Republican senators said Wednesday that they still have questions for Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth as he publicly fights misconduct allegations that threaten his confirmation.
Mr. Hegseth met with incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota and soon-to-be Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker of Mississippi as he continued one-on-one discussions with Republican senators whose votes he will need to be confirmed.
Assuming all Democrats oppose his nomination, Mr. Hegseth cannot afford to lose support from more than three Republicans. These initial meetings are crucial to whether he will have enough support to survive the confirmation process.
“We’ll see kind of what the sense of our members is after he’s completed all of them,” Mr. Thune said.
Mr. Thune did not handicap Mr. Hegseth’s chances of confirmation. In his meeting with the nominee, he said they discussed only his “big view for how to fix the problems around the bureaucracy at DOD.”
Mr. Hegseth has been accused of various misconduct, including allegations of sexual assault, infidelity in his first two marriages, financial mismanagement of veterans organizations he ran and excessive drinking around co-workers.
SEE ALSO: Hegseth says media is just trying to ‘smear’ him
Mr. Wicker said Mr. Hegseth pledged not to drink if confirmed as defense secretary. Sen. Kevin Cramer, North Dakota Republican and Armed Services Committee member, was set to meet with Mr. Hegseth on Wednesday evening. He said such a pledge “would help me a lot.”
“I think people are ready to give him the benefit of the doubt if they can have commitments from him about things going forward,” Mr. Cramer said.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginia Republican, told The Washington Times that she discussed some of the allegations with Mr. Hegseth when they met Tuesday.
“It’s probably incomplete, and I think we’ll hear more,” she said when asked whether she was comfortable with his responses to her questions.
Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican who has been floated as a potential replacement if Mr. Hegseth’s nomination falters, said she had “a frank and thorough conversation” with him on Wednesday but declined to answer further questions.
Ms. Ernst is a survivor of sexual assault and an advocate for fellow victims. She likely had tough questions about a 2017 police report accusing Mr. Hegseth of raping a woman. He has said the sexual encounter was consensual and that no charges were filed after the claims in the report were investigated.
Between his Wednesday meetings, Mr. Hegseth briefly addressed reporters on Capitol Hill. On previous days, he primarily dodged questions. He said he spoke with Mr. Trump on Wednesday morning and that the president-elect has his back and is encouraging him to continue the fight.
“We’re not going anywhere,” he said.
Mr. Hegseth declined to answer questions about the accusations against him. Instead, he referred to an hourlong interview with Megyn Kelly for her SiriusXM show, in which he denied the severity of what had been reported.
“It is the classic art of the smear,” he said on the show. “Take whatever tiny kernels of truth and there are tiny, tiny ones in there, and blow them up into a masquerade of a narrative about somebody that I’m definitely not.”
Mr. Hegseth said he has “never had a drinking problem,” nor had anyone suggested he should get help for alcohol abuse.
“Never. I’ve never sought counseling, never sought help,” he said. “I respect and appreciate people who do. But you know, what do guys do when they come back from war oftentimes? Have some beers. You know, how do you deal with the demons you see on the battlefield? Sometimes it’s with a bottle.”
Although he initially did not plan to give the “ridiculous and all anonymous” allegations any oxygen, Mr. Hegseth ultimately decided it was necessary to offer a counter to the media narrative.
“It’s our turn to, it’s our time to stand up and tell the truth and our side,” he said.
The public relations campaign continued with a Wall Street Journal op-ed Mr. Hegseth wrote explaining accusations that he was forced to step down as the head of two veterans organizations, Vets for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America, over financial mismanagement, his behavior of excessive drinking on work trips and mishandling of complaints of sexual misconduct against other employees.
“Like veterans returning from any war, we drank beers to manage the reality of what we had faced. But we never did anything improper, and we treated everyone with respect,” Mr. Hegseth said in the op-ed about his outings with Vets for Freedom colleagues.
Regarding the financial mismanagement, Mr. Hegseth said the group was “naive” and doubled down on political spending for Republican presidential nominee John McCain late in the 2008 campaign when other groups pulled back.
“It was a tactical mistake, which left us in debt (like most political campaigns),” he said. “But I stayed with the organization until all the debt was paid off and outstanding contracts negotiated.”
Of his time at Concerned Veterans for America, Mr. Hegseth said, “The anonymous accusations of a few disgruntled employees … made it sound as if we ran a college frat house. That’s just untrue.”
“What is true is that as our organization grew. There was an internal difference of opinion about its future. I wanted to engage in foreign policy; our donors didn’t,” he said. “Eventually, the organization and I parted ways. The feeling was mutual, and the organization’s leadership wrote me a glowing letter when I left.”
Republican senators who have not met with Mr. Hegseth said they plan to ask him about the accusations. Some also said they want an FBI background check report on Mr. Hegseth, which is traditional for administration nominees.
Mr. Hegseth does have some Senate defenders.
“All of us have a past. All of us have a time to grow up,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, Oklahoma Republican. “We’re nominating Pete for who he is today, not for what he did seven years ago or five years ago or whenever it was.”
Mr. Mullin joined Mr. Hegseth as the nominee briefly left the Senate to meet the House Republican Study Committee.
Members at the meeting said Mr. Hegseth called for all his anonymous accusers to come forward and publicly disclose their allegations.
“He’s going to be on the offensive from here on out,” said Rep. Ralph Norman, South Carolina. “The press is after him. The left-wing people are after him because he is a door kicker. That’s what Trump wants.”
Mr. Norman said that House Republicans would call their Senate counterparts and hold news interviews to help support Mr. Hegseth’s confirmation.
“The president is not putting somebody in charge that’s going to be the pope,” Rep. Eric Burlison, Missouri Republican, told The Times. He said the defense secretary is “someone that’s got to be tough as nails.”
Off Capitol Hill, defense analysts said Mr. Hegseth has a chance to make it through Senate confirmation, but more damning revelations could sink his prospects.
“More stories about ill-treatment of women will likely emerge, and that will doom him,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a retired Marine Corps colonel.
Specialists said Mr. Hegseth’s baggage and controversial positions could limit his chances of being an effective defense secretary. Mr. Cancian said the president would quickly tire of him.
“He seems committed to the idea of ‘warrior review boards.’ He believes that the warriors in the department will cheer,” said Mr. Cancian, referring to a rumored plan to establish review boards that could remove Defense Department officials or senior military officers.
“In fact, the military will see this as a direct attack,” he said. “He will last a year before the White House gets tired of the constant negative stories and pushes him out.”
Mr. Trump’s defense secretary will be tasked with tackling so-called woke policies such as diversity, equity and inclusion and other liberal ideologies inside the Defense Department. Some analysts said Mr. Hegseth would struggle to effectively lead the department by putting those issues at the forefront, especially with the U.S. and its allies facing significant threats worldwide.
“He still has a chance to be confirmed and, more importantly, to be effective because he is a smart guy and he has served his nation in combat. However, his claims and insinuations that DEI issues are the military’s most serious are unpersuasive and unpromising,” said Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow and director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. “If that’s still his spiel, he won’t be effective and could do great harm.”
• Mallory Wilson and Alex Miller contributed to this report.
• Lindsey McPherson can be reached at lmcpherson@washingtontimes.com.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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