More details are emerging about an alleged 2017 sexual assault involving Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, including that he made a payment to the woman in exchange for not making the allegations public, his lawyer confirmed to Military.com.
“They threatened to file a lawsuit, knowing that the likelihood of success was minimal, but the mere public filing would cause him to lose his job,” Tim Parlatore, Hegseth’s personal lawyer since 2017, said on Monday.
“He was a victim of blackmail,” Parlatore claimed.
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Police records released by the City of Monterey, California, last week confirmed that the alleged incident occurred in the early hours of Oct. 8, 2017, and involved a victim who suffered bruising on their thigh. Monterey police did not disclose the age or identity of the alleged victim.
Parlatore said that following the incident, Hegseth reached a confidential settlement that included a cash payment and a nondisclosure agreement but he would not disclose the payment amount.
The Washington Post was the first to report the news of the settlement and their reporting noted that “a detailed memo was sent to the Trump transition team this week by a woman who said she is a friend of the accuser,” in which she alleged that the now-former Fox News host raped the woman — a conservative group staffer then 30 years old — in his room after drinking at the hotel bar.
A spokeswoman for Fox News told Military.com on Monday that Hegseth no longer works for the network.
Palatore does not deny that Hegseth and the woman had sex but insists it was consensual.
Given the nature of the case, including the confidential nature of the agreement, Military.com was not able to reach out to the woman in this case to verify any of the claims being made by Hegseth’s team.
The timing of this incident came at a precarious time for Hegseth.
In September of that year, his second wife, Samantha, had filed for divorce, Minnesota court records show. About a month prior, Hegseth had a daughter with Fox News producer Jennifer Rauchet, according to social media posts from the pair.
Meanwhile, Hegseth’s prominence with the first Trump administration was on the rise.
He and Rauchet were photographed having a private dinner with President Donald Trump just over two weeks after the alleged incident in Monterey.
Parlatore said he wouldn’t go into whether those events were part of Hegseth’s concern over his then–job at Fox News.
Hegseth has built much of his public persona around the idea that he is a culture warrior who rails against a “woke” military in his various books and media appearances in recent years.
While the term “woke” has been used broadly by Republicans to deride any number of liberal policies to which they object, most often, it refers to the growing number of minorities, women and other marginalized groups in the ranks, and policies that recognize and address them.
Hegseth has specifically taken notable issue with women serving in combat roles, and he has publicly called female troops a detriment to the effectiveness of frontline units.
While women have served in the military in various capacities for decades, their ability to serve in roles that expose them to direct ground combat is far more recent, having been lifted by then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in 2013.
Meanwhile, Hegseth himself served in the National Guard for just under 13 years of service, with deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, according to service records released by the Army last week.
His awards include two Bronze Stars, two Army Commendation Medals and the expert infantryman and combat infantryman badges, according to the records.
His records show that he left the District of Columbia National Guard as a major in 2021.
The disclosure of the alleged sexual assault call to police was revealed shortly after Hegseth’s nomination was announced last week. He did not face any formal investigations into his conduct during his National Guard service, according to a spokesperson for the National Guard Bureau.
Editors note: This article has been updated with the information that Hegseth no longer works for Fox News.
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