A woman told police that she was sexually assaulted in 2017 by Pete Hegseth after he took her phone, blocked the door to a California hotel room and refused to let her leave, according to a newly-released investigative report.
Mr Hegseth, a Fox News personality and US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be defense secretary, told police at the time that the encounter had been consensual and denied any wrongdoing, the report said.
News of the allegations surfaced last week when local officials released a brief statement confirming that a woman had accused Mr Hegseth of sexual assault in October 2017 after he had spoken at a Republican women’s event in Monterey.
Mr Hegseth’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment early on Thursday. He has said Mr Hegseth paid the woman in 2023 to head off the threat of a baseless lawsuit.
The 22-page police report was released in response to a public records request and offers the first detailed account of what the woman alleged to have happened - one that is at odds with Hegseth’s version of events. The report cited police interviews with the alleged victim, a nurse who treated her, a hotel staff member, another woman at the event and Mr Hegseth.
The woman’s name was not released.
A spokeswoman for the Trump transition said on Thursday that the “report corroborates what Mr Hegseth’s attorneys have said all along: the incident was fully investigated and no charges were filed because police found the allegations to be false.”
The report does not say that police found the allegations were false. Police recommended the case report be forwarded to the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office for review.
Investigators were first alerted to the alleged assault, the report said, by a nurse who called them after a patient requested a sexual assault exam. The patient told medical personnel she believed she was assaulted five days earlier but couldn’t remember much about what had happened. She reported something may have been slipped into her drink before ending up in the hotel room where she said the assault occurred.
Police collected the unwashed dress and underwear she had worn that night, the report said.
The woman’s partner, who was staying at the hotel with her, told police that he was worried about her that night after she didn’t come back to their room. At 2am, he went to the hotel bar, but she wasn’t there. She made it back a few hours later, apologising that she “must have fallen asleep.” A few days later, she told him she had been sexually assaulted.
The woman, who helped organise the California Federation of Republican women gathering at which Mr Hegseth spoke, told police that she had witnessed the TV anchor acting inappropriately throughout the night and saw him stroking multiple women’s thighs. She texted a friend that Mr Hegseth was giving off a “creeper” vibe, according to the report.
After the event, the woman and others attended an afterparty in a hotel suite where she said she confronted Mr Hegseth, telling him that she “did not appreciate how he treated women,” the report states.
A group of people, including Mr Hegseth and the woman, decamped for the hotel’s bar. That’s when “things got fuzzy,” the woman told police.
She remembered having a drink at the bar with Mr Hegseth and others, the police report states. She also told police that she argued with Mr Hegseth near the hotel pool, an account that is supported by a hotel staffer who was sent to handle the disturbance and spoke to police, according to the report.
Soon, she told police, she was inside a hotel room with Mr Hegseth, who took her phone and blocked the door with his body so that she could not leave, according to the report. She also told police she remembered “saying `no’ a lot,” the report said.
Her next memory was laying on a couch or bed with Mr Hegseth hovering over her bare-chested, his dog tags dangling over her, the report states. Mr Hegseth served in the National Guard, rising to the rank of major.
After Mr Hegseth finished, she recalled him asking if she was “OK,” the report states. She told police she did not recall how she got back to her own hotel room and had since suffered from nightmares and memory loss.
At the time of the alleged assault in 2017, Mr Hegseth, now 44, was going through a divorce with his second wife, with whom he has three children. She filed for divorce after he had a child with a Fox News producer who is now his wife, according to court records and social media posts by Mr Hegseth. His first marriage ended in 2009, also after infidelity by Mr Hegseth, according to court records.
Mr Hegseth said he attended an after-party and drank beer but did not consume liquor, and acknowledged being “buzzed” but not drunk.
He said he met the woman at the hotel bar, and she led him by the arm back to his hotel room, which surprised him because he initially had no intention of having sex with her, the report said.
Mr Hegseth told investigators that the sexual encounter that followed was consensual, adding that he explicitly asked more than once if she was comfortable. Mr Hegseth said in the morning the woman “showed early signs of regret,” and he assured her that he wouldn’t tell anyone about the encounter.
Mr Hegseth’s attorney said a payment was made to the woman as part of a confidential settlement a few years after the police investigation because Mr Hegseth was concerned that she was prepared to file a lawsuit that he feared could have resulted in him being fired from Fox News, where he was a popular host. The attorney would not reveal the amount of the payment.
