On Nov. 12, 2024, President-elect Trump 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, alongside details surrounding the grim sexual assault allegation and allegations of drinking in the workplace that have been made against him. Plus, everything you need to know about the affidavit that contains a new allegation about Pete Hegseth’s behavior towards his second wife.
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
Amen @JDVance. Anti-Christian bigotry in the media on full display.
They can target me — I don’t give a damn — but this type of targeting of Christians, conservatives, patriots and everyday Americans will stop on DAY ONE at DJT’s DoD. https://t.co/TCZVWsxEAS— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) November 15, 2024
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 with 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 was walking him to his room, and that he had 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.”
Pete Hegseth’s history with alcohol
In 2024, The New Yorker described a previously undisclosed whistle-blower report that recounted Hegseth’s behavior during his time as president of Concerned Veterans for America from 2013 to 2016. According to the seven-page report, Hegseth was “repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity,” including an incident in which he brought his team to a Louisiana strip club and was restrained after drunkenly attempting to join dancers onstage. Three sources told The New Yorker that Hegseth was forced to resign from his position at C.V.A. in part because of his abuse of alcohol.
Hegseth has given conflicting accounts regarding his relationship with alcohol. On a 2021 episode of The Will Cain Show podcast, Hegseth described a past propensity towards heavy drinking. In a 2024 appearance on The Megyn Kelly Show, however, Hegseth stated that he had never experienced an issue with alcohol: “First of all, I’ve never had a drinking problem.”
“No one’s ever approached me and said, ‘You should really look at getting help for drinking.’ Never,” Hegseth continued.
Hegseth also told Kelly that, if confirmed, he plans to abstain from alcohol.
“This is the biggest deployment of my life, and there won’t be a drop of alcohol on my lips while I’m doing it.”
An affidavit contains new allegations of abuse
On Jan. 21, senators received an affidavit from Hegseth’s former sister-in-law. The affidavit contained new accusations that Hegseth had been abusive toward his second wife to the point that she feared for her safety.
According to NBC News, “The former sister-in-law, Danielle Hegseth, submitted the affidavit in response to a Jan. 18 letter from Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., seeking ‘a statement attesting to your personal knowledge about Mr. Hegseth’s fitness to occupy this important position.'”
According to Danielle, Hegseth’s second wife, Samantha Hegseth, once hid in a closet from her then-husband. Samantha also allegedly orchestrated escape plans from her then-husband that were to be activated with a code word; according to the affidavit, Samantha put these escape plans into action once.
Two viewers of the unredacted affidavit recounted a new allegation to NBC News. “As I told the FBI, Samantha once told me that Hegseth grabbed her groin without consent at their home. Samantha told me about this sometime during the years between 2014-2016,” Danielle Hegseth says in the affidavit. “I believe what Samantha told me because what she told me is consistent with what I personally observed of Hegseth’s erratic and aggressive behavior over many years.”
Danielle Hegseth also recalled a number of occasions in 2008 or 2009, as well as around 2013, when she saw Hegseth intoxicated to the point of passing out.
In a response to a request for comment from NBC News, Samantha Hegseth said, “There was no physical abuse in my marriage. This is the only further statement I will make to you, I have let you know that I am not speaking and will not speak on my marriage to Pete. Please respect this decision.” In 2021, in the midst of their divorce, Samantha Hegseth and Pete Hegseth both signed a Minnesota court document saying that neither claimed to be a victim of domestic abuse.
In response, Hegseth has denied all allegations. A lawyer for Hegseth, Tim Parlatore, stated that, “Sam has never alleged that there was any abuse, she signed court documents acknowledging that there was no abuse and recently reaffirmed the same during her FBI interview. Belated claims by Danielle Dietrich, an anti-Trump far left Democrat who is divorced from Mr. Hegseth’s brother and never got along with the Hegseth family, do nothing to change that.”
“After an acrimonious divorce, Ms. Dietrich has had an axe to grind against the entire Hegseth family,” Parlatore continued. “Ms. Dietrich admits that she saw nothing but is now falsely accusing Sam of lying to both the Court and to the FBI because of private, undocumented statements that she allegedly made 10 years ago.”
