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Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s embattled nominee to lead the Department of Defense, will release a woman from a non-disclosure agreement that followed a 2017 sexual assault allegation against the former Fox News anchor, according to Senator Lindsey Graham.
“He told me he would release her from that agreement,” the South Carolina Republican told NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday. “Just think about what we’re talking about. I’d want to know if anybody nominated for a high-level job in Washington legitimately assaulted somebody.”
Graham compared Hegseth’s nomination to the 2018 confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was publicly accused of sexually assaulting former classmate Christine Blasey Ford.
“If people have any allegation to make, come forward and make it,” Graham said. “Like they did in Kavanaugh, we’ll decline whether or not it’s credible. Right now he’s being tried by anonymous sources, that will not stand.”
The Independent has requested comment from Hegseth’s attorney.
In 2017, police in Monterey, California, investigated an allegation that an intoxicated Hegseth sexually assaulted a woman in a hotel room after a Republican women’s conference, at one point physically blocking a door and stopping her from leaving, according to a police report viewed by The Independent.
Hegseth told police and has subsequently maintained the encounter was consensual.
No charges were filed.
After the accuser threatened to sue Hegseth in 2020, they entered a non-disclosure agreement and Hegseth paid the individual.
“Hegseth strongly felt that he was the victim of blackmail and innocent collateral damage in a lie that the Complainant was holding onto to keep her marriage intact,” his lawyer toldThe Washington Post of the agreement.
Hegseth’s attorney claimed earlier this month the NDA was better described as a confidential settement agreement and that the accuser has already voided it. He has threatened to file an extortion claim against the woman if the former Fox anchor isn’t confirmed.
“There is no NDA to release her from,” Tim Parlatore told CNN. “If she wants to go in and talk about it, she can do it. I mean certainly she would do it at her own peril of a further defamation lawsuit.”
Hegseth has faced a numerous accusations concerning his allegedly troubling private behavior since Trump tapped him for defense secretary, including alcohol abuse, financially mismanaging veterans groups, and chanting “kill all Muslims” in a bar.
His mother accused him in an email later made public of being an “abuser of women,” though she’s since disavowed the message and defended her son’s nomination.
The allegations don’t appear to have damaged Hegseth’s standing with Trump, who hosted Hegseth as a guest during Saturday’s Army-Navy football game in Maryland.
