Trump stands by Defense pick who denies sexually assaulting woman

President-elect Donald Trump has told advisers he is standing by his nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, after the transition team was jolted by an allegation he had sexually assaulted a woman in an interaction he insists was consensual.

Trump made his view plain to aides after a conversation with Hegseth days ago, after the team learned that a woman had accused him of assault in 2017, according to two people briefed on the discussion. They also learned that Hegseth had entered into a financial settlement with the woman that had a confidentiality clause.

On Sunday, Steven Cheung, the president-elect’s communications director, did not address Trump’s thinking, but said, “President Trump is nominating high-caliber and extremely qualified candidates to serve in his administration.”

He added, “Mr. Hegseth has vigorously denied any and all accusations, and no charges were filed. We look forward to his confirmation” by the Senate.

Last week, the Monterey Police Department in California said it had investigated an allegation of sexual assault involving Hegseth in 2017 at the address of the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel and Spa. The statement released by police said the department had filed no charges against Hegseth.

Trump announced Tuesday that Hegseth, a former Fox News personality, was his choice to lead the Pentagon, setting off a wave of resistance from many corners of Washington. Hegseth has criticized some in the Pentagon leadership as too “woke,” and he pushed for Trump to intervene when he was president on behalf of three members of the military accused or convicted of war crimes, which Trump did.

Late Wednesday, the Trump team received a memo written by a person claiming to be a friend of a woman who said she was raped by Hegseth. The memo said the woman, who was referred to as “Jane Doe,” was 30 at the time and was working for the organizers of a conference in California where Hegseth spoke. Jane, the memo said, was staying at the hotel with her husband and two children.

The allegations in the memo, obtained by The New York Times, could not be independently verified.

But it said that Hegseth was with two women at a bar after his speech when Jane received a text from the women saying that Hegseth was getting pushy about taking them upstairs to his room.

Jane went over to try to mitigate the situation, the memo said. The two other women left and from that moment on, the memo said, Jane did not remember anything until she was in Hegseth’s hotel room, and she had only hazy memories of being there and then stumbling back to her room. The next day, she had a “moment of hazy memory” of being raped the night before.

She went to a hospital and was tested with a rape kit, which revealed the presence of semen, the memo said.

Hegseth’s lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, said it was a consensual encounter and gave a very different version of events from the memo sent to the Trump team.

He described Hegseth speaking at an event hosted by the California Federation of Republican Women, and then attending an after-party at the hotel bar with a number of people, including the woman in question.

“At the end of the after-party, Mr. Hegseth left the bar with the complainant,” Parlatore said. “Witnesses stated that Mr. Hegseth was visibly intoxicated but the complainant was not, as she led him by the arm to his hotel room. Video surveillance confirms that the two of them were ‘walking together with arms locked together’ and that the complainant was smiling.”

Hegseth was a speaker at the Republican women’s conference at the Monterey hotel in early October 2017 when the encounter that led to the investigation occurred.

According to the police statement, the complaint was filed four days after the encounter, and the complainant had bruises to her thigh. The police report itself was not released.

Parlatore said that two years later, when he and Hegseth heard that the woman was no longer working for the Republican women’s group, they learned she had discussed the possibility of filing a lawsuit against Hegseth. Parlatore sent her a cease-and-desist letter in February 2020, and they entered into their settlement agreement months later, he said.

“Mr. Hegseth strongly felt that he was the victim of blackmail and innocent collateral damage in a lie that the complainant was holding onto to keep her marriage intact,” Parlatore said. “However, knowing that it was the height of the #MeToo movement and any public accusation would result in his immediate termination from Fox, Mr. Hegseth ultimately decided to enter into a settlement for a significantly reduced amount.”

It was unclear what amount of money was involved, but Parlatore added that “false claims like this undermine the gravity of real sexual assault cases.”

Hegseth, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has long been a favorite of Trump’s. He is a star on the conservative television network Trump has watched for decades. Trump had considered tapping him to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs in his first term, before picking someone else.

Trump, who has himself been accused of multiple incidents of sexual assault or misconduct and was found liable for sexual abuse decades earlier in a civil case last year, has been supportive of a number of men who have faced such allegations. And he often encourages them to fight if they say the accusations are false.

But in the case of Hegseth, the allegations came as a surprise to the Trump team; the settlement was confidential and did not appear as part of his vetting because of that, according to a person briefed on the matter. Trump often dislikes when people connected to him get negative media coverage.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.