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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”:
Timeline of DoD Sec nominee Pete Hegseth sex assault allegation:
Aug 2017: Divorces his second wife/mother of 3 kids
Aug 16, 2017: his exec producer gives birth to their daughter
Oct 8, 2017: Alleged assault occurred in Hyatt Regency Monterey between midnight-7 am during CA Fed…— Elise Jordan (@Elise_Jordan) November 15, 2024
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.
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Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
