Pete Hegseth launches astonishing attack on ex-Fox colleague: ‘She hates Trump’

Pete Hegseth has hit out at a Fox News journalist who posted a letter sent to the defense secretary from Congress questioning a home repairs bill. 

Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin, 56, posted a letter sent to Hegseth from Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, which asked the government official to explain why he required more than $130,000 for maintenance work on his government-furnished house.

Included in the bill was a $49,000 request for an ’emergency’ paint job.

Hours after the document was posted to X, Hegseth aggressively pushed back on the report saying it was ‘fake news,’ alongside the claim Griffin ‘hates Trump’.

Hegseth, 44, also claimed the behavior from Griffin was ‘not surprising,’ adding that she and Democrats are the ‘same thing.’ 

The US Secretary of Defense claimed all the repairs he requested for the government-furnished home were going to happen regardless of who moved in next.

‘Any/all house repairs were going to happen no matter who was moving in – and were all initiated by DoD,’ he wrote on X.

Hegseth added an additional jab at the reporter from his former network, claiming the Democrats and Griffin ‘don’t care about facts’ because ‘they’re just Trump haters.’ 

As defense secretary, Hegseth is granted the option to live in government housing, however, it is more common for people in such positions to opt to live in private housing, according to Military.com. 

The former defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, lived in his own home in Great Falls, Virginia.

However, since Hegseth has taken the opportunity to live in the home, Democrats have demanded he justify why he needs the government-provided home, why it needs to be improved and how much he plans to pay in rent.

‘We know that many service members and their families currently live in unacceptable housing conditions including houses with mold, lead paint, and other hazards,’ the letter penned on February 7 reads. 

‘What commitment will you make to provide service members with a similarly high quality of housing for themselves and their families?’ 

As seen in the report, the total cost comes out to $137,297 to improve the 4,000-square-foot government-furnished home.

In their letter, Democrats pointed out that Hegseth will earn an annual income of $246,000 in addition to the millions of dollars he already has from his former career as a Fox News host. 

Democrats are now asking Hegseth to answer their questions by February 21. 

The request has become increasingly politicized due to the fact that President Donald Trump and his ‘first buddy’ Elon Musk have been making drastic changes to the federal government with aim to reduce federal spending.

Musk and Trump are attempting to place thousands of federal workers on administrative leave and plan to cut many others that they believe are unnecessary – all in a widespread attempt at saving money and making American taxpayer dollars ‘more meaningful.’

The president-elect tasked the Tesla CEO and Vivek Ramaswamy with cutting trillions of dollars in federal spending in the coming years using the newly developed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – which Musk leads.

And the pair have already been hard at work injecting their influence in to politics.

House DOGE Caucus Co-Chair Aaron Bean, exclusively revealed to DailyMail.com some of the most egregious government waste projects federal workers are approving – many at massive costs to taxpayers.

‘We’re giving cocaine to animals to see does it turn them transsexual?’ the Republican lamented to DailyMail.com over the phone. 

He suggested similar government-funded studies need to be halted by DOGE.

‘It just, it’s the craziest thing that you would never spend your own money on. But when agencies have money to burn, they will spend money on literally everything,’ Bean added.

The study in question, a decade old NIH experiment titled ‘Cocaine induces state-dependent learning of sexual conditioning in male Japanese quail’ to determine the patterns of birds using cocaine.

That study was given a US taxpayer-funded grant worth $875,000. 

This nearly $1 million taxpayer-funded study found that cocaine use tends to lead to riskier sex – something many would say is ‘common knowledge.’

A similar study to measure cocaine use in beagles was revealed by advocacy group White Coat Waste Project in recent years. That study received over $2.3 million dollars from the National Institute of Health.

Other wasteful projects in the ‘Festivus’ report: A $10,000 for ice skating drag queens, a $12 million Las Vegas pickleball complex project and $108,000 for on a non-functioning, long-abandoned hotel in the Caribbean – all courtesy of the US taxpayer.

The official DOGE X account also highlighted various U.S. government spending projects, many of them absurd.

‘What does the U.S. Government use taxpayer dollars for? “$6.9M studying ‘smart toilets’ that recognize the user’s ‘anal print’ – $2.3M for the NIH to inject dogs with cocaine – $118,000 to study if a metal replica robot of Marvel Comics’ Thanos could really snap his fingers – $75,000 in grants on a Harvard study on lizards being blown off trees with leaf blowers,”‘ the statement said.

In addition to handing out grant money for ridiculous studies and remote, useless hotels, Bean told DailyMail.com other handouts, like subsidies, should be re-examined.