Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, at the Capitol this month.
Credit...Tierney L. Cross for The New York Times

Pete Hegseth’s Mother Accused Her Son of Mistreating Women for Years

Penelope Hegseth made the accusation in an email to her son in 2018, amid his contentious divorce. She said on Friday that she regretted the email and had apologized to him.

by · NY Times

The mother of Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, wrote him an email in 2018 saying he had routinely mistreated women for years and displayed a lack of character.

“On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say … get some help and take an honest look at yourself,” Penelope Hegseth wrote, stating that she still loved him.

She also wrote: “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”

Mrs. Hegseth, in a phone interview with The New York Times on Friday, said that she had sent her son an immediate follow-up email at the time apologizing for what she had written. She said she had fired off the original email “in anger, with emotion” at a time when he and his wife were going through a very difficult divorce.

In the interview, she defended her son and disavowed the sentiments she had expressed in the initial email about his character and treatment of women. “It is not true. It has never been true,” she said. She added: “I know my son. He is a good father, husband.” She said that publishing the contents of the first email was “disgusting.”

Questions about Mr. Hegseth’s treatment of women have emerged in the weeks since Mr. Trump chose him, a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, to lead the Pentagon. The issue is expected to be a subject of scrutiny during Senate confirmation hearings.

Reports of his infidelity have focused attention on his character and leadership, particularly for a civilian overseeing the military, where active-duty service members can be subject to prosecution for adultery under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Another issue is how the senators will view a rape complaint against Mr. Hegseth filed to police in October 2017 after an incident at a political conference in Monterey, Calif. No charges were ever brought and the complainant has not come forward publicly.

Mr. Hegseth has said that he was falsely accused by a woman with whom he had a consensual sexual encounter. He secretly paid her a settlement a couple years later — only because, according to his lawyer, he wanted to protect his job as weekend anchor at Fox & Friends.

Mrs. Hegseth emailed her son on April 30, 2018, during a turbulent period in his life. He was in the middle of a contentious divorce from his second wife, Samantha, the mother of three of his children. Samantha Hegseth filed for divorce after her husband impregnated a co-worker, part of a pattern of adultery that dated back to his first marriage.

Mr. Hegseth’s mother wrote in the email that she was upset about his treatment of Samantha, writing: “For you to try to label her as ‘unstable’ for your own advantage is despicable and abusive. Is there any sense of decency left in you?”

“She did not ask for or deserve any of what has come to her by your hand,” she said. “Neither did Meredith,” Mrs. Hegseth added, referring to his first wife.

Mrs. Hegseth forwarded a copy of her email to Samantha the same night she sent it to her son, according to documents reviewed by The Times. The Times obtained a copy of the email from another person with ties to the Hegseth family. The email does not describe in detail the circumstances that prompted Mrs. Hegseth to write it.

Mrs. Hegseth said on Friday that she would consider providing The Times with her apologetic follow-up email to her son but did not immediately do so. Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said in an email that The Times was “despicable” for publishing “an out-of-context snippet” of Mrs. Hegseth’s exchange with her son, adding that Mrs. Hegseth had “expressed regret for her emotional message and apologized.”

Thirteen months after she wrote the accusatory email, Mrs. Hegseth praised her eldest son on Fox News on Mother’s Day, saying he had excelled in high school and college. Above all, she said, he had displayed a love of country in his military service. “I’m grateful for that, Pete, and proud every day to be your mom,” she said, holding hands with him on a couch on the set.

The disclosure of the email comes as Mr. Hegseth and his allies, including Vice President-elect JD Vance, are mounting a concerted effort to help him win approval by the Senate. Mr. Trump will not be able to formally submit his nomination until after taking office on Jan. 20.

Several key Republican senators have said that the sexual assault allegation in Monterey is not an obstacle to Mr. Hegseth’s nomination because it was never proven. But Senator Joni Ernst, a Republican of Iowa who has said she was sexually harassed while in the military, told Politico: “Any time there are allegations, you want to make sure they are properly vetted, so we’ll have that discussion.”

Mr. Hegseth married Meredith Schwarz, his high school sweetheart, in 2004, one year after they both graduated from college. Ms. Schwarz sued for divorce less than five years after their wedding. The 2009 court judgment cited Mr. Hegseth’s infidelity as the reason for the breakdown of the marriage.

The following year, Mr. Hegseth married Samantha. Within five years, they had three boys.

Mr. Hegseth has repeatedly said he is a Christian who adheres to conservative family values. In a short-lived bid for the Republican nomination for a Minnesota seat in the U.S. Senate in 2012, he credited his parents for instilling those values in him, saying, “I didn’t learn conservatism out of a book.”

In an essay that same year, he acknowledged that he had erred by fathering a child “out of wedlock” with Samantha, who had been his co-worker at a nonprofit group called Vets for Freedom, after his first marriage ended.

“Had I been raised in a family where faith, fidelity and fatherhood were not valued, my choices could have led to family breakdown,” he wrote in a publication about fragmented families for the Center of the American Experiment, a nonprofit group.

By late 2016, Mr. Hegseth, a Fox News contributor and aspiring anchor, was having an affair with Jennifer Rauchet, an executive producer at Fox News. He was named as the weekend anchor of Fox & Friends in early 2017 — a post he held until earlier this month, when Mr. Trump announced he wanted him to head the Defense Department.

Ms. Rauchet, who has three other children, delivered a baby girl in August 2017, one month before Samantha Hegseth filed for divorce. Mr. Hegseth married Ms. Rauchet in 2019 at a ceremony at Trump National Golf Club Colts Neck in New Jersey.

The acrimonious divorce from Samantha took 10 months to finalize and led to the appointment of a parenting consultant to help negotiate disputes over dividing time with the children.

Mr. Hegseth’s mother, who is a longtime executive business coach, wrote her email three months before the final divorce decree. It began: “Son, I have tried to keep quiet about your character and behavior, but after listening to the way you made Samantha feel today, I cannot stay silent.”

She said that “Sam is a good mother and a good person,” adding that she knew that her son thought that “we” had taken her side. That was “bunk,” she wrote. “We are on the side of good and that is not you.” The email did not say who “we” referred to, beyond herself.

“It’s time for someone (I wish it was a strong man) to stand up to your abusive behavior and call it out, especially against women,” she wrote. “We still love you, but we are broken by your behavior and lack of character.” If the email “damages our relationship further,” she added, “so be it.”

She described his abusive behavior over the years as “dishonesty, sleeping around, betrayal, debasing, belittling” women.

She told him not to bother to reply, because “you twist and abuse everything I say anyway.”

In the years that followed, Pete and Samantha Hegseth continued to fight over care of the children, according to documents in their divorce record. In 2020, after Mr. Hegseth sent a text to his ex-wife calling her “pathetic and selfish,” the court-appointed consultant said she wanted to see “an action plan from Pete regarding cessation of hostile and degrading communication to and about Sam.”

In an affidavit filed with the court, Mr. Hegseth said that he had slipped up, regretted the text, and had not always been as respectful as he could have been. He said, “I am committed to learning from my mistakes and communicating with Sam in a positive manner.”

Ernesto Londoño contributed reporting from Minneapolis, and John Ismay from Washington.

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