Hegseth Allegedly Chanted ‘Kill All Muslims!’ While Leading Vets Group
Pete Hegseth has had a rough go of it since Donald Trump nominated him to run the Pentagon last month. The former Fox News host’s past has come into the full focus of the media and the Republican lawmakers who must vote to confirm him, and it doesn’t look pretty. The details of a disturbing 2017 sexual assault allegation were recently made public, for example. Rolling Stone reported that Trump’s team was furious Hegseth didn’t come clean about during the vetting process.
Over the weekend, The New York Times released a letter that Hegseth’s own mother wrote to her son, excoriating him for being an “abuser of women.” Hegseth’s sexism likely extends far beyond his mother’s purview. The New Yorker late Sunday night released a damning report featuring a whistleblower account of Hegseth’s behavior while leading the veterans group Concerned Veterans for America, as well as reporting about his time helming the group Veterans for Freedom.
He was forced out of his roles atop both organizations.
Hegseth allegedly cultivated a culture of sexism at CVA, which he ran from 2013-2016, and, according to The New Yorker, “he and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization’s female staffers.” The report alleges that Hegseth took the CVA team to a Louisiana strip club in 2014, where “he was so drunk he tried to get on the stage and dance with the strippers.” The same night, a different male staff member allegedly attempted to sexually assault one of CVA’s female staff members who had tried to restrain Hegseth. The female staffer moved to file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, but The New Yorker reports that the matter was settled with a payment to the staffer and a non-disclosure agreement. The whistleblower noted that the staffer was then “ostracized” by the CVA, which had become “become a hostile and intimidating working environment.”
Hegseth’s drunken behavior was cited multiple times as embarrassing the organization. Another complaint describes a stop on the CVA’s Defend Freedom Tour, when Hegseth and someone traveling with the group were in a bar when they started chanting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!” in what the complaint described as “a drunk and a violent manner.”
There was also Hegseth’s previous stint atop the group Veterans for Freedom, where he reportedly ran up so much debt that donors devised a plan to take control away from Hegseth. Donors were concerned their money was being spent inappropriately, and Hegseth later admitted that the group had less than $1,000 in the bank against $435,000 in unpaid bills. Hegseth was forced out of his leadership role, but he didn’t seem to learn his lesson. The New Yorker obtained an email sent to his successor at CVA years later noting that Hegseth “treated the organization funds like they were a personal expense account — for partying, drinking, and using CVA events as little more than opportunities to ‘hook up’ with women on the road.”
This is the man Donald Trump wants to lead the Department of Defense, one of the federal government’s largest and most complicated bureaucracies. We’ll see if Republican senators oblige him.
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