The Pressure Campaign to Get Pete Hegseth Confirmed as Defense Secretary

At the Senate confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, on Tuesday, the most telling feature may be the voices from whom the senators won’t hear. The Trump transition team has waged an intense, and in many ways unprecedented, behind-the-scenes campaign ahead of the hearing to intimidate and silence potential witnesses, aimed at keeping Republican senators in line and in the dark.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which will be holding Hegseth’s hearing, told me, “I’m deeply concerned by an apparent pattern of intimidation and threats, whether it’s legal action or reputational harm. They’re playing the hardest of hardball. It’s harder by several orders of magnitude than in almost any other confirmation.” Senator Elizabeth Warren, another Democrat on the committee, said the pressure tactics “seem designed” to insure that witnesses “don’t speak up.” Blumenthal said that “it’s been pretty unnerving” for Senate Republicans, “because this nominee is so deeply unqualified and unprepared,” yet they fear political retaliation from Trump if they vote their consciences. Referring to reports that Hegseth, a former National Guard major and Fox News weekend host with minimal civilian management experience, has been accused of drunkenness on the job, sexual impropriety at work, and other kinds of professional misconduct, Blumenthal said, “Someone who is inebriated, or self-dealing, or managerially incompetent in this position could put the whole nation at risk. My Republican colleagues are unsettled,” he added, “and some genuinely feel scared and intimidated.”

Hegseth has admitted to excess drinking in the past, but he has vowed that, if confirmed to lead the Pentagon, “there won’t be a drop of alcohol on my lips while I’m doing it.” In December, he said that he was “a different man than I was years ago,” describing his life as “a redemption story.” But even as he has attempted to reassure senators, additional reports continue to raise questions about when, and whether, he has reformed. As recently as the spring of 2023, according to an account shared last week with The New Yorker, Hegseth ordered three gin-and-tonics at a weekday breakfast meeting with an acquaintance in Manhattan. “It was an extremely strange experience,” his companion that morning told me. “We met at Fox News in New York for breakfast, and he suggested we go across the street to a bar. It was, like, ten in the morning. Then he ordered two gin-and-tonics at the same time for himself. To be polite, I ordered one, too. But it was so strong I couldn’t drink it, so I ordered coffee. Then he had a third gin-and-tonic. I don’t know how he could pass a security clearance. But they’re trying to create a culture where whistle-blowers are uncomfortable coming forward.” Neither Hegseth’s lawyer nor a spokesman for Trump responded to requests for comment.

Hegseth has denied all allegations of misconduct, including an accusation of rape stemming from an alcohol-fuelled extramarital sexual encounter in 2017, which he has described as consensual. The accuser reported the encounter to law enforcement, which brought no criminal charges, but Hegseth subsequently reached a financial settlement with her, shrouded behind a nondisclosure agreement. Hegseth revealed none of this to the Trump transition team, but when the Washington Post reported it, in November of 2024, Hegseth’s lawyer claimed that his client had been blackmailed into the settlement, despite his professed innocence, because he feared losing his job at Fox. Hegseth’s account, however, has raised concerns about his vulnerability to extortion if he is confirmed. Greg Kelly, a former Fox News host and a former pilot in the Marines, published an essay this week arguing that Hegseth’s apparent susceptibility disqualifies him for a national-security post, under a long-standing executive order, signed in 1953, which “explicitly bars individuals with vulnerabilities—such as blackmail—from positions of national security.”

This and other revelations have shaken support for Hegseth, but last week Trump, in meetings with Republican senators, warned the legislators that Hegseth’s confirmation is a priority for him—turning the process into a loyalty test. With a 53–47 Republican majority in the Senate, Hegseth cannot afford to lose more than three Republican votes, presuming that all Democrats vote against him.

The Trump team’s efforts to crush dissent range from public-media campaigns targeting vulnerable senators in conservative states (and paid for by unelected billionaires) to more underhanded tactics aimed at intimidating and discrediting potentially hostile witnesses. Hegseth’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, for instance, has threatened to sue Jane Doe, Hegseth’s anonymous rape accuser, and her lawyer for defamation if her allegations prevent him from being confirmed. So far, it appears that such tactics may be working. Several potential witnesses, including the accuser, have declined to speak out publicly and have elected not to testify at Tuesday’s hearing.

Republican senators have disparaged anonymous critics of Hegseth. But some of these senators have also declined to speak face to face and confidentially with such critics, including the woman who accused Hegseth of rape. According to three sources with knowledge of the situation, Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, is one of the senators who have turned down offers to hear privately from Hegseth’s accuser. Ernst is a pro-Trump conservative on the Armed Services Committeee, and her vote is seen as the linchpin to Hegseth’s confirmation, because she is both a military veteran and a survivor of sexual assault who has championed women’s rights. (Ernst’s office did not respond to questions from The New Yorker about her refusal to see Hegseth’s accuser.) Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine, also declined an offer to meet with the alleged victim. Collins’s press secretary, Blake Kernen, confirmed the outreach but said that the senator believes that such allegations should be brought to the relevant committee—in this case, the Armed Services Committee—of which she is not a member. Collins has, however, met with Hegseth. Afterward, she said she would wait to decide on his nomination until he had undergone an F.B.I. background check and his confirmation hearing.

Julie Roginsky, the co-founder, along with the former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson, of Lift Our Voices, a nonprofit that fights against the silencing of victims of sexual misconduct, told me, “For senators not to allow a sexual-assault survivor to speak to them is unconscionable. She should be allowed to tell her story.” But a source who tried to broker one such meeting described the Republican senators as “just plain scared of Trump.”

Several Republican senators have taken the same approach as Collins, saying that they are waiting for the F.B.I.’s background report on Hegseth to assess the conflicting claims about his behavior. But, as the Senate rushes ahead with the confirmation process, the F.B.I. report doesn’t appear likely to resolve much. According to multiple well-informed sources, the Bureau failed to interview several potentially crucial witnesses, including the woman who has accused Hegseth of rape. The F.B.I. also neglected to do a full background interview with the second of Hegseth’s three wives—from whom he reportedly went through a contentious divorce—after initially struggling to get in touch with her. The Bureau failed, too, to interview former employees of Concerned Veterans for America who were critical of Hegseth when he ran the organization, between 2013 and 2016. As The New Yorker reported in December, these former employees were so shocked by his behavior that they sent a blistering internal whistle-blower report to the nonprofit’s top management—a document that was subsequently shared with the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sources told The New Yorker that the F.B.I.’s background investigation also failed to interview Fox News personnel who had described Hegseth to NBC News as smelling of alcohol on the job as recently as last fall. Instead, sources say that the Bureau settled for an interview with a public-relations official at Fox. (The F.B.I. declined to comment for this article.)

The lack of rigor in the Hegseth investigation is reminiscent of the F.B.I.’s investigation into Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his contentious confirmation hearing, in 2018. Three years after Kavanaugh’s confirmation, the F.B.I. disclosed that it had received more than forty-five hundred tips on him during its investigation, and that the Trump White House determined which ones received follow-up. (Max Stier, a Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s who had reached out to the Bureau to report witnessing gross misconduct by Kavanaugh, was among those the F.B.I. never contacted.) The Bureau has a lesser standard for background checks of nominees than it does for criminal investigations. It regards the President who appointed the nominee—in both these instances, Trump—as “the client” who determines the scope of the inquiry.

The F.B.I.’s Hegseth report may be irrelevant, in any case, because it appears that most senators will never even get to see it. The newly installed Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker, of Mississippi, who was briefed on the F.B.I.’s investigation into Hegseth last Friday, plans not to share the Bureau’s findings with any senator other than the top-ranking Democrat on the committee, Jack Reed, of Rhode Island. A senior Republican staffer on the Armed Services Committee told me that the close hold on the F.B.I. findings was normal practice. But Democrats and some Republicans in the Senate are outraged by the decision. In a text, Blumenthal told me that the Trump team was trying to “conceal” and “whitewash” Hegseth’s past, adding, “Whatever they say is ‘normal’ (a disputed point), this nomination is not normal.”

The amount of private money being spent on the effort to confirm Hegseth is staggering for a Cabinet nominee. The sum is rivalled only by the cash that has been spent to pressure senators into confirming Supreme Court Justices. This week, one group, American Leadership PAC, reportedly plans to spend a million dollars to muscle wavering Republican senators in five states into approving Hegseth. According to the most recent F.E.C. records, the group barely exists, other than as a political piggy bank for four enormously wealthy right-wing megadonors. Federal records show that, in the 2022 and 2024 political cycles, the group was funded almost entirely by the Texas oil magnate Timothy Dunn; Thomas Klingenstein, a New York financier who runs the conservative Claremont Institute; Bill Koch, a member of the oil-and-gas dynasty and the founder of the petroleum-coke business Oxbow Carbon, L.L.C.; and the Wisconsin billionaire Richard Uihlein, the chair of the Uline packing company.

In December, a dark-money group previously backed by Elon Musk, Building America’s Future, also began pouring money into the fight. It spent half a million dollars on ads pressuring Ernst to support Hegseth after she voiced doubts about him. Musk and other Trump allies have made clear that they will fund primary challenges against Republican senators who oppose Trump’s nominees. (According to Fox News, several of Trump’s top campaign operatives—including his campaign manager Chris LaCivita and the pollster Tony Fabrizio—are set to become senior advisers to the dark-money group, which they plan to use as a private funder of Trump’s second-term agenda.)

“Elon Musk’s actions are designed to subvert the constitutional responsibility of the U.S. Senate to advise and consent,” Warren told me in a phone interview. Last week, after Hegseth declined to meet with Warren before the hearing, she sent him a thirty-three-page letter demanding answers. “He couldn’t pass a background check for a job at the mall,” she said. “He’s the most unqualified nominee for Secretary of Defense in U.S. history.” Warren argued that Hegseth’s previous opposition to female soldiers, in addition to the allegations of sexual assault, make him “an insult to women.” Moreover, she added, “he’s been repeatedly drunk at work events. Even his Fox co-workers talked about having to babysit him.”

Outside the public eye, Hegseth’s fixers have used questionable tactics against his opponents. Last week, the private employment records of a former employee of Hegseth’s who was a potential witness against him were leaked to the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative Web site, which published them in an apparent effort to undermine her. The Free Beacon’s chief financial supporter is Paul Singer, a New York hedge-fund billionaire who was also a major supporter of Vets for Freedom, a nonprofit that nearly went bankrupt under Hegseth in 2008, as NBC recently reported. The Free Beacon didn’t disclose its past ties to Hegseth. Instead, it publicly outed the previously anonymous witness, who had sought whistle-blower protection from the Senate Armed Services Committee. The same day, another version of the piece about the witness, along with her photograph, appeared in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post.

The whistle-blower, Kat Dugan, is a military veteran who helped compile the accounts of Hegseth’s drinking, misogyny, and other misconduct for the report on Hegseth produced by several former employees at Concerned Veterans for America. The seven-page report was written by numerous former employees and named more than two dozen individuals and incidents. But the Free Beacon and Post stories attempted to dismiss Dugan as a lone “disgruntled employee” exacting revenge for having been laid off following a medical leave.

When asked for comment, Dugan sent a statement via e-mail decrying “thuggish efforts to intimidate me.” She said that Hegseth’s allies had spread “outright lies” about her, including the false claim that she was trying to help the Democrats. She described herself as a registered Republican with twenty-one years of experience in the Army and as a defense contractor, and said that she had left Concerned Veterans for America in 2015 by mutual agreement. She said that she had not communicated with any Democratic members of the Senate and had not provided any news organization with the whistle-blower report on Hegseth. As for her agenda, she said, “I am for a fair process of vetting this cabinet nominee, period.” Dugan insisted that she was “not intimidated” by what she called a “smear campaign.” Nonetheless, she decided that the personal and professional costs of testifying at his hearing were too high.

Reporters have been targets for Hegseth’s defenders, too. (Arthur Schwartz, an adviser to Hegseth who reportedly has close ties to Donald Trump, Jr., sent me a link to the Free Beacon story about Dugan, with a text message saying simply, “You’re such a ridiculous buffoon.”) The insults and intimidation, however, have failed to stanch a growing flood of negative stories on Hegseth, including several from conservative outlets. Both the National Review and the National Interest have published scathing appraisals of Hegseth in the past few days. In the National Review, John Fund, in a piece titled “Pete Hegseth Is a Walking Dead Nominee,” argues that the appointment was a mistake made while Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, was taking a few days off; during this period, self-described “disruptors” such as the talk-show hosts Tucker Carlson and Dan Bongino persuaded Trump to appoint unqualified favorites of theirs, including Hegseth and Matt Gaetz, Trump’s aborted pick for Attorney General. (Bongino denies this account.) Though Gaetz’s nomination blew up immediately, Fund wrote, “Hegseth has held on—aided by a thuggish group of online MAGA satellite players who threaten anyone who raises objections.” Christian Whiton, a senior fellow at the Center for the National Interest, who worked in the State Department under George W. Bush and Trump, wrote an article laying out a nightmare scenario in which Hegseth, with his lack of expertise, might have to advise Trump on how to respond to a nuclear strike. The Washington Post’s editorial board has identified Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—Trump’s choice for the Department of Health and Human Services—as the Cabinet-secretary nominees too unqualified to be confirmed. And the Associated Press published a news story showing that Hegseth’s history of marital infidelity and insubordination toward a commanding officer violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which, as Defense Secretary, he would be called on to enforce. The report quoted Chuck Hagel, a former Republican senator who served as Barack Obama’s defense secretary, as saying, “You can’t minimize how important character is in leadership.”

It remains to be seen whether Trump’s enforcers—whom Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, has called “MAGA’s flying monkeys”—will succeed in pressuring Republican senators to confirm Hegseth. At the earliest, the Senate vote would be on January 20th, following Trump’s Inauguration. “The danger,” Whitehouse told me, “is that people with a lot of resources could threaten and intimidate shy people, or people with fewer resources, from telling the truth.” Dark-money groups, he notes, “are all waging campaigns to whip up the Internet hate community. They create terror and fear, which puts witnesses in an impossible position. Either they stay anonymous, in which case the senators say, ‘I don’t believe you,’ or they go public and get attacked and terrorized by people saying ‘I hope your children die,’ and worse. It’s grotesque stuff.” ♦