.” CCTV footage apparently showed the pair leaving the hotel bar earlier in the evening, with their arms locked together.
Hegseth told the police that he thought Doe walked him to his room, and that he’d not intended to have sex with her. “He might have thought that with someone else, but not Jane Doe,” the report said. Hegseth claimed that he repeatedly asked for Doe’s consent, and made sure “she was comfortable with what was going on,” including his choice not to wear a condom.
“This police report confirms what I’ve said all along, that the incident was fully investigated, and police found the allegations to be false, which is why no charges were filed,” Hegseth’s attorney, told CNN. Hegseth didn’t face criminal charges, but the report did not find Doe’s allegations to be false.
Hegseth’s accuser threatened litigation in 2020. Hegseth paid the accuser, who then signed a non-disclosure agreement.
Per the Washington Post, Trump’s transition team received a memo detailing the alleged assault by Hegseth of a female staffer for a conservative organization at a Monterey hotel. The memo was written by a friend of the alleged victim.
Trump communications director Steven Cheung responded: “President Trump is nominating high-caliber and extremely qualified candidates to serve in his Administration. Mr. Hegseth has vigorously denied any and all accusations, and no charges were filed. We look forward to his confirmation as United States Secretary of Defense so he can get started on Day One to Make America Safe and Great Again.”
