As Hegseth’s public profile grew, he faced deepening private turmoil

When President Donald Trump first considered Pete Hegseth for a Cabinet position in 2017 and 2018, he marveled at a soldier who seemed straight out of central casting. The telegenic Fox News host, a decorated combat veteran with a chiseled jaw who spoke forcefully about standing up for his fellow servicemembers, appealed to Trump as he searched for his next secretary of veterans affairs.

But behind his public facade, Hegseth’s life at the time was in turmoil. He had recently left leadership of a nonprofit advocating for veterans amid allegations that he mismanaged funds and was regularly intoxicated at work events. He was going through an acrimonious divorce with his second wife after having an affair and a child with a Fox News co-worker. And a woman accused him of sexually assaulting her at a Republican conference where he spoke, an allegation he denied and authorities declined to bring charges on.

Hegseth’s personal troubles barely made the news at the time. Even after Trump went with other candidates for VA secretary, Hegseth stayed close to the president, dining at the White House and discussing military issues with him.

Since Trump announced Hegseth as a surprise pick for secretary of defense in his second term last month, however, those troubles have broken out into public view. Now, concerns about Hegseth’s treatment of women and use of alcohol are threatening to derail his spot in the Cabinet.

While Hegseth has attacked the criticism he’s faced as unfounded, Trump is already mulling other candidates to replace him as defense secretary.

A CNN review of court records, Hegseth’s writings and public statements, and interviews with people close to him show how the tumultuous period of late 2015 through 2017, when Hegseth’s public profile was reaching new heights, set the stage for his struggles over the last few weeks.

Hegseth’s attorney, Timothy Parlatore, told CNN that the allegations his client has faced about his personal life are “not accurate” and “all fairly ancient history.”

In comments to reporters Thursday between meetings with the senators who will vote on his confirmation, Hegseth said he was “a different man than I was years ago, and that’s a redemption story that I think a lot of Americans appreciate.”

But several key Republican senators have still declined to endorse Hegseth’s nomination, including Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, a veteran who’s spoken publicly about being a survivor of sexual assault.

“I think for a number of our senators, they want to make sure that any allegations have been cleared,” Ernst told Fox News on Thursday. “And that’s why we have to have a very thorough vetting.”

Shaped by military service

Hegseth grew up in a Minneapolis suburb, where he was a star athlete and high school valedictorian. Growing up in a conservative Christian household, Hegseth wrote in his first book, “I made sure to zealously avoid all forms of sin—especially sex, alcohol, and cursing.”

But that wouldn’t stick. He went to college at Princeton University and, after working briefly on Wall Street, served in the Minnesota Army National Guard.

He was deployed to the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and then volunteered for a deployment to Baghdad and Samarra, Iraq, where he saw combat while serving as an infantry platoon leader.

One of Hegseth’s military superiors in Iraq, who asked not to be named to speak candidly about him, said that “before Pete arrived, we all thought, just what we need, a Princeton smart mouth who’s never served in combat.”

But Hegseth was impressive, showing strong leadership and staying deliberate even as he faced dozens of memorial services for his fellow troops over the course of a few months. “Pete was quick on his feet, and he always put his soldiers first,” the former colleague said.

After he returned from his time in Iraq, Hegseth wrote in his 2016 book, he dropped that “pious caricature I had carefully crafted” in his earlier years.

Now, “I barely trust someone who doesn’t enjoy a few drinks and won’t drop a well-placed F-bomb,” Hegseth wrote. “Not because I think drinking and swearing are good things—but because I think moral lines are better served elsewhere.”

Those moral lines around drinking – as well as his treatment of women – seemed to trip Hegseth up over the years. His first wife, his high school sweetheart, filed for divorce in 2008, and court records show that a judge wrote he had been unfaithful to her.

He has also acknowledged that he struggled with the transition from military to civilian life, and that he was drinking heavily in the years after he returned from his deployments.

“It was a couple weeks between being in combat to sitting in a Manhattan apartment with my cat,” Hegseth said in a 2021 appearance on “The Will Cain Show.” “I’d look around at 10 o’clock and be like, ‘what am I going to do today, how about I drink some beers. How about I go have lunch and have some beers. How about I meet my one or two buddies and have some beers.’ And one beer leads to many.”

Looking for a renewed sense of purpose, Hegseth joined a nonprofit group, Vets for Freedom, where he has said he got “an absolute baptism in advocacy.”

During the 2008 election, the group spent millions on ads attacking then-presidential candidate Barack Obama over his policy on the Iraq War. But the campaign fell flat, and the organization ended that year in debt, according to tax records.

Margaret Hoover, a Republican political consultant and CNN commentator who was an adviser to Vets for Freedom between 2008 and 2010, said Hegseth’s leadership of the small nonprofit makes her doubt his ability to manage the far larger budget and staff of the Pentagon.

“He mismanaged funds and was not fully transparent about it,” Hoover said.

Others have defended Hegseth’s role with Vets for Freedom. David Bellavia, co-founder of the nonprofit, called the notion that Hegseth mismanaged funds “absurd” and told CNN the group spent money heavily and strategically to try to sway public thinking.

The organization eventually merged with another group, and Hegseth moved on. He briefly ran for Minnesota’s US Senate seat in 2012, before dropping out after a rival candidate won the Republican Party’s nomination.

He also volunteered for another deployment to Afghanistan, where he worked to train Afghan security forces. He was awarded a second Bronze Star Medal in 2012, after earning his first for his service in Iraq.

Hegseth’s experiences serving abroad shaped him more than anything, he said in his Will Cain interview. “Nothing has left a bigger imprint on my heart or on my life or on my perspective of humanity than strapping on boots and walking out the gates with guys you love who you know are just as human as you,” Hegseth said. “It teaches you a lot about yourself.”

A growing public profile

Hegseth’s public profile grew in 2014, when he was hired as a Fox News contributor. He was also leading another nonprofit, Concerned Veterans for America, that advocated for changes to the Department of Veterans Affairs amid criticism over its mismanagement of health care for servicemembers returning from the Middle East.

Some employees of the group questioned Hegseth’s financial management. Tax records show that while Hegseth oversaw a rise in the nonprofit’s annual revenue from just over $1 million to nearly $16 million, the group spent more than it received in three of the five years in which he served as CEO. In the fiscal year ending September 2016, Hegseth’s last in leadership, the group took in about $437,000 less than it spent and ended up about $37,500 in debt.

Under Hegseth, CVA also hired his younger brother, Philip, straight out of college, and paid him a total of more than $125,000 between 2014 and 2017, according to tax records. An executive for the organization told American Public Media in 2018 that the younger Hegseth did not report directly to his brother, and that he was “an outstanding employee who made significant contributions” to the group.

During his leadership, some employees of the group voiced concern about what they described as Hegseth’s excessive drinking and misbehavior as CEO, The New Yorker reported this week. Several employees wrote a memo to another CVA executive laying out multiple examples of Hegseth becoming so intoxicated that he had to be carried away from events and accusing him of overlooking at least one allegation of sexual misconduct by another staff member, according to the magazine. CNN has not reviewed the memo.

In another letter, the magazine reported, an employee said that Hegseth had drunkenly chanted “Kill all Muslims!” multiple times at an Ohio bar while on a bus tour for the group in 2015.

Hegseth has denied the allegations, with his lawyer saying they are “outlandish claims” pushed by “a petty and jealous disgruntled former associate of Mr. Hegseth’s.”

Other coworkers at the group remembered Hegseth as a strong leader. Brandon Davis, who worked as an operations analyst at CVA, said Hegseth was always willing to “go to bat” for his employees and would listen to everyone. Davis said that he hadn’t seen Hegseth drink excessively or act inappropriately toward anyone.

“He would attend after-parties with us, but he wasn’t out as late as some of us,” Davis told CNN. “He maintained his professionalism.”

Hegseth left the group in January 2016. The New Yorker reported that he resigned under pressure, although a letter from the group’s trustee said Hegseth voluntarily resigned his position and “provided strong leadership” to the group.

Hegseth received a $156,000 severance payment between October 2016 and September 2017 and total compensation of more than $172,000 over that period, according to the tax documents, even though he had left the organization months before.

Allegations of alcohol abuse and assault

In December 2016, as Trump prepared to enter the White House, he first considered Hegseth for secretary of veterans affairs. While Hegseth was one of the finalists for the position, some veterans’ groups opposed his candidacy due to his advocacy for allowing vets to seek health care in the private sector, and Trump eventually went with David Shulkin, an under-secretary under Obama.

But even being considered helped boost Hegseth’s profile. And Trump, an avid Fox News viewer, continued to call Hegseth personally to discuss military issues and goings-on at the network.

At Fox, Hegseth was receiving more airtime, and was months away from being promoted to co-host of the weekend “Fox & Friends” show. But his behavior was also raising some red flags.

Hegseth caused a disturbance at Fox’s Christmas party in 2016, which led to a discussion with the network’s human resources department, a person with knowledge of the incident said on condition of anonymity. The disturbance was rooted in the fact that Hegseth, who was married to his second wife, was having an affair with Fox executive producer Jennifer Rauchet, who was also married. The New York Times was first to report on Hegseth’s discussion with HR.

“We all knew about it, and we all knew we just couldn’t say anything about it,” one of Hegseth’s former fellow Fox hosts told CNN about the affair.

Parlatore, Hegseth’s attorney, told CNN that an attendee reported Hegseth being “handsy” with Rauchet at the party, and that their interaction was consensual.

At the time, Fox sources said, Rauchet showed favoritism toward Hegseth, much to the chagrin of other personalities at the network. “She kept putting Pete on TV,” an executive said. After Rauchet got pregnant with Hegseth’s child, the couple disclosed their relationship to Fox management, and Rauchet was moved to a different show. She later left Fox altogether.

In an interview during Trump’s first term in office, years before Hegseth became Trump’s pick to run the Pentagon, one longtime Fox News producer told CNN that Hegseth also had a drinking habit that was an “open secret” on the set of “Fox & Friends.” The producer said he sometimes noticed beer cans in the trash can inside Hegseth’s office, and once asked his boss, “Does Pete drink before he goes on the air every day?”

In another interview several years ago, Hegseth’s former fellow host described him as “the life of the party at Fox,” noting that people swarmed around him at company gatherings and female staffers sometimes flirted with him.

Parlatore denied that Hegseth had any drinking problem at Fox, pointing to public statements from his colleagues supporting him.

Rauchet gave birth to Hegseth’s baby in August 2017, which appeared to be the last straw for his second wife, Samantha. She filed for divorce a month later.

Records from the divorce case in Minnesota show the couple accused each other of saying hurtful things to their children about the other parent. A court-appointed parenting consultant chastised Hegseth in one letter for his conduct around his sons, writing that he had shown “hostile and degrading communication” toward Samantha.

In another filing, Samantha claimed that Hegseth had called her a “f***ing b****” in front of their sons. She said they told her Hegseth had them miss their “first day of online school” for something related to Fox News, which led one of the boys to have an anxiety attack.

Hegseth stated in a court filing that he thought the court-appointed consultant’s letter was “heavy handed,” though he committed to learning from his mistakes.

Parlatore said that the proceedings were typical for divorce cases, noting that Hegseth has a great relationship with his kids and adding that “this is why people get divorced – because they fight.”

As the acrimonious divorce proceedings went on, Hegseth traveled to Monterey, California, in October 2017 to speak at the convention of a decades-old Republican women’s group. After his speech, he was seen drinking in a hotel bar with a woman associated with the group.

That woman later told police that Hegseth sexually assaulted her in his hotel room, recounting that she remembered “saying ‘no’ a lot” and seeing his dog tags “hovering over her face,” according to a police report. She said she had only hazy memories of the alleged attack, and told a hospital nurse that she thought someone might have put something in her drink.

Hegseth strongly denied assaulting her, saying the encounter was fully consensual. The local district attorney declined to file charges.

Still, Hegseth later came to a financial settlement with his accuser that included a confidentiality clause, which his lawyer has said was due to fears he would be fired from Fox News amid the #MeToo movement.

Just two weeks after the alleged assault, Hegseth attended a small private dinner with Trump in the White House’s East Wing along with Rauchet, the mother of his baby, according to a social media photo. It’s unclear whether the president had any idea what was going on in Hegseth’s personal life at the time.

In March 2018, as Trump planned to remove Shulkin as VA secretary, he again considered Hegseth for the job. He eventually went with Robert Wilkie, a Defense Department official in his administration.

Around the same time, Hegseth’s mother wrote him an email accusing him of mistreating Samantha and other women, The New York Times reported. She said that she regretted sending the letter, arguing this week that her son is a changed man.

By 2019, Hegseth appeared to be putting the turmoil in his life behind him: The Monterey case was closed, he had finalized his divorce with Samantha, and he married Rauchet in August 2019 in a ceremony at a Trump golf club in New Jersey.

Hegseth has described his latest marriage as transformative. He said in an interview with journalist Megyn Kelly this week that he could have previously been characterized as a serial cheater but that he “truly was changed by Jen and my lord and savior Jesus Christ, and I mean that.” He added, “Do I regret those things? Yes. But is it who I am today? No.”

Cabinet nomination in limbo

While Hegseth had avoided the skeletons in his closet spilling into public view during his first two rounds being considered for Trump’s Cabinet, that didn’t hold true after Trump announced him as his pick for secretary of defense last month.

Within days, CNN and other news outlets reported on the Monterey sexual assault allegation. Reports from The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vanity Fair and other outlets detailed the claims about his abuse of alcohol, financial mismanagement, and bitter divorces.

As he’s crisscrossed the Senate over the last two weeks holding meetings with the senators who will decide the fate of his nomination, Hegseth has faced a barrage of questions over the controversies. In recent days, he’s broken his public silence to mount a more forceful defense of his record, telling Kelly that “we’re not backing down one bit.”

But while Hegseth said Wednesday that Trump had voiced support for him in their conversations, the president-elect has already been considering other candidates to replace Hegseth, potentially including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or Ernst, the Iowa senator – either of whom would likely have a far easier time in the Senate.

If Hegseth holds on, he will face a bruising confirmation hearing that could include testimony from women in his past, disapproving colleagues from his nonprofits, or other critics.

In a gambit to save his nomination, Hegseth has told senators that he would avoid alcohol if he became defense secretary. While he maintained that he had never had a drinking problem, Hegseth said in his interview with Kelly that “this is the biggest deployment of my life, and there won’t be a drop of alcohol on my lips while I’m doing it.”

That commitment echoed the promise made by John Tower, President George H. W. Bush’s nominee for the job, in 1989, who also faced criticism over his drinking and treatment of women. Tower was rejected by the Senate – a major surprise, considering he himself had served as a senator from Texas for more than two decades.

James Riddlesperger, a political science professor at Texas Christian University who has written about the Tower nomination, said that Tower’s personal struggles undermined his chances to join the Cabinet even though he had a decadeslong record overseeing military policy. That’s in contrast to Hegseth, someone who has “no experience in the Pentagon, no experience in major-level policy-making for the Defense Department,” he said.

Hegseth’s nomination, Riddlesperger said, is “only conceivable in a presidency of Donald Trump.”

By Casey Tolan, Curt Devine, Rob Kuznia and Brian Stelter, CNN

About The Author