Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth has been hit with an onslaught of disturbing allegations since President-elect Donald Trump announced the former Fox News personality as his cabinet choice. The latest accusations arrive from former colleagues who spoke with NBC news about concerns they had with Hegseth's drinking during his employment at Fox News.
The alleged accounts of Hegseth's time at Fox News are based on interviews with three current and seven former Fox employees, all requested to remain anonymous.
Hegseth joined Fox News as a contributor in 2014. After filling in as a co-host in 2016, Hegseth was officially named co-host of Fox & Friends the following year, where he remained until he exited the network following Trump's announcement of Hegseth as his cabinet pick.
Two of the sources claimed that Hegseth smelled of alcohol before going behind the camera on more than a dozen occasions, while those same two people and an additional source said that he appeared on television after talking about being hungover.
One current and two former Fox employees said due to Hegseth's drinking and late nights, they felt like they had to “babysit” him. “We'd have to call him to make sure he didn't oversleep because we knew he'd been out partying the night before,” a source claimed. None of the sources provided an occasion during which the former TV personality missed a scheduled appearance due to drinking.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Trump transition team called the claims “disgusting” and “completely unfounded and false.” The spokesperson added: “As a decorated combat veteran, Pete has never done anything to jeopardize that, and he is treating his nomination as the most important deployment of his life.”
As NBC News highlights, Hegseth's alleged behavior from his former Fox colleagues has brought concern over on his ability to fulfill his duties as the country's secretary of defense. The position involves managing the Pentagon and its 3 million civilian and military employees at anytime and at all hours, while a crisis may occur during the night or the weekend.
“He should not be secretary of defense,” a former Fox employee said. “His drinking should be disqualified.”
In 1989, the Senate rejected then-President George H. W. Bush's nominee to be defense secretary, former Sen. John Tower, R-Texas, partly over Tower's drinking habits and his alleged relationships with women.
On Sunday, The New Yorker reported that Hegseth had been pushed out as the head of two veterans' advocacy organizations over internal complaints of mismanagement of funds, sexual impropriety, and reports of intoxicated behavior while at work.
According to the publication, a whistleblower report claimed Hegseth drank heavily several times at work events, including a team outing to a Louisiana strip club in November 2014 where he supposedly had to be “restrained” from getting on stage and dancing with the strippers.
Another complaint detailed a stop on the CVA's Defend Freedom Tour, when Hegseth and someone traveling with the group were in a bar when they reportedly started chanting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!” in what the complaint called “a drunk and a violent manner.”
Tim Parlatore, a lawyer for Hegseth, told the publication: “We're not going to comment on outlandish claims laundered through The New Yorker by a petty and jealous disgruntled former associate of Mr. Hegseth's. Get back to us when you try your first attempt at actual journalism.”
In November, it emerged that Hegseth was investigated over an alleged sexual assault in Monterey, California in 2017. The City of Monterey confirmed that a police report had been made involving Hegseth.
CNN previously reported that according to Hegseth's attorney, Hegseth paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault in a settlement agreement that included a confidentiality clause. His lawyer said Hegseth denied the 2017 assault and called the incident a “consensual sexual encounter.”
Last week, the mother of Trump's nominee for secretary of defense accused her son of mistreating and abusing women in an email released by the New York Times. Penelope Hegseth sent the email in 2018 while the former Fox co-host was in the midst of a divorce from his second wife, Samantha Hegseth.
“You are an abuser of women — that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego,” Penelope wrote. “You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth… your abuse over the years to women (dishonesty, sleeping around, betrayal , debasing, belittling) needs to be called out.”
Penelope condemned her initial email in an interview with the Timesand said her statements about Pete's treatment of women were “not true.”
