C-SPAN host Mimi Geerges was forced to correct Republican Rep. Rich McCormick on Wednesday when he insisted that Pete Hegseth does not know the identity of the woman accusing him of sexual assault, only for the Georgia lawmaker to double down on his false claim.
McCormick, who was on Washington Journal to primarily talk about his heated clash with Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, was asked about the embattled Hegseth’s efforts to rally support for his nomination as secretary of defense amid a slew of accusations over sexual misconduct and excessive drinking.
Noting that the former Fox News star recently had a “positive meeting” with GOP lawmakers, McCormick said that Hegseth did a “really good job” of pushing back against the allegations that have come out since President-elect Donald Trump chose him to run the Pentagon.
The Georgia congressman also said that all the complaints were “anonymous” and that Hegseth asserted that he didn’t know who was accusing him. “He doesn’t know what they’re talking about. His wife doesn’t know what’s going on,” McCormick added.
“Are you talking about the allegations of sexual assault?” Geerges interjected.
“Yeah,” the representative confirmed.
“Ok, but he paid a settlement. So he does know who it is,” the C-SPAN anchor replied.
Indeed, Hegseth and his lawyer have acknowledged that the ex-Fox & Friends host agreed to pay a woman a confidential sum in 2020 to prevent her from filing a lawsuit accusing him of sexually assaulting her in 2017. Hegseth, who has described the encounter as “consensual,” said that he settled with the woman because he feared he’d lose his job at Fox News if the lawsuit went public.
According to a police investigation launched in 2017, a woman claimed that a drunken Hegseth raped her after physically blocking her from leaving his California hotel room. Hegseth, meanwhile, argued that the woman was the “aggressor” and initiated the sexual encounter. While Monterrey law enforcement eventually closed the case with no charges filed, the report doesn’t state that police found the woman’s allegations to be false.
Although Hegseth and his attorney — who has threatened to release the woman from her non-disclosure agreement so the ex-Fox host can sue her — clearly know the identity of the accuser, McCormick insisted that wasn’t the case.
“No. He didn’t know who it is,” the lawmaker exclaimed. “And he’s saying to us — it’s an empty allegation of an anonymous tip. That’s not the same thing.”
McCormick added that while he also initially thought that Hegseth knew who was accusing him of rape and had “concerns,” he was told in the latest conference that these were “anonymous tips” and “we don’t know where they came from. Geerges left it there, moving on to questions about McCormick’s confrontation with DeJoy.
