The man tasked with winning senators’ support for embattled Pentagon nominee Pete Hegseth is a Never Trumper who is also lobbying for Saudi Arabia, the Daily Beast has learned.
Norm Coleman, a former Republican senator, has been escorting Hegseth around the Capitol complex this week, bobbing and weaving through packs of reporters shouting questions about Hegseth’s alcohol consumption and rape allegations.
Coleman is the Trump transition team’s “sherpa” for Hegseth. But eight years ago, he called Trump “a bigot,” “a misogynist,” “a fraud,” and “a bully.”
“There is a coarseness to Trump that degrades the political discourse, such as when he calls women ‘fat pigs’ or attacks a female reporter by a not-so-subtle reference to her menstrual cycle,” Coleman wrote in an opinion piece published in The Minnesota Star Tribune on March 3, 2016.
“He is not to be trusted to lead our nation’s military in times of peace or war,” Coleman wrote of Trump. Coleman, 75, was senator for Minnesota from 2002 until 2009, when he was defeated by former SNL writer and performer Al Franken by a margin of just 312 votes.
But that was then, and this is now. And Coleman is raking in millions of dollars as a registered foreign agent for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—where, incidentally, alcohol is prohibited—as he steers meetings between Hegseth and key senators who will decide whether the former Fox News star’s drinking habits and alleged abuse of women will block him from leading the Department of Defense.
Trump on Thursday continued pushing Hegseth’s nomination. He railed against “The Swamp fighting back because they can’t continue to line their pockets”—even as his transition team’s designated sherpa for his DOD pick is doing just that from clients who include defense contractors.
Coleman, as senior counsel for the global law firm Hogan Lovells, represents countries and companies with business before the Department of Defense. And he lobbies Congress on behalf of the foreign governments that pay him handsomely, public documents show.
This year alone, Saudi Arabia paid Coleman’s law firm, Hogan Lovells, $2.4 million to lobby members of Congress and other government officials on behalf of the oil-rich kingdom’s interests. His firm’s fees were laid out in his Jan. 23 letter to Princess Reema bint Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the ambassador of The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the United States.
The Bulwark posted its story a few hours before the Daily Beast did.
There is no indication that Coleman, a former U.S. senator from Minnesota, is shilling for Saudi Arabia or other countries and corporate clients during his many meetings with senators to win confirmation for Hegseth. But serving as sherpa to one of Trump’s most high-profile and controversial nominees certainly puts the former senator squarely in front of the senators he now lobbies.
Coleman also represents Japan, the repressive Georgian government, and in the past he worked for Afghanistan. He also serves as chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition, the leading GOP Jewish political action committee, which gets funding from billionaire Miriam Adelson, the Israeli-American donor who gave $100 million to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
Coleman, however, is an odd choice for Trump—not just because of his previously stated hatred of the former and future president. Another hat he wears is that of chairman of the decidedly anti-MAGA American Action Network, an advocacy group that promotes “center-right” policies.
The Daily Beast reached out to the Trump transition team, Hogan Lovells and the Republican Jewish Coalition for comment.
But one thing Coleman does share with the Trump family is a connection to Saudi Arabia.
Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, won a $2 billion investment from the Saudi Arabian government soon after leaving the White House in 2022. And Trump has chosen Kevin Hassett, one of Kushner’s partners at his investment firm, Affinity Partners, to serve as head of the National Economic Council. Kushner’s firm has been scrutinized for potential conflicts of interests and “potential counterintelligence risks” by congressional Democrats.
Eight months before the 2016 election, Norm Coleman, the man who is now shepherding the nomination of Trump’s choice to lead the Pentagon in his second administration, warned, “It is said that our leaders are a reflection of who we are. If we believe that, then people like Donald Trump will fall.
“If not, then people like Donald Trump will rise up, and like every fascist before them, will lead a nation to its doom.”
A veteran Republican sherpa for Senate confirmations who worked on the first Trump transition—who supports Trump and his nominees—expressed concern about the choice of Coleman to steer the Hegseth nomination, and said he suspected Trump was unaware.
“The notion that Senator Coleman is indispensable to confirming Hegseth is wrong,” said the former Trump transition official, who requested anonymity. “I can’t imagine that President Trump knew that a registered foreign agent was talking around his nominee for DoD. And if he knew about it, I am sure that he would have rejected the idea.”
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