Almost from the moment he first went on air at Fox News as a contributor, Pete Hegseth’s star on the nation’s most powerful conservative media outlet was on the rise. A decorated combat veteran, Mr. Hegseth became the weekend anchor of the popular “Fox & Friends” show and a familiar presence to viewers across the country, including President-elect Donald J. Trump.
Mr. Trump was so impressed that he named Mr. Hegseth, 44, as his choice to head the Department of Defense. But less familiar to Fox News viewers — and presumably to Mr. Trump — was what had been happening behind the scenes at the network.
More than once during his early years at the network, Mr. Hegseth’s heavy drinking and raucous behavior at Fox News-related events escalated into episodes that were addressed by company officials or co-workers. Those incidents underscore concerns about his behavior that have imperiled his prospects to lead the Pentagon. Mr. Hegseth has said that he continues to have Mr. Trump’s full support, but by Tuesday night the president-elect was reported to be weighing whether to find another candidate for the prestigious position.
At Fox News, the network’s human resources department looked into Mr. Hegseth’s conduct at the “Fox & Friends” Christmas party in 2016 and discussed it with him, according to a person with intimate knowledge who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter.
The following December, Mr. Hegseth got so drunk at a wedding of a Fox News producer that he struggled to stand upright in a men’s bathroom, according to two people with direct knowledge of the episode who declined to be named for fear of retribution. Friends asked a producer who was there to get Mr. Hegseth a ride home so he could make it to the set by 6 a.m., they said.
Timothy Parlatore, Mr. Hegseth’s lawyer, said that “neither of these allegations are true.”
Mr. Hegseth’s bouts with alcohol — which he said never reached the stage of being a problem — have now combined with questions over his managerial experience to jeopardize his prospects to lead the sprawling Defense Department, which has an $849 billion budget, nearly three million employees and 750 military bases around the world.
Mr. Hegseth also has been battered by accounts in the press about his womanizing and infidelity, as well as a 2017 incident in which he was accused of rape at a speaking event in Monterey, Calif., though no charges were ever filed. Mr. Parlatore has said that the encounter was consensual.
Mr. Hegseth’s successive tenures as the head of two nonprofit veterans groups, from 2008 to 2016, ended with both in financial trouble. At the first, Vets for Freedom, revenues rose sharply under his leadership, reaching $8.7 million in 2008. But spending rose even faster. The group fell into debt, then fizzled. In 2012, four years later, it received just $81 in donations, according to financial documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service.
The second, Concerned Veterans for America, also often spent more than it took in and was $37,000 in debt by 2016, when Mr. Hegseth was listed in tax filings as the outgoing chief executive officer.
The New Yorker magazine reported this week that several ex-employees filed a whistle-blower complaint to the group’s leadership, claiming that Mr. Hegseth had been drunk at multiple work-related events while there.
In an interview with Megyn Kelly on Wednesday, Mr. Hegseth said he was the target of “an arsenal of lies” from anonymous sources who were using the media to disrupt Mr. Trump’s agenda.
“What you’re seeing right now with me is the art of the smear,” he told Ms. Kelly on her SiriusXM show.
He acknowledged a “somewhat difficult past,” including drinking beer to deal with the trauma of his battlefield experiences. He also admitted to a long history of cheating on his wives and romantic partners.
But with the help of his third wife, Jennifer Rauchet, and his religious faith, he said, “I have become a changed man.”
He said that while “I never had a drinking problem” or sought counseling or treatment for alcohol abuse, he would become a teetotaler as secretary of defense.
“This is the biggest deployment of my life and there won’t be a drop of alcohol on my lips while I’m doing it,” he said.
Dealing With Civilian Life
Every secretary of defense in recent memory has had vastly more experience for the job than Mr. Hegseth. Lloyd J. Austin III, the current defense secretary, ran U.S. Central Command, responsible for defending and promoting U.S. interests in 20 nations in the Middle East, Central and South Asia.
His predecessor, Mark T. Esper, ran the U.S. Army. Jim Mattis, who headed the department during Mr. Trump’s first term, was a four-star general who had headed both the U.S. Joint Forces and Central commands.
As of Monday, many Senate Republicans expressed confidence that Mr. Hegseth would be able to resolve concerns about his lack of experience and personal behavior.
But by Tuesday, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, told CBS News that some of the allegations against Mr. Hegseth were “very disturbing.” He added: “Some of this stuff is — it’s going to be difficult.”
Under pressure from Republican senators, Mr. Trump’s transition operation announced on Tuesday that it had belatedly signed an agreement with the Justice Department that will allow the F.B.I. to conduct background checks on people Mr. Trump intends to appoint as senior administration officials. Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, was among those who had said that Mr. Hegseth’s case was a prime example of why such scrutiny was necessary.
Mr. Hegseth has said he drank heavily after his deployments. He was first deployed by the National Guard to Guantánamo Bay in 2004, then volunteered to serve in Iraq, where he was awarded the first of two Bronze Stars for meritorious service.
“I went from being in a combat zone to being in an apartment in Manhattan,” he told Reserve & National Guard Magazine in 2022. Other than an occasional phone call or email, he had little contact with the men with whom he had served, he said.
“I didn’t do much and I drank a lot trying to process what I had been through while dealing with a civilian world that frankly just didn’t seem to care,” he told the magazine.
In 2006, he started as an unpaid director at Vets for Freedom, working only a half-hour a week. By 2008, he was working 40 hours a week and earning $100,000 per year, the organization’s top salary. By 2009, he listed his title as “president” of the group, which pushed for increased military involvement in Iraq.
Under his leadership, the organization’s revenues grew from $150,000 in 2006 to $8.7 million in 2008. But in 2008 alone, it spent $6.3 million on “media buys.” That year, the group spent $353,000 more than it took in and wound up $10,000 in debt.
It reported borrowing $20,000 from a private individual to “provide additional liquidity to the organization.” Since 2012, the group has filed only cursory paperwork with the I.R.S., indicating it still exists but that its donations are minimal.
‘Squared It Away’
In the interview with Ms. Kelly, Mr. Hegseth said he knew that the group was overspending, and attributed it to his political inexperience. After the organization went in the hole, he said, “I spent the next year and a half fund-raising from donors to pay off debt and working with different vendors to try to negotiate down contracts and prices.” He said he had “squared it away” in the end.
He was deployed again and this time sent to Afghanistan, where he was awarded another Bronze Star. After that, Mr. Hegseth took over leadership of Concerned Veterans for America. That group, formed to promote conservative policies to support veterans and their families, was bigger than the previous one.
Donations reached $15.9 million in 2016, when the group employed 159 people, according to its tax filings.
Mr. Hegseth was paid $182,000 in 2015, including a $50,000 bonus. The group also employed his brother, paying him $69,000 per year in 2015. By 2016, the organization’s debts eclipsed its assets, according to a filing with the I.R.S.
Although he was listed as the chief executive officer, Mr. Hegseth did not have sole control over its finances. The organization was supported by a network of donors and operatives led by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch, and people familiar with it said its finances were overseen at least partly by officials at that network’s umbrella organization at the time, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce.
Two former employees said they remembered Mr. Hegseth as a powerful voice for the organization who spoke emphatically about veterans’ issues and encouraged his audiences to vote.
Mark Lucas, who took over running of the nonprofit briefly after Mr. Hegseth left, said he found a well-run organization with knowledgeable and well-connected staff. “I didn’t inherit anything from Hegseth that was a problem,” he said.
Matt Schuck, who booked some of Mr. Hegseth’s media appearances in late 2013 and early 2014, said he was a good boss. “I never saw anything out of the ordinary. I never saw him drinking heavily.”
The New Yorker reported that multiple ex-employees claimed in a seven-page whistle-blower report that Mr. Hegseth had been drunk at a series of work-related events between 2013 and 2015. The Times has not reviewed that document.
Mr. Hegseth said in the interview with Ms. Kelly that the document was filled with falsehoods from disgruntled ex-employees who blamed him for their job loss.
“There were no allegations of impropriety. There were no allegations of excessive drinking,” he said.
Mr. Hegseth’s career began to soar once he joined Fox News, first as a contributor, then as the weekend anchor of “Fox & Friends.” In the past four years, he has written three best-selling books that were published by Fox News Books.
The “Fox & Friends” Christmas party at a New York bowling arcade in 2016 was a low point. Mr. Hegseth, who was married to his second wife, with whom he had three children, was having an affair with Ms. Rauchet, a producer on the show.
Her husband, suspecting an affair, showed up at the party even though the event was limited to Fox News employees, and Mr. Hegseth, who had been drinking, was upset to see him, according to people with knowledge of the incident.
Employees reported that Mr. Hegseth caused a disturbance, a complaint that the human resources department addressed directly with him, according to one of the people with knowledge of the situation. After Mr. Hegseth and Ms. Rauchet disclosed their relationship to Fox News in late 2016, Ms. Rauchet was transferred to a comparable job within Fox News.
The post Pete Hegseth’s Troubles at Work Raise Questions About Leadership appeared first on New York Times.
