CNN
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Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, has been ousted from his posts as head of two veterans’ advocacy groups following internal allegations of mismanagement and personal misconduct, The New Yorker reported Sunday. Ta.
During his time leading one of the nonprofit advocacy groups, Hegseth repeatedly became intoxicated at work events and gatherings with staff, according to a whistleblower report obtained by the magazine. It also alleges that he sexually pursued female staff members and that the organization ignored allegations of sexual misconduct by another staff member.
The report is the latest investigation into Hegseth, a veteran and former Fox News host with no government experience, ahead of what is expected to be a tough confirmation process in the Senate. This follows reports detailing allegations of sexual assault in 2017, which Hegseth has denied and no charges have been filed.
Asked by CNN to comment on the magazine’s report, an adviser to Hegseth said, “We have no intention of commenting on the outlandish allegations laundered through The New Yorker by narrow-minded, jealous and disgruntled former colleagues of Mr. Hegseth.” said. Contact us for your first foray into real journalism. ” Hegseth’s team had provided a similar statement to The New Yorker.
The seven-page whistleblower report was compiled by former employees of Concerned Veterans for America, an advocacy group that Hegseth served as president from 2013 to 2016, and was sent to executives in February 2015, according to The New Yorker. The paper reported. The magazine did not name the employee, and CNN has not independently reviewed the report.
According to The New Yorker, the report alleges that at a strip club in Louisiana that Hegseth visited with his team, Hegseth had to be stopped from joining the dancers on stage, and that another member of Hegseth’s staff It alleges that the group ignored female employees’ claims that its members had attempted to do so. To sexually assault her at that strip club.
The New Yorker alleges that his management “sexually stalked” employees and divided the organization’s female staff into two groups: “party girls” and “non-party girls.”
A separate complaint reported by The New Yorker alleges that in late 2015, another employee emailed Mr. Hegseth’s successor as president of the American Veterans Federation, saying that the employee had moved to Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. He claimed to have been accompanied by Mr. Hegseth on a work trip. On the group’s Freedom Tour, he shut down hotel bars and repeatedly shouted, “Kill all Muslims!”
In the letter, the employee criticized Hegseth’s “despicable conduct” and said it had “embarrassed the entire organization”. The magazine said staff also wrote about another incident in which Hegseth “passed out” in the back of a party bus and then urinated in front of the hotel where the organizing team was staying.
The New Yorker reported that when the magazine asked the letter’s unnamed author for comment, he said, “If you print it, you will deny that I wrote it.”
Hegseth joined the Concerned Veterans for America movement after a controversial previous term leading Vets for Freedom, a nonprofit backed by Republican billionaire mega-donors.
The magazine reported that a former official with the organization said its donors feared their funds would be wasted on parties and other inappropriate spending that were rumored to be “polite secret meetings.” He said that it has become like this. By early 2009, the organization was more than $500,000 in debt, and its donors elected to downsize the organization and transfer most of its management to another veterans organization. Hegseth’s role diminished and he eventually resigned after a few years.
CNN political commentator Margaret Hoover, who served as an advisor to Veterans for Freedom from 2008 to 2010, said last month that Hegseth’s management of the organization was “so inadequate” that he had lost the trust of donors. He told CNN’s Erin Burnett. She said the organization has fewer than 10 employees and a budget of less than $10 million.
“And he couldn’t do it properly,” Hoover said, casting doubt on his ability to lead the Pentagon. “From what I saw at the time, I don’t know how he was going to run an organization with an $857 billion budget and 3 million individuals.”
CNN previously reported that a woman accused Hegseth of sexually assaulting her in Monterey, California, in the early morning hours of October 8, 2017, after Hegseth had given a speaking engagement the night before. The accuser told police that Hegseth physically prevented her from leaving her hotel room, took her cell phone, and then sexually assaulted her.
The Monterey County District Attorney told CNN last month that his office declined to file charges against Hegseth in January 2018 because “the charges were not supported by evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.” She declined further comment. Hegseth maintains that the encounter with the anonymous woman was consensual.
Years later, Hegseth paid his accusers in a settlement agreement that included a confidentiality clause, his lawyer Timothy Parlatore told CNN in a statement last month. Parlatore said Hegseth settled because it was during the “Me Too” movement and he didn’t want to lose his job at Fox News if the accusations became public. The statement did not disclose the amount paid to the accusers as part of the settlement, but Parlatore said it was “significantly reduced.”
Hegseth’s alleged behavior with women came under even more scrutiny over the weekend. The New York Times reported that in 2018, Hegseth’s mother sent her son an email harshly criticizing his treatment of women.
In an email published by The Times, Penelope Hegseth told her son that there were “many” women who were “abusing him in some way” and encouraged him to “get help.”
According to a report in the Times, Penelope Hegseth said, “I have no respect for men who disrespect, lie, cheat, sleep with, and take advantage of women for their own power and ego. Yes (and has been for years), and as your mother, I’m heartbroken and embarrassed to say this, but it’s the sad, sad truth.
Penelope Hegseth told The New York Times on Friday that she wrote the email “with anger and emotion” and quickly apologized in another email. She went on to defend her son, saying her portrayal of his treatment of women in a 2018 email was “never true.”
CNN’s Alayna Treene contributed to this report.
