Is Pete Hegseth’s Nomination In Danger Again, Or Are These Latest Allegations Also Totally Fine?
Just asking.
If you watched Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing, you saw a bunch of Republican senators fawning all over the creeper with the Crusades tattoos who gives all the white supremacist Christian extremists little stiffies underneath their little LARPing outfits.
“How many pushups can you do?” asked new Montana GOP Senator Tim Sheehy, who also made Hegseth giggle like a little schoolgirl with his joke about how he knows how many genders there are because he is a “SHEE-HY.” Hegseth announced that he had done five sets of 47 pushups that morning — get it? 47! — because we guess he hadn’t gone down on Donald Trump enough that day yet.
But otherwise it was just Democrats yelling at Hegseth about everything — his lack of qualifications to manage an Applebee’s, his track record of running wingnut veterans’ orgs into the ground, the rape accusation, the abuse of women allegations, the reports of constant drunkenness and drinking problems, everything. And we saw Republican senators refuse to challenge Hegseth when his answer to all of that was that it was “anonymous smears.”
(Your mom is anonymous smears? Because we saw what she writes about young Peter’s treatment of women when he’s not currently trying to get white conservative Christian affirmative-action hired to run the Pentagon. Also not “anonymous smears” is the woman who said Hegseth raped her, and no, he was not “cleared” for that. Lots of people know her name. He had to know her name to sign the check to her when he paid her off for her silence.)
At the beginning of the week, we were hearing rumblings that there would be a fast confirmation vote for Hegseth, after Republican Joni Ernst sold out her dignity, self-respect, and military service to vote Hegseth’s nomination out of the Armed Services Committee.
But uh oh! Here come some more allegations! Is Hegseth’s nomination in trouble again? Well, we just don’t know.
NBC News reported yesterday that senators got a new affidavit with allegations about Hegseth’s past treatment of his second wife Samantha, the mother of three of his 768 children, to whom he was married between 2010 and 2018. (He’s been married three times, but this latest one is forever, wink wink, probably, you betcha.) According to Hegseth’s ex-sister-in-law — his brother’s ex-wife — Samantha was afraid of Hegseth and feared for her safety, and had plans in place to escape if she needed to.
Danielle Hegseth gave this information in response to a letter from Democratic Senator Jack Reed, ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, who was asking for anything she might know. Now, at least 15 senators have been going over it.
NBC News:
Danielle describes in the affidavit allegations of volatile and threatening conduct by Hegseth that made his second wife, Samantha Hegseth, fear for her safety. Among the allegations are that Samantha hid in a closet once from Hegseth, that she developed escape plans for use “if she felt she needed to get away from Hegseth” that would be activated with a code word and that she did once put the escape plans into action.
Samantha Hegseth denies it, sort of, kind of. She told NBC News in an email Monday that “First and foremost, I have not and will not comment on my marriage to Pete Hegseth,” and said she’s never authorized anybody to speak on her behalf. She said, “I do not believe your information to be accurate, and I have cc’d my lawyer.”
In a followup on Tuesday, she said, “There was no physical abuse in my marriage” and refused to comment further. Careful readers will note that those statements don’t actually respond to the specific allegations in the block quote. We also have no idea what kind of behind-the-scenes action might or might not be influencing what she is willing to say. This is MAGA, after all. They frequently threaten witnesses, and women in particular.
Hegseth’s lawyer is denying everything, and further says that “Danielle Dietrich, an anti-Trump far left Democrat,” blah blah blah blah blah, we guess Dietrich is her married name now. (The same lawyer has been saying Hegseth was “cleared” of the California rape allegation, simply because charges were never filed. That’s not how that works.)
Regardless, NBC News reports that Samantha Hegseth stated to the court in 2021 that she was not domestically abused.
Danielle Hegseth/Dietrich says she told the FBI all this back in December, but we guess the Trump transition team forgot to mention it when they told Reed and committee Chair Roger Wicker about how Hegseth’s background check went. She says she told the FBI more this past Saturday, AKA after Hegseth’s confirmation hearing.
More from the affidavit:
In the affidavit, Danielle Hegseth notes that “much” of what she knows about Samantha’s situation she “learned from her around the time of the events in question."
“However, I trust what Samantha told me for the reasons stated above, most critically because it was consistent with what I personally observed of Hegseth’s erratic and aggressive behavior over many years,” Danielle Hegseth says in the affidavit.
She also says, “I believe Hegseth has an alcohol abuse problem and was abusive to his ex-wife Samantha, as I understand those terms as a lay person.”
NBC News reports on another person who has “indirect knowledge” that Samantha had an escape plan, who spoke to the Armed Services Committee, and two other sources who knew about that plan, a code word she could text people to activate her plan to get away from Pete. Says Danielle, one time, in 2015 or 2016, Samantha Hegseth used that code word.
There’s more if you read the full NBC News report, stuff Danielle says she witnessed personally, like an incident in 2009 when he allegedly drunkenly screamed at her for walking out of the room instead of listening to some story he was telling. “I remember it had a racial slant that bothered me,” she says, big shocker. “He followed me out of the room and yelled at me that I was disrespecting him by walking away.” Oh boy, that sure sounds like the type of deficient man Pete Hegseth is!
Also:
According to the affidavit, she heard Hegseth “say that women should not have the right to vote and that they should not work.”
Also:
She also recounts a night in 2013 in which Hegseth “got very drunk” at a bar, “dancing with gin and tonics in each hand and dropping several glasses on the dance floor, making a mess.” Leaving the bar with Hegseth, she says, he “repeatedly shouted ‘No means yes!’”
Huh. “No means yes!” in 2013, accused of rape in 2017. Allegedly!
Other news organizations have confirmed this reporting, with the Wall Street Journal focusing on allegations that Hegseth often drank to the point of passing out and/or throwing up, including in uniform.
All of this is extremely on brand, at least based on everything we are able to put together about this guy.
Hegseth’s lawyer, however, retorts that “These claims are clearly and obviously false to any objective observer.” Sure, bud. Maybe he and Pete can explain to us how everything Danielle Hegseth says about Pete is also an anonymous smear.
Maybe Pete should tell us again that he promises never to drink ever again if you’ll just let him be Defense secretary this one time, because that’s just a really cool thing that people without drinking problems say.
Interestingly — and we have no idea what this means, so don’t be askin’ us about it — Danielle Hegseth says in the affidavit that she’s speaking out now because “I have been assured that making this public statement will ensure that certain Senators who are still on the fence will vote against Hegseth’s confirmation. But for that assurance I would not subject myself or others referred to in this statement to the public scrutiny this statement is likely to cause.”
Again, we have no idea what that means. Who did the assuring? Don’t know. What does the person doing the assuring know about the whip count in the Senate? Don’t know. Does the assuring person know that there are at least four who would jump together and vote against Hegseth, and which ones would they be? Murkowski? Collins? Don’t know.
McConnell? We are just spitballing here!
Again, we don’t know if this will matter. If they schedule a confirmation vote real quick, then it didn’t.
But if they don’t? Well then we reckon we’ll start to wonder, the way we’re wondering right now if they’re ever going to schedule confirmation hearings for Tulsi Gabbard or RFK Jr.
[NBC News]
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I know I've fucked up. I know I've done terrible things because of my drinking. I know that I have ruined lives, and relationships, and that I have disappointed all of those people who had faith in me and loved me.
But I promise I can change. I will change.
I will stop drinking, I will be a better person.
If you put me in charge of the largest, most technologically advanced military in human history.