As the Senate weighed whether to confirm Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, NBC News dug up information about his past, including an affidavit from his former sister-in-law accusing him of abusive behavior toward his second wife. Courtney Kube, a Pentagon correspondent for the network, assisted with the coverage.
The reporting did not upend the confirmation of Mr. Hegseth, a Fox News host before his nomination. But it did leave an impression on him.
Shortly after taking office, Mr. Hegseth told his team to bar Ms. Kube from the Pentagon, according to three people with knowledge of his order. The team did not follow through, because Pentagon lawyers said the Defense Department could not single out one news outlet for removal, two of the people said.
Mr. Hegseth’s request did, however, foreshadow his adversarial approach to the press while in the job — both toward specific reporters and toward the industry more broadly.
Under his leadership, the department has removed national news outlets from a shared media workspace and made it available to conservative outlets instead; has scaled back reporters’ ability to roam Pentagon corridors; and, in the most recent salvo, is imposing a set of restrictions outlining causes for the revocation of correspondents’ press passes.
The Defense Department is falling in line with a policy of hostility toward news organizations that spans the Trump administration. President Trump himself has sued ABC and CBS over their coverage, with both lawsuits ending in settlements, and has accused The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times of defamation. (The case against The Times was dismissed, though Mr. Trump has the right to file a new complaint.) The White House ejected The Associated Press from the White House press pool and seized control of coverage assignments formerly administered by the White House Correspondents’ Association.
Mr. Hegseth’s initiatives, former Pentagon officials say, point toward a defense secretary at odds with the news media to a degree unseen in modern times.
“I don’t remember any secretary of defense — and I’ve worked for a number of them — saying, ‘OK, put a shackle on them,’” said Raymond DuBois, a former Pentagon official whose roles included overseeing the operations of the sprawling complex.
Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement that Mr. Hegseth “takes his message directly to the troops and the American people.” Mr. Parnell added: “He doesn’t rely on the corrupt filter of the mainstream media.”
Tim Parlatore, Mr. Hegseth’s personal lawyer, said it was “false” that the secretary had ordered Ms. Kube’s expulsion. He also accused Ms. Kube of “pushing knowingly false stories” and being “extremely unethical.”
In Mr. Parlatore’s account, Ms. Kube refused to listen to objections about her reporting and accused Mr. Parlatore of being sexist when he disputed her points. He complained to Ms. Kube’s editor about the sexism accusation. “They ignored it,” said Mr. Parlatore, who is also a Pentagon adviser.
An NBC spokeswoman said in a statement that the company was “proud of Courtney’s distinguished and courageous reporting of national security issues spanning more than two decades across Democratic and Republican administrations.” The statement added: “She is an intrepid journalist who has broken many impactful news stories in the public interest.”
Mr. Hegseth, 45, was a member of the news media for about a decade before becoming the defense secretary. He joined Fox News as a contributor in 2014, and later became a host. On air, he regularly voiced support for Mr. Trump and criticized Democrats and the news media, at one point calling both of them “agents of Russia.”
As defense secretary, Mr. Hegseth has regularly criticized the press. Some of his most pointed comments have been directed at one of his former colleagues, Jennifer Griffin, a veteran Fox News Pentagon correspondent. Before becoming defense secretary, Mr. Hegseth had developed a professional disdain for Ms. Griffin, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Evidence of that animosity surfaced in early February when Mr. Hegseth tore into Ms. Griffin in a social media post. “Fake News of the Day,” he wrote. At a June news conference, Ms. Griffin asked about U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. “Jennifer, you’ve been about the worst — the one who misrepresents the most intentionally,” Mr. Hegseth responded. Brit Hume, a Fox News political analyst, among many others, rushed to Ms. Griffin’s defense, saying on Fox News, “Her professionalism, her knowledge and her experience at the Pentagon is unmatched.”
Asked about the department’s treatment of Ms. Griffin, the Pentagon sent a statement from Tami Radabaugh, a former colleague of Ms. Griffin’s at Fox News and now an aide to Mr. Hegseth. Ms. Radabaugh said Ms. Griffin’s reporting “is consistently sloppy, riddled with mistakes and inaccuracies,” and added: “She is intentionally nasty and biased in her reporting of President Trump and his top allies like Secretary Hegseth.”
Ms. Radabaugh provided no supporting evidence for her critique of Ms. Griffin, other than asserting that her viewpoint has been “confirmed” by the former Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly. Fox News said in a statement: “Jennifer’s depth of experience and distinguished reporting around the world throughout her more than 30-year journalism career speaks for itself.”
Corridors and meeting spaces have sat at the center of numerous clashes between Mr. Trump and the media since just before his first term, in January 2017, when his advisers considered bouncing White House reporters from the West Wing.
Jim Acosta, a White House correspondent for CNN, was kicked out of the entire complex in 2018, then allowed back in after a successful court challenge. Brian Karem, a Playboy magazine correspondent whose press pass was revoked after an oral altercation in the Rose Garden with a former Trump adviser, similarly recovered his credentials through litigation. Both cases affirmed the principle that journalists subject to ejection must have the opportunity to challenge such official actions.
Due process did not figure into Mr. Hegseth’s request to expel Ms. Kube from the Pentagon, according to the people familiar with the situation. He wanted action, as did his wife, Jennifer, who was assisting Mr. Hegseth’s team with communications strategy.
“It’s hard to find previous reports of a defense secretary letting his wife sit in on official closed-door meetings or task his senior staff in their official duties,” said John Ullyot, the chief Pentagon spokesman when Mr. Hegseth issued his instructions. “It shows poor judgment and may pose a risk to national security. As I’ve said before, President Trump deserves better.”
Mr. Ullyot, a deputy assistant to the president and chief spokesman for the National Security Council in Mr. Trump’s first term, left his job at the Pentagon weeks after Mr. Hegseth started there. But while there, Mr. Ullyot defended Ms. Hegseth’s role, saying that “she is welcome any time in the Pentagon.” He now says Mr. Hegseth directed him to issue that statement despite his view that the arrangement was “strange and inappropriate.”
Ms. Hegseth, in an email responding to questions about her role in pushing to oust Ms. Kube, said she was “definitely not part” of it. She added that she had “never read Ms. Kube’s work and wouldn’t know who she was if she showed up at my front door.”
In the end, Mr. Hegseth’s colleagues announced a rotation plan to remove outlets from their dedicated spaces and invite others to take their spots. The reshuffling proceeded in two waves, with NBC News among the first to lose its workspace.
Journalists working for the ousted news outlets retained their credentials and membership in the Pentagon Press Association, a group that pushes for access to military officials and events. Those credentials enable them to wander the Pentagon corridors in search of officials to buttonhole and stories to corral. The roaming privileges, two of the former Pentagon officials said, upset Mr. Hegseth, who was unsettled to see members of the press walking unescorted past his office.
In late May, the Pentagon issued a directive barring credentialed journalists from all but a sliver of the building without an official escort. They can no longer amble past the offices of the secretary, the joint staff and the public relations offices of the various branches of the military, which are frequent destinations for reporters seeking details about the military’s expansive bureaucracy. Reaching one of the building’s no-go zones now requires calling for help from an official.
“Basically, you have to have somebody willing to come to our part of the building, get you and bring you back,” said Nancy Youssef, a staff writer at The Atlantic and a longtime Pentagon correspondent. “So it’s a big ask, and you have to use it judiciously because of that.”
In September, the department introduced a 17-page document detailing the circumstances that could lead to the revocation of a journalist’s Pentagon credentials. After pushback from media lawyers, this week the department issued revised strictures that addressed some of their concerns. But the document still contains provisions that many journalists fear will expose them to punishment for doing their jobs.
“Limiting the media’s ability to report on the U.S. military fails to honor the American families who have entrusted their sons and daughters to serve in it, or the taxpayers responsible for giving the department hundreds of billions of dollars a year,” the Pentagon Press Association said in a statement on Wednesday.
“The new media policy is not about any one person or any one outlet,” the Pentagon said in a statement. “It is about preventing leaks that damage operational security and national security. It’s common sense.”
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