Originally published by The 19th.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As Pete Hegseth tries to persuade senators to support him to lead the Department of Defense in the Trump administration, several lawmakers, women veterans and military advocates warn that his confirmation could be detrimental to women in the military and reverse progress in combating sexual assault in the Armed Forces.
Hegseth, a Fox News host who served in the Army National Guard, was named by President-elect Donald Trump on November 12 as his pick for defense secretary. Since then, Hegseth has been the subject of a number of allegations of sexual misconduct, alcohol abuse and financial mismanagement. The most recent spate of news stories have detailed allegations, which Hegseth has denied, related to excessive alcohol consumption and appear to be the main topic of concern on Capitol Hill.
“It's just been very troubling to see how unconcerned many members of Congress are with men who are accused of sexual assault," said Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas, a member of the House Armed Services Committee. While the House does not vote to confirm Cabinet nominees, Hegseth met with Republican House members on Wednesday to shore up support.
“The issue that apparently, I heard, came up in his meetings was his alleged alcohol abuse,” she said. “But I guess his abuse of women doesn't seem to bother as many folks."
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Credible allegations of impropriety have often been cause for withdrawal or disqualification. Hegseth is one of a number of Trump’s Cabinet-level nominees who face accusations of sexual misconduct.
In 2020, Hegseth paid a confidential settlement to a woman who filed a police report accusing him of raping her in 2017 at a Republican women’s conference in Monterey, California. No charges were filed against Hegseth in connection with the encounter, which he and his lawyer maintain was consensual. The New Yorker and other outlets have reported on additional allegations that Hegseth mismanaged funds and abused alcohol while leading two veteran-focused nonprofits, and that his colleagues at Fox News witnessed him drinking to excess while he was a weekend co-host at “Fox and Friends.” Hegseth has strenuously denied those claims, including in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, and told Megyn Kelly in an interview on her SiriusXM show that he wouldn’t drink alcohol as defense secretary.
Representatives for Fox News and the Trump transition did not immediately return requests for comment. Several of Hegseth’s current and former Fox News colleagues, including current “Fox & Friends Weekends” co-host Will Cain, have spoken up in his defense.
“The press is peddling anonymous story after anonymous story, all meant to smear me and tear me down. It’s a textbook manufactured media takedown,” Hegseth wrote in the Journal. “They provide no evidence, no names, and they ignore the legions of people who speak on my behalf. They need to create a bogeyman, because they believe I threaten their institutional insanity. That is the only thing they are right about.”
Democratic women serving on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees argued that Hegseth getting confirmed would not only undercut years-long bipartisan efforts in Congress to address sexual assault and abuse in the military but also the armed services’ efforts to recruit more women.
“This is very concerning,” said Escobar, a Democrat. “We have been trying to address recruitment for a long time, and women are a key component of that. This is the last thing we needed, and it is my hope that those members of the Senate who are committed to these reforms and who know how important women are in the military will have very candid conversations with him, and he will drop out.”
Nearly 1 in 4 women in the military report having experienced sexual assault and more than half report harassment, according to a 2016 analysis of articles published in the peer-reviewed journal Trauma, Violence and Abuse. The vast majority of incidents go unreported, according to the RAND Corporation, which provides research to the U.S. Armed Forces. In 2018 alone, about 6,000 sexual assaults were reported to the Department of Defense, but surveys suggested more than 20,000 service members were sexually assaulted. And amid a broader military recruitment crisis, a 2020 government study found that women were leaving the military at higher rates than men and citing sexual assault as a major factor.
Michelle Simpson Tuegel, a Texas-based lawyer who does not practice in the military justice system but has represented survivors in several high-profile sex abuse cases, said Hegseth’s nomination marks “a scary moment” for women service members.
“I get calls every year from women who have faced sexual assault and sexual harassment in the military, I’ve represented people on the bases when I used to do criminal defense,” Tuegel said. “There's a lot of violence on our military bases.”
Reports of sexual assault in the military have risen by an estimated 25 percent since 2018, according to the military’s own data, which include both anonymous surveys and formal reports.
Military justice reform advocates have gained ground in recent years, particularly in regards to how military sexual assault and harassment investigations are handled. After the end of World War II, one Supreme Court ruling — known as the Feres doctrine — barred service members from suing the government over any injuries incurred while on active duty. Though typically applied to cases of medical malpractice, this ruling had expanded to include sexual assault allegations. However, the high-profile murder in 2020 of Vanessa Guillén, a soldier who was sexually harassed by a supervisor and violently murdered while stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, acted as a catalyst for reform. Guillén’s death led to major changes in the National Defense Authorization Act, guaranteeing that certain crimes like sexual assault and domestic violence would be prosecuted outside the chain of command.
Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, a veteran, called it “insane” that Trump would nominate someone like Hegseth after the “decades” of efforts within the Armed Services.
“There are simply too many reasons proving that Pete Hegseth is not the right person to lead our military men and women, and he will not have my vote,” she said in a statement to The 19th. “Republicans confirming him to this position wouldn’t just be an insult to our men and women in uniform—it would be dangerous for our national security and military readiness.”
Rep. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey was a student at the Naval Academy 30 years ago as part of the first class of women eligible for combat ships. She served for nearly a decade, including a stint in London when she worked for a Navy fleet commander overseeing the deployment of troops to Iraq, at a time when she said the culture was not great for women.
When young women interested in the service academies come to her office, Sherrill said, “they're not interested in going into a force as second-class citizens, and they're not interested in being given special treatment.”
“What they want is the challenge that all people that go into our military service want. What they want to do is to serve the public, to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and to make sure that people here can sleep at night,” said Sherrill, who is also running for governor of New Jersey. “And so, why you would ever put someone in charge that didn't respect that, that didn't respect the service of about 20 percent of our armed forces, is shocking to me.”
The implications stretch beyond the ranks of the Armed Forces, said Democratic Rep. Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, who served in the Air Force and Air Force Reserve. Changes that enabled women like her, Sherrill and others to serve in the military put them on the path to public service in Congress, she said.
“They served because we made some real reforms that mattered in how women are able to serve and what kind of roles they're able to serve in,” Houlahan said. “And I think it's not a coincidence that you then see those people, decades later, showing up in places like Congress, because they've had equal opportunity.”
The U.S. Senate vets and confirms the president’s nominees to Cabinet posts and other high-level positions. In some ways, Hegseth’s nomination and the scandal surrounding it are not new. The first time a new president’s initial Cabinet nominee was rejected was in 1989 when the Senate failed to confirm John Tower, former President George H.W. Bush’s pick for defense secretary, after he was accused of being an alcoholic womanizer.
Then Sen. Sam Nunn, a Democrat and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman at the time, led the charge against Tower’s nomination on the grounds that his character was unfit for the position.
“The committee is also concerned about the personal example the secretary of defense must set for efforts of the Department of Defense to end discrimination toward, and any sexual harassment of, women. … Mr. President, leadership must be established from the top down,” Nunn said during the 1989 Senate debate.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, has made it a priority of his tenure to combat sexual assault in the military, establishing a commission early on to make recommendations to the military. Meanwhile, Hegseth has signaled a different set of values and priorities when it comes to women and people of color. He wrote a book arguing that military standards have been lowered for women, that “America’s white sons and daughters” are walking away from the military because of ideology that is too “effeminate” and that diversity, inclusion and equity efforts are bad for national security.
“I’m straight up just saying we shouldn’t have women in combat roles," Hegseth said in November during a podcast interview. “It hasn’t made us more effective. It hasn’t made us more lethal. It has made fighting more complicated.”
On Wednesday, Hegseth mounted another lobbying blitz on Capitol Hill, meeting with several key Republican senators. GOP Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, an Army veteran and a sexual assault survivor herself who has been outspoken against sexual assault in the military, posted on X that she had a “frank and thorough” conversation with Hegseth.
His mother, Penelope Hegseth, is also doing a media tour on behalf of her son after The New York Times reported on an email she sent him in 2018, in the midst of his contentious divorce from his second wife, excoriating Hegseth as an “abuser of women.” It is against military law to commit adultery, which could result in dishonorable discharge. Penelope Hegseth, who said she since apologized for and disavowed the contents of the email, took to Fox News with her hopes that lawmakers, “especially our female senators,” to “not listen to the media and that you will listen to Pete.”
Houlahan said she’s using the influence she has as a woman veteran in Congress to register her concerns with her colleagues in the Senate about Hegseth’s nomination.
“To the degree I can, I'm trying to have conversations, and directly have conversations with my Senate companions, to do my best to explain that I am really worried about this,” she said. “And I'm hoping that me being really worried is an indicator, a canary in the coal mine, of other people who are worried about it, who don't have the voice that I have.”
