Everything We Know About the Alcohol Abuse Allegations Against Pete Hegseth
Pete Hegseth’s nomination to head the Department of Defense is in dire straits. On top of allegations of sexual assault, the former Fox News hosts confirmation prospects are being derailed by reports of alcohol abuse that affected his workplace conduct across large swaths of his career.
Records obtained by multiple news outlets, anonymous statements from current and former coworkers at Fox News, and Hegseth’s own past statements paint a picture of a combat veteran who struggled with his alcohol consumption following his return to civilian life.
As he works to convince dubious Republican senators to back his nomination, Hegseth publicly stated that he “never had a drinking problem” in a Wednesday interview with fellow former Fox News host Megyn Kelly. But even in that same interview, Hegseth questions how one deals “with the demons you see on the battlefield?”
“Sometimes it’s with a bottle,” he told Kelly, adding that “two Js” — his wife Jennifer and Jesus — “pulled me out of that.”
Lawmakers weighing their votes on Hegseth’s confirmation have taken note of the reporting surrounding his relationship with alcohol, and Hegseth has reportedly been promising senators that he will stop drinking if they confirm him.
“Much as we might be sympathetic to people with continuing alcohol problems, they shouldn’t be at the top of our national-security structure,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told The New Yorker on Monday.
With his nomination in the balance, here’s everything we’ve learned so far about the allegations of alcohol abuse surrounding the potential Secretary of Defense.
Allegations of a drunken sexual assault
Last month, a 2017 sexual assault allegation againast Hegseth resurfaced. The woman Hegseth allegedly assaulted during a conference hosted by the California Federation of Republican Women filed a police report, and Hegseth eventually settled with his accuser.
According to the police report, a hotel worker who was called to intervene in an argument between Hegseth and the accuser told Monterey, California, law enforcement that Hegseth seemed very drunk, and grew belligerent when confronted by the employee. The alleged assault took place in the hotel later that night.
He allegedly drunkenly chanted “Kill All Muslims!” at a work event
According to a report from The New Yorker, Hegseth’s drinking sparked multiple complaints from employees at Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), a nonprofit he headed between 2013 and 2016.
In 2015, a complaint letter a now-former CVA employee sent to management described Hegseth chanting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!” at a bar in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, while on a rally tour with the organization. The complaint described Hegseth and another individual chanting in “a drunk and violent manner.”
He allegedly got so drunk he tried to rush the stage at strip club
That same New Yorker report included details from a separate seven-page report sent to the CVA’s upper management by several former employees. The 2015 document describes Hegseth as being repeatedly intoxicated at multiple work events where he was presiding as head of the organization — sometimes to the extent that other employees had to physically carry him away.
In one instance, Hegseth took several employees to a Louisiana strip club where he drunkenly attempted to join the dancers on stage, only to be restrained by his coworkers.
Some of his former Fox News co-workers have said they were concerned about his drinking
Ten current and former Fox News employees detailed their experiences with Hegseth’s drinking to NBC News earlier this week. Several recalled Hegseth smelling of alcohol or discussing being hungover before taping Fox & Friends Weekend.
“Everyone would be talking about it behind the scenes before he went on the air,” one former employee said.
One current employee and two former ones told the outlet that they felt they had to “babysit” the host to mitigate the effects of his drinking. “We’d have to call him to make sure he didn’t oversleep because we knew he’d be out partying the night before,” one said.
While none recalled Hegseth ever missing a show because he’d been drinking, they did say that oftentimes he arrived at the studio so late that staff had to scramble to get him ready in time for the live broadcast. “Morning TV is stressful, and more times than not Pete made it even more stressful,” one employee said.
Fox News HR reportedly looked into his drunken conduct at a company Christmas party
According to interviews given to the The New York Times, in 2016 Hegseth got into a verbal altercation with the husband of his mistress-turned-third-wife Jennifer Rauchet, then a producer on his show.
Rauchet’s husband, suspecting the relationship between Hegseth and his wife, showed up to the employee-only party at a New York City bowling arcade. Sources told the Times that Hegseth, who had been drinking, caused a disturbance over Mr. Rauchet’s presence, one that later landed him in hot water with Fox News’ human resources department.
He reportedly got so drunk at a Fox News producer’s wedding that he struggled to stand
Sources also told The New York Times that at the 2017 wedding of a fellow Fox News host, Hegseth got so drunk he was struggling to remain standing while in the men’s restroom. Guests asked a network producer who was at the event for help getting the host a ride home so he could make his 6 a.m. broadcast the next day.
He reportedly polished off a display of warm beers at 10 a.m.
In an incident described by two former Fox News colleagues to The Washington Post, during a segment celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, Fox & Friends Weekend staff had set up a display of beers. After the show concluded — around 10 a.m. — Hegseth reportedly drank all of the beers on the display table, which by that point had gone flat and lukewarm. The Post notes that Hegseth downing the beers was “jarring” to colleagues.
His own descriptions of his alcohol consumption
While Hegseth is currently denying ever having had a drinking problem, the former Fox News host in the past he has publicly discussed and written about his abuse of alcohol.
In his 2016 memoir In the Arena, Hegseth wrote that he had “carefully crafted” a “pious caricature,” and “manufactured facade of goodness,” that masked his personal struggles. He added that while he publicly presented a moral front, he often “fell short” when it came to drinking, sex, and other vices, and was “often insufferable (and hypocritical) about it.”
In a 2021 interview with fellow Fox News personality Will Cain, Hegseth described his relationship with drinking after returning from a deployment in Iraq.
“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 some lunch and have some beers? How about I meet my one or two buddies and have some beers?’” he said. “And one beer leads to many, leads to self-medication, leads to ‘I’ve earned this.’ Like, ‘Don’t tell me I can’t.’”
He also acknowledged his drinking in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published on Wednesday. “Like veterans returning from any war, we drank beers to manage the reality of what we had faced. But we never did anything improper, and we treated everyone with respect,” he wrote of his time leading the group Vets for Freedom.
Later on Wednesday, he told Megyn Kelly: “I never had a drinking problem.”
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