Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s embattled pick for defense secretary, received the backing Monday of two former colleagues at a veterans’ organization.
Unfortunately for Hegseth— who was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel room in 2017—one of those defending him was also accused of violence against a woman.
The New Yorker reported Sunday the details of a whistleblower report submitted during Hegseth’s tenure running Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) from 2013 to 2016 that alleged he was repeatedly intoxicated on the job, led a senior management group that sexually pursued female employees, and ignored staff concerns about a sexual assault allegation against another male employee.
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The magazine reported that Hegseth resigned from the organization under pressure. But the allegations were contested on Monday.
“I was there for most of those alleged incidents, and this stuff is just complete fabrications,” Sean Parnell, a retired U.S. Army captain who was a senior adviser at CVA while Hegseth ran the organization, told the online magazine Compact.
Parnell, not to be confused with the former Republican governor of Alaska of the same name, suspended his bid for the Republican nomination for Senate in Pennsylvania in 2021 amid allegations of spousal and child abuse.
His then-estranged wife told a court that he choked her and caused injury to their children. Parnell denied the claims, though a judge found her testimony credible at a custody hearing. (Parnell said this year that in November 2023 he has had “shared legal and physical custody” of his children and has adopted his new wife’s two daughters.)
He was endorsed by Trump at the time.
Parnell was joined by another former senior CVA member in rebuffing the allegations against Hegseth made in The New Yorker. Speaking anonymously, the other former member told Compact, “These were false allegations made by a group of disgruntled employees fired by Pete.”
The anonymous former member and Parnell both insisted that Hegseth stepped down from CVA of his own accord, not under pressure.
Trump’s pick for the Pentagon has strenuously denied the 2017 sexual assault allegation against him, and police did not press charges after investigating the alleged incident.
The thrice-wed Hegseth said the encounter was consensual and that he paid the woman a settlement because, his lawyer said, he feared the allegations could derail his career as a Fox News host.
Hegseth’s mother accused him of being an “abuser of women” in a 2018 email, though said she immediately apologized and regretted sending it. “It is not true,” she said of her words. “It has never been true.”
The Trump campaign called The New York Times “despicable” for publishing the email Friday.
