Fox News alum Gretchen Carlson and Julie Roginsky react to his confirmation.
In 2022, the United States Senate voted unanimously to pass our Speak Out Act, which bans non-disclosure agreements for sexual misconduct. Last Friday, the United States Senate voted to confirm Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon, even though he has been credibly accused of sexual misconduct and has admitted to using a non-disclosure agreement to cover it up.
To say that we are disappointed is an understatement. For years, we walked the halls of Congress, meeting with Senators on both sides of the aisle who assured us that they took allegations of sexual misconduct seriously. They understood that, too often, predators silence survivors by imposing gag orders on them that precluded them from sharing what happened with anyone. That is why every single one of them supported the only two pieces of federal legislation to come out of the #MeToo movement, our Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act and the Speak Out Act, both of which gave survivors of sexual misconduct back their voices.
Two years before those laws passed, Hegseth paid a woman $50,000 for her silence after she accused him of raping her in a hotel room at a Republican conference in 2017. Several days after the night in question, the woman visited a hospital, reported the assault and asked for a rape kit, though she originally refused to identify her alleged assailant. A nurse called the local prosecutor’s office, at which point the woman identified Hegseth as the man in question. Eventually, the Monterey County District Attorney’s office declined to bring charges against Hegseth, saying that it found no proof of assault beyond a reasonable doubt. That is no surprise. Most rape cases are not prosecuted because it’s almost impossible to determine what happens in situations where there are rarely witnesses. By no means was Hegseth “cleared” by law enforcement, as he has repeatedly insisted.
Most troubling for us is the refusal of so many Senators to sit with the alleged survivor and hear her out. (Senator Joni Ernst, a rape survivor who has focused her efforts in the Senate on addressing sexual assault in the military, would meet with her.) Nor did it seem to bother Senators that Hegseth once seemingly published or wrote a college newspaper column claiming that someone having sexual intercourse with an unconscious woman could not be accused of rape because “though intercourse was not consented to, there was no duress because the girl drank herself into unconsciousness.”
Between the time he was nominated and confirmed, more than 10 of Hegseth’s current and former Fox News colleagues told the media of his on-the-job alcohol abuse. All of their concerns were dismissed by Hegseth and, presumably by his supporters in the Senate, as “anonymous smears.”
Every single Senator who voted for our Speak Out Act knows better. Much like the woman who accused Hegseth of rape, these current and former Fox News employees could not speak out publicly because they are likely subjected to NDAs or simply fear retaliation. Hegseth’s lawyer threatened as much, warning the alleged sexual assault survivor that she could break her NDA if she chose but that Hegseth would then sue her for defamation if it cost him the job to which President Trump had nominated him.
This is a case of witness intimidation, and it is yet another silencing tool that the Senate claimed to stand against when it unanimously passed both the Speak Out Act and the Ending Forced Arbitration Act of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act. Back then, the same Senators who voted for Hegseth said they understood that survivors deserved to lift their voices, even if powerful people were trying to silence them.
“Survivors of sexual assault and harassment deserve to be heard,” said one Republican Senator when the arbitration bill passed in 2022.
“This legislation will advance the cause of sexual assault and sexual harassment victims who have been silenced through NDAs in the past. The more we know, the more we deter,” said a second Senator when the Speak Out Act passed.
“Women who are victims of sexual assault or abuse in the workplace have raised the issue of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) being used to coerce silence. Unfortunately, there are some corporate entities that have used NDAs inappropriately,” said another.
All three voted to confirm Hegseth as the Secretary of Defense. So did 47 of their colleagues.
We find it difficult to reconcile that the same Senators who listened to and believed our stories suddenly discount the account of a less public-facing woman simply because she had the misfortune of crossing paths with a presidential nominee of their own party. We choose to believe that the American people are better than this and that the work of changing our culture, while hard, is never-ending. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said more than 50 years ago, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
Gretchen Carlson and Julie Roginsky are the co-founders of Lift Our Voices, an organization dedicated to eradicating silencing mechanisms in the workplace.
