Hegseth vetting questioned amid sexual misconduct allegation

A top Trump official and Trump’s attorneys reportedly met Thursday with the President-elect’s nominee for U.S. Secretary of Defense, Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth, to discuss a 2017 police report indicating his involvement in a sexual assault allegation investigation.

“In a statement, a spokesperson for the city government of Monterey, California, said its police department had investigated ‘an alleged sexual assault’ involving Hegseth,” CNN reported Friday. “The alleged assault took place in the early morning hours of October 8, 2017, at the address of the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel and Spa, and was reported four days later, according to the statement.”

“Hegseth was a speaker at a conference held by the California Federation of Republican Women at the hotel during the timeframe when the alleged assault took place, according to photos of the event posted on Facebook.”

That statement, which says the “full police report…is exempt from public disclosure,” also indicates the age and name of a “Victim” was listed as “Confidential.”

The police statement “did not specifically identify Hegseth as an alleged assailant,” CNN adds.

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At Vanity Fair, Gabriel Sherman reported Trump’s transition team had “scrambled Thursday after Trump’s incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles was presented with an allegation that former Fox & Friends cohost Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee to be Defense Secretary, had engaged in sexual misconduct. According to two sources, Wiles was briefed Wednesday night about an allegation that Hegseth had acted inappropriately with a woman.”

“According to the transition source, the allegation is serious enough that Wiles and Trump’s lawyers spoke to Hegseth about it on Thursday. A source with knowledge of the meeting said that Hegseth said the allegation stemmed from a consensual encounter and characterized the episode as he-said, she-said.”

Vanity Fair also reports that “one high-level MAGA member familiar with the allegation said Hegseth wasn’t properly scrutinized before Trump made the controversial pick. ‘He wasn’t vetted,’ the source said. But the senior transition source disputed this. ‘Hegseth was vetted, but this alleged incident didn’t come up.'”

Vanity Fair notes that Hegseth “has a history of making incendiary statements,” and “once called liberals ‘domestic enemies’ who want ‘trans-lesbian black females [to] run everything!’ In 2018, when he was a potential appointee to run the Department of Veterans Affairs, it was reported that he began an affair, and had a child with a Fox producer while still married to his second wife. He later married the producer.”

MSNBC and NBC News political analyst Elise Jordan posted a timeline of the “Hegseth sex assault allegation”:

Democratic strategist Matt McDermott, commenting on the Vanity Fair report, wrote: “In case there was any doubt about the lack of vetting the Trump transition is giving to cabinet nominations, it appears Trump nominated Pete Hegseth without knowing he’s facing credible sexual misconduct allegations.”

Paul Rieckhoff, founder and CEO of Independent Veterans of America, on Wednesday (video below) told MSNBC that Hegseth’s nomination is a “reflection of” his “loyalty to Trump, more than anything else.”

“Hegseth is a very effective culture warrior,” Rieckhoff said, “he’s very good at communications and at the religious war, and at the political war, but he is the most unqualified candidate for this position in the history of America.”

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Justin Higgins is a former policy adviser for a House Tea Party Republican. He later “became a senior research analyst for the Republican National Committee (RNC) and created content associated with Donald Trump’s presidential bid that year,” Newsweek reported.

Earlier this week Higgins wrote: “While at the RNC in 2016, I vetted Hegseth for an under secretary role at the Pentagon, and he wasn’t qualified for that much more subordinate role then. No amount of conservative spin will make this guy a qualified choice for Secretary of Defense.”

Potential Cabinet nominees are generally thoroughly vetted, interviewed, and asked if there’s anything in their history that would cause concern.

The century-old international law firm Covington & Burling LLP, which says it “has advised numerous nominees to cabinet, sub-cabinet, independent agency, and ambassadorial positions in Democratic and Republican administrations,” published a primer on the vetting process for potential presidential nominees.

“The first Trump administration took a more flexible approach than prior administrations to vetting nominees, particularly in terms of the threshold for abandoning a nomination based on issues detected during the vetting process,” according to the Covington advisory. “President Trump may take a similar approach in his second administration, although navigating which issues are most likely disqualifying will involve nuanced judgements.”

“Particularly for appointees to the most senior positions, the vetting teams will draw on the assistance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (‘FBI’), the Office of Government Ethics (‘OGE’), and agency ethics offices to complete their review.”

Also on Friday, CNN reported separately that “President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is bypassing traditional FBI background checks for at least some of his Cabinet picks while using private companies to conduct vetting of potential candidates for administration jobs, people close to the transition planning say.”

Retired U.S. Naval War College professor Tom Nichols, an expert on international affairs, national security, Russia, and nuclear weapons, on Friday, while not pointing to any particular nominee, wrote: “If you don’t want the FBI to do vetting on your appointees, it’s because you know you have serious problems – including national security threats – among your appointees. It’s that simple.”

Watch the MSNBC video below or at this link.