Despite facing allegations of sexual assault, “aggressive drunkenness,” financial mismanagement of veterans’ organizations, and a report his colleagues “smelled alcohol on him before he went on air,” at Fox News “as recently as last month,” U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) stated Tuesday that the standards for confirming presidential cabinet nominees have “evolved.” As a result, he indicated he is inclined to support Pete Hegseth’s nomination as Donald Trump’s next U.S. Secretary of Defense.

Saying that “of course” the multiple allegations against Hegseth are “concerning,” Senator Cramer told CNN’s Manu Raju (video below) on Tuesday, “I look forward to visiting with Pete, and I’m interested in who Pete Hegseth is today, and who he is going forward.”

Raju added that later, Senator Cramer “told me … that he is leaning yes, in supporting Pete Hegseth’s nomination, and I asked him if the standards have now changed in the United States Senate? Remember the last time the Senate voted down a defense secretary nominee or any cabinet nominee was in 1989. That was John Hightower over allegations of womanizing and also excessive drinking, including drunkenness.”

“And Cramer told me, ‘yes, the standards have evolved.’ And he says, ‘grace abounds,’ and he wants to see if Hegseth is in fact is a different person going forward.”

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Tuesday evening NBC News reported that “Ten current and former Fox employees say Trump’s pick for defense secretary drank in ways that concerned his co-workers.”

“Two of those people said that on more than a dozen occasions during Hegseth’s time as a co-host of ‘Fox & Friends Weekend,’ which began in 2017, they smelled alcohol on him before he went on air. Those same two people, plus another, said that during his time there he appeared on television after they’d heard him talk about being hungover as he was getting ready or on set.”

“One of the sources said they smelled alcohol on him as recently as last month and heard him complain about being hungover this fall,” NBC News added.

On Sunday, The New Yorker published a bombshell report revealing in part that a “previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events.”

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“The detailed seven-page report—which was compiled by multiple former C.V.A. employees and sent to the organization’s senior management in February, 2015—states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team. The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization’s female staffers, whom they divided into two groups—the ‘party girls’ and the ‘not party girls.’ In addition, the report asserts that, under Hegseth’s leadership, the organization became a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by a female employee that another employee on Hegseth’s staff had attempted to sexually assault her at the Louisiana strip club. In a separate letter of complaint, which was sent to the organization in late 2015, a different former employee described Hegseth being at a bar in the early-morning hours of May 29, 2015, while on an official tour through Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, drunkenly chanting ‘Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!'”

That New Yorker report also alleges that a “trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues, indicates that Hegseth was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran—Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America—in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.”

Mother Jones on Monday published “A Running List of the Allegations Against Pete Hegseth.”

The article, which has not been updated yet to include the latest NBC News allegations, characterizes them under the headings: “Mismanagement, a Drinking Problem, and Sexually Inappropriate Behavior,” “Rape Allegation,” and, “His Mother Called Him ‘an Abuser of Women’.”

CNN’s Manu Raju also talked with U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R-MA), who said, “As I’ve repeatedly said to you, I believe that we need an FBI background check to evaluate the allegations. We need to have the normal committee process of questionnaires, and questionnaires about this background and we also need to have a public hearing.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Susan Collins on Hegseth: “I believe that we need an FBI background check to evaluate the allegations, we need to have the normal committee process of questionnaires and..questionnaires about his background, and we also need to have a public hearing.” pic.twitter.com/uZo2tZC8gO

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 3, 2024

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Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license

President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly set to nominate Stephen Feinberg, a billionaire defense industry investor and major Trump megadonor—despite his lack of military or organizational leadership experience—for the second-highest position at the U.S. Department of Defense, Deputy Defense Secretary. The Washington Post first broke the news on Tuesday afternoon, which comes as Trump’s pick for U.S. Secretary of Defense, Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth, faces mounting criticism and negative press amid numerous scandals including alleged sexual assault, “aggressive drunkenness,” and financial mismanagement of veterans’ organizations.

Trump has already offered the job to Feinberg, according to the Post, calling it “a decision that could elevate a longtime political supporter with investments in defense companies that maintain lucrative Pentagon contracts.”

“Feinberg is the co-CEO of Cerberus Capital Management, which has invested in hypersonic missiles and which previously owned the private military contractor DynCorp,” the Post reports. “DynCorp was acquired by another defense firm, Amentum, in 2020. During the first Trump administration, Feinberg led the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, which provides the U.S. leader advice on intelligence assessments and estimates and counterintelligence matters.”

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“The deputy defense secretary typically manages day-to-day operations of the massive bureaucracy with a combined workforce of more than 3 million service members and civilian employees,” the Post explained.

The current Deputy Defense Secretary is Kathleen Hicks. She holds a master’s in national security studies, and her PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Hicks started her career at the Pentagon as a civil servant in 1993. For three years she was a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) before returning to the Pentagon under President Barack Obama in 2009. She has served as Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for strategy, plans, and forces, and Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for policy.

In 2020, President-elect Joe Biden chose Hicks to lead “the 23-person agency review team’s assessment of defense and national-security related issues,” Defense Daily reported.

“These teams are composed of highly experienced and talented professionals with deep backgrounds in crucial policy areas across the federal government. The teams have been crafted to ensure they not only reflect the values and priorities of the incoming administration, but reflect the diversity of perspectives crucial for addressing America’s most urgent and complex challenges,” the Biden transition team said in a statement, according to Defense Daily.

Feinberg has a bachelors’ from Princeton.

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In 2021, The New York Times reported that the four Saudis “who participated in the 2018 killing of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi received paramilitary training in the United States the previous year under a contract approved by the State Department, according to documents and people familiar with the arrangement.”

“The training was provided by the Arkansas-based security company Tier 1 Group, which is owned by the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management,” the Times reported.

In July of 2017, a New York Times report noted Feinberg’s ties to the now far-right podcaster and political strategist Steve Bannon, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.

“Erik D. Prince, a founder of the private security firm Blackwater Worldwide, and Stephen A. Feinberg, a billionaire financier who owns the giant military contractor DynCorp International, have developed proposals to rely on contractors instead of American troops in Afghanistan at the behest of Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, and Jared Kushner, his senior adviser and son-in-law, according to people briefed on the conversations.”

A 2012 Rolling Stone profile of then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney, included this statement from Feinberg.

“’We try to hide religiously,’ explained Steven [sic] Feinberg, the CEO of a takeover firm called Cerberus Capital Management that recently drove one of its targets into bankruptcy after saddling it with $2.3 billion in debt. ‘If anyone at Cerberus has his picture in the paper and a picture of his apartment, we will do more than fire that person,’ Feinberg told shareholders in 2007. ‘We will kill him. The jail sentence will be worth it.’ ”

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Despite apparent consternation from a small number of Democrats—including Governor Jared Polis and U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, both of Colorado, and Senator Gary Peters of Michigan—a strong majority of Democratic voters support President Joe Biden’s decision to issue a complete, blanket pardon for Hunter Biden, his son, whom incoming Trump nominees are expected to continue to target. Multiple legal experts, including former federal prosecutors, have stated they would not have brought charges against Hunter Biden. The President and the White House have indicated the pardon was in response to Trump’s nominations.

A YouGov poll conducted Monday of over 3500 adults found 64% of Democrats approve of President Biden pardoning his son, while 21% disapprove. Nearly eight in ten Republicans (79%) disapprove. Overall, 34% of the country approves, and 50% does not. Adults 45 and older were the largest groups to disapprove.

“Biden didn’t just pardon his son, but he did so after repeatedly saying he wouldn’t, and he gave Hunter Biden an extraordinarily broad pardon, historically speaking,” reported The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake. “These numbers suggest it’s a mark against the outgoing president, but not exactly a scandal.”

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Blake also reported that previous polls showed Democrats had been opposed to the President pardoning his son.

He noted that the numbers suggest “the pardon might not be as big a stain on Biden’s legacy as it seemed it could be.” (Other news outlets, including Politico, have suggested the pardon has or will harm Biden’s legacy.)

The Post also reports the “reversal reinforces how partisanship can rein in such matters — how ideas that are highly unpopular in the abstract can win significant support when your side actually does it.”

Others have also spoken out against President Biden pardoning Hunter Biden.

Outgoing U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (who left the Democratic Party officially this year and declared independent status) told CNN the pardon makes President Biden’s legacy “more difficult,” and said Biden should have also pardoned Donald Trump to make it “more balanced.” Donald Trump had been facing close to 100 felony charges across multiple state and federal jurisdictions and courts on a wide variety of alleged criminal acts, including under the Espionage Act. Presidents cannot pardon state offenses.

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Meanwhile, The Post also reports any possible pardons for those involved in the January 6 insurrection or other actions at the Capitol are strongly opposed—even by many Republicans.

“Polls show this idea has been very unpopular, and even many Republicans aren’t sold. A CNN poll in January showed 69 percent of American adults and even 46 percent of Republican-leaning Americans opposed the idea of pardoning most Jan. 6 convicts. And a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll a year ago showed just 26 percent of Americans and 42 percent of Republicans said punishments for Jan. 6 convicts were ‘too harsh.'”

However, Trump supporters’ perceptions could still change.

“Republicans have quite conveniently adjusted their views related to Trump and crime — and even the Capitol insurrection — plenty before, in Trump’s direction. And it could surely happen again.”

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Image via Reuters