Pete Hegseth: It Will Get Worse-- Much Worse
I already wrote about why Pete Hegseth’s adultery, lying, hypocrisy, disloyalty, ingratitude, and poor judgement make him a poor nominee for Secretary of Defense, a poor nominee despite his admirable feistiness and his sound policy views. (Plus, it turns out that as leader of two nonprofit organizations he wrecked them through reckless spending.1) This is not like voting for Donald Trump because the alternative is Kamala Harris. Mr. Trump can find 100 men with Hegseth’s same feistiness and policy views but without his moral flaws. He should do so.
But what this Substack is about is practical politics— what will happen rather than what should happen. Suppose Pete Hegseth remains the nominee. What will happen between now and when he is confirmed? Will he persuade enough senators that he will indeed be confirmed? How great will the political damage be to President Trump and the senators who vote for him?
I’ve seen a lot of action on Twitter and Bluesky about Mr. Hegseth, not just by the two sides, Pro and Anti, but by the many sides to the confirmation battle. It’s a little hard to tell who’s Pro and who’s Anti. Donald Trump nominated him, of course, but is he still Pro-Hegseth? Or would he rather Hegseth withdrew, or that Hegseth were struck by lightning and disappeared from the picture? The Democrats are Anti, probably, but would they like Hegseth’s nomination to be withdrawn, or would they rather go all the way to the confirmation hearings so they could create public embarassment for the new Administration? Or maybe they’d like to vote against him but have him get confirmed anyway, to obtain the result of an ineffective Secretary of Defense mocked by people all the way from the Pentagon brass who hate Trump down to the ordinary soldiers who love Trump but also like to make fun of hypocritical bigshots? This isn’t as simple as trying to win an election.
That kind of political gamesmanship makes it tough, though fun, to try to make sense of what Senators Ernst and Vance are saying, or the reliability of the planted (by who?) rumors that Trump is considering Governor DeSantis as a replacement nominee, or the rumors— again planted, by someone— that 50 Republican Senators have pledged to vote in favor of Hegseth. I won’t do that here, though I hope somebody else does so I can read what they write. Rather, I’ll talk about the general strategy of confirmation battles and what I think will happen in this particular case in light of that.
The general strategy in a confirmation battle is that the Pro side wins if everything proceeds quietly, especially if their party controls the Senate, as is the case for Hegseth. The Senate does give some deference to the President, and in this case even if they didn’t, Hegseth would be confirmed on a party-line vote. Thus, it is the Anti side that bears the burden of the offensive. The Anti side must come up with evidence that the nominee would hurt the country. This evidence can be about his policy views, his competence, or his moral character. The Democrats will attack Hegseth’s policy views and his competence, but I won’t talk about those here, since they aren’t his biggest problem. Rather, it is his moral character. The question is what evidence has come out about that, and what evidence is still to come out.
The first move, though, is actually by the Pro side, and is a defensive move that happens behind the scenes even before someone is nominated. The Pro side asks the potential nominee what evidence might come out about him, and does its own research too. If they find he lied, that is a mark against him and he might be crossed off the list. Then, when the President-Elect has decided to choose this particular man, they ask him again, because now he might add some new information he was afraid might have stopped the President from choosing him. This second round is purely so the President’s staff can get ready for the battle.
The staff must now decide what to do to get ahead of the bad news. They might decide to float rumors that this particular man is going to be the nominee, to see what negatives come out and which of the negatives they know about don’t get mentioned. They decide whether to release the negatives themselves. If something is going to come out anyway, the staff want to control the timing and the spin. Almost any negative is going to come out sooner or later before the confirmation vote if the nominee is a controversial one such as Hegseth. You can’t assume the Democrats are stupid and don’t know how to use Google or pick up a phone and call the nominee’s ex-wives, or that they won’t run a detective report and find out about every time he was arrested, paid a speeding ticket, or was sued for not paying rent.
In Hegseth’s case, he lied to the staff. They asked him, we can be sure, if he had any other negatives than the ones that everybody knew about, such as being divorced twice for infidelity, the second time for an affair with a co-worker at Fox whom he got pregnant. Hegseth said no. He didn’t mention the 2017 police inevstigation and lengthy police report about a woman accusing him of date rape. He also didn’t mention the nondisclosure agreement he later paid the woman to sign.2
As I explain in my previous Substack on Hegseth, that incident is enough to disqualify him even if we look at the evidence in the way that looks best for him. We don’t have to believe the woman’s story that she can’t remember much about what happened after the party and she just woke up in his room and only knew she’d engaged in sexual intercourse when the hospital rape-check people told her. Suppose she deliberately joined Hegseth in bed despite her husband and two children being in the same hotel, she was totally sober, and Hegseth was dead drunk. It still reflects badly on Hegseth, perhaps even worse, if he’s too weak to stop women from taking advantage of him and blackmailing him for large amounts of money. But that is the best defense of him that I’ve seen, and I’ve seen it enough places on X that it looks like this is “the official defense”.3
If that is indeed the official defense, I don’t see how he can be confirmed. Remember, we’re still in the pre-Senate stage of the confirmation battle. This is just the stage where both sides are maneuvering to figure out what the other side knows, what the senators are thinking, and what the public will think of everything once the real battle begins. In the confirmation hearings, the Democrats can bring the woman as witness, and the police, and the prosecutor who decided not to prosecute. It won’t be just “No charges were filed,” as the Pro side is currently saying. The tawdry story will be told as I have told it, with the addition that the police and lawyer will say that Hegseth might have slipped her a date rape drug, or used force, but when it’s he-said/she-said, it’s impossible to prove rape to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt so they dropped the case— not at all because they thought Hegseth was innocent, but because they couldn’t prove he was guilty. The Democrats will read the police report into the record. I hesitate whether to include something so graphic here, but I will show you a small part of it:
Mr. Hegseth will be asked about what his wife would have thought about his behavior. He’ll be asked whether it was appropriate for a man whose wife had a baby just two months earlier to not just leave her alone to go out of town for an event but to spend the evening at the bar drinking and then to take a woman up to his room. He’ll be asked whether he telephoned his wife that night, and what he said to her. Or at least, that’s what I’d ask if I were the Democrats. They’ll milk it for all it’s worth.
But that isn’t the worst of it. We still have not seen the nondisclosure agreement. The Senate can subpoena it, requiring him to show it to them, and read that into the record also. They’ll tell us exactly how much he paid the woman not to talk to reporters. She will be free, though, to talk to the Senators, and, in fact will be required to answer their questions under oath. A nondisclosure agreement does not apply to testimony required in court or at a senate hearing. She will also be asked what threats Mr. Hegseth made about what he’d do— what he might tell her husband, for example— if she didn’t agree to sign the nondisclosure. Mr. Hegseth will look utterly despicable.
Since Mr. Hegseth is a member of a strict, conservative, church, he will also be asked about what his church thinks of all this. And he’ll be asked about what his church’s denomination thinks of it. The denomination is the small but intellectually influential Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CERC), the best-known pastor in which is Pastor Doug Wilson of Moscow, Idaho. The Senate Democrats will subpoena Hegseth’s local pastor and Pastor Wilson both. They’ll ask them about their views on Christian nationalism, and they’ll also ask them, “Does the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches consider it a sin for a married man with children to be naked with a woman in a hotel room, or is that normal behavior for married men in your denomination?” This will be paired with questions about the role of women: “Your church is on record as saying that women should not be pastors, and that wives should obey their husbands. Do you also think that if a man asks another man’s wife to join him in his hotel room, it is her duty as a Christian woman to obey him and submit?” It will be grim.
I worried a little while I was writing this that I might be giving too much free advice to the Democrats. I don’t want the scenario I just laid out to happen. But I am not a confirmation battle professional, and the Democrats will be using professionals— staffers, Senators and consultants much better at this than me (and much better than the Republican have, if past experience is any guide; we Republicans are pitiful at political scheming).
As a Calvinist, who believes all men are sinful, I agree with the Governor Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren’s novel, All the King’s Men. A senior judge, highly respected for his integrity, has blocked one of the governor’s laws. The governor tells his fix-it young man, the novel’s narrator, to find some dirt on the judge so he can be blackmailed into reversing his position. The fix-it man pleads that it’s hopeless— th judge is just too honest, which he knows because he’s known the judge personally for his entire life as a family a friend, someone who even taught him duckhunting as a boy. The governor was raised strictly as a Baptist, and although he’s now a corrupt womanizer, he believes enough of it to answer saying,
Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something.4
In the course of the novel, the young man finds that the judge is actually an evil man despite his respectability. His careful research uncovers that the judge took a large bribe from a corporation many years before. When he tells the judge that, the judge shoots himself. And the young man’s mother then reveals that the judge was the reason the young man’s father left the family— because the young man, in fact, is the product of the judge’s adultery with her. That’s fiction, but what is true is that if you can dig up one solid piece of dirt on someone, you’ll probably be able to find some more if you keep digging. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
So it might get worse for Pete Hegseth’s nomination, even beyond the dirt I’ve already talked about. Remember, we’re just in the maneuver phase of the confirmation battle. I already explained that the Pro side must make the strategic decision of whether and when to release negative information. But so must the Anti side. Sometimes it’s good to release the negatives early, sometimes late. If you have enough negatives on a nominee, you do a little of both. You knock him off balance with an early release, before the confirmation hearings begin, but you save some of the negatives for the knockout punch during the hearings themselves. You don’t even hint at the negative you use for that— you pull it out after the hearings begin, to surprise the Pro side and prevent them from preparing any defense against it. Sometimes there isn’t any pre-hearing release of negatives at all. If the Anti side doesn’t have much in the way of a negative, so they have to invent something fraudulent or use very weak evidence, they’ll wait until the hearing, so the Pro side can’t debunk their feeble case. That’s what happened when Clarence Thomas and Brett Cavanhaugh were nominated for the Supreme Court. All the Democrats had were, in each case, an unreliable woman witness with a strange and implausible story that seemed totally out of character for the nominee. And after the nominees were confirmed, no other stories appeared, and the women’s confirmation hearing stories didn’t get confirmed by any new evidence. It became obvious they must have been false.
What about Pete Hegseth, though? The 2017 rape story is perfectly in character for him. He was divorced for infidelity twice before that story. We’ll probably hear about his earlier affairs at the hearings too. But might there be something else? In the case of Justice Thomas and in the case of Justice Cavanhaugh, the Democrats had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to try to find some sort of sexual misbehavior. Do we think that in the case of Pete Hegseth, their further efforts will come up dry? Indeed, don’t we think they may have come up with lots more material already, material they are going to make public only during the confirmation hearings?5
What of Mr. Hegseth’s behavior from 2017 to 2024? He says he got religion and reformed. Did he? Maybe. It does happen. But if he lied to President-Elect Trump about not having any 2017 scandal to tell him about, he’d surely lie about scandals in the 7 years after that. If I were Trump, I wouldn’t want to take that risk— I’d pull the plug on the nomination. Trump seems to disagree, and hasn’t pulled the plug yet, but he did already give up on two of his other nominees who turned out to have disastrous backgrounds, and those two did not even lie to him about their pasts— their flaws were public knowledge, so Trump had a moral duty to support them or do something nice to make up for it if he did withdraw the nomination. Liberals say that Trump demands loyalty above all else, but that clearly is not true. Hegseth was disloyal in concealing his police report, and most politicians would have tossed him to the wolves after that kind of embarassing betrayal. I certainly would have, if only to make an example of him so other underlings would be afraid to lie to me. But Trump has been kind to him, and Hegseth has been given a second chance— but probably only while they watch the senators and do focus groups on what American women will think when the story comes out under Democratic questioning in the hearings.
So, my prediction is that the Hegseth nomination will be withdrawn, and that if it does not, we will not only have some of the most sexually explicit hearings in American history, but we will learn even more about Pete Hegseth’s escapades than we know already.
Footnotes
Thus, Pete Hegseth, contrary to what his critics say, does have years of experience in managing organizations— but it’s even worse than having no experience, because he’s shown incompetence at it. In the years when he ran two nonprofit organizations he ran them into the ground with wasteful spending. So he is not untested in his managerial abilities— he is tested, and he failed the test twice.
See Jane Mayer’s New Yorker article, “The Secret History of Pete Hegseth” (Dec. 1, 2024). Jane Mayer is notoriously unreliable and biased, but the financial specifics are checkable by looking at documents that the Senate can subpoena, and even from the public 990 forms submitted by Hegseth’s two organizations, the VFF and the CVA, to the public.
Under his leadership, V.F.F. soon ran up enormous debt, and financial records indicate that, by the end of 2008, it was unable to pay its creditors. The group’s primary donors became concerned that their money was being wasted on inappropriate expenses; there were rumors of parties that “could politely be called trysts,” as the former associate of the group put it. The early sympathizer said, “I was not the first to hear that there was money sloshing around and sexually inappropriate behavior in the workplace.”under his leadership, V.F.F. soon ran up enormous debt, and financial records indicate that, by the end of 2008, it was unable to pay its creditors. The group’s primary donors became concerned that their money was being wasted on inappropriate expenses; there were rumors of parties that “could politely be called trysts,” as the former associate of the group put it.”
and
The 2015 federal tax filing by C.V.A. has an unusual note saying that “major programs developed in the last fiscal year were paused,” and it describes Hegseth as “President (outgoing).” By the start of 2016, Hegseth, who had been paid a salary of $177,460, was out of his job.
A CBS article goes into more details on the financials of the two organizations. It isn’t clear to me what their financial situation was. CBS makes much of their deficit spending, but that’s not necessarily bad. An open-minded look at the IRS Form 990’s would tell you a lot, if you know how to interpret numbers, but I haven’t looked at them myself.
According to four sources familiar with the situation, some top Trump transition officials and others close to the president-elect have been puzzled, if not infuriated, that Hegseth did not preemptively inform them of the allegations against him before they made their way into the press — most notably through the publication of a police report detailing the alleged incident at a hotel in Monterey, California.
“How did he not know? Why didn’t he tell us?” a source close to Trump says. "… Even if the allegations are fake, it doesn’t matter because he was supposed to tell us what we needed to know so we could be better prepared to defend him — not learn about it from the media.”
“When we ask, ‘Is there anything else we need to know about?’ that is usually a good time to mention a police report,” a Trump adviser says. “Obviously he remembered that this all happened and there is no way — I don’t think — he could have believed this wouldn’t come out once he got nominated.”
An additional consideration is that adultery is a criminal offense in the military, under Article 134. I do not know whether Mr. Hegseth committed adultery while he was in the military. I haven’t been able to pin down when someone in the reserves is under military jurisdiction. He is if he commits adultery during a training weekend, I would bet, but what if he is not on active military service? What if he is on active military service, but is on leave? What is the statute of limitations? If Mr. Hegseth has already confessed to criminal adultery, then most likely, since it was over 5 years ago, he cannot be prosecuted, but it isn’t good for the Secretary of Defense to have to plead the statute of limitations to escape prison for military crimes.
The “stink of the didie” phrase sounds like a quote from the King James Bible, but it is not. It’s good theology, nonetheless.
“Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Psalm 51:5).
“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23).
“There is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not.” (Ecclesiastes 7:20) .
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).
“What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight. How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water? (Job 15:14-16).
The 2024 New Yorker article has already provided lots of material. There is a story about an employee of Hegseth’s (not he himself) who sexuall assaulted a woman and was paid off with a nondisclosure agreement, for example. That will all come out.
The female staffer who had to restrain Hegseth at the strip club alleged that a different male staff member had attempted to sexually assault her there, according to the report. A C.V.A. manager, however, was described as dismissive, for arguing that her attacker had been drunk and therefore shouldn’t be held responsible. According to the report, the female staffer took steps to file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and C.V.A. hired outside counsel. The female staffer declined to be interviewed. But, according to a source aware of the case, the matter was settled with a payment to the staffer, concealed by a nondisclosure agreement. As a result, the woman was “ostracized” and “experiencing reprisal” by the organization, which, the whistle-blower report said, “has become a hostile and intimidating working environment.”
I know I’m depraved, saved by grace — not casting stones.
I don’t understand how Hegseth can be okay with all of the mud slinging, when he has a family that also gets hit by it. I hope his children don’t see the downstream effects of it….
Depressing story. It reminds me somewhat of a Giuliani deposition I read a few years ago. Sad.