Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Defense, is under scrutiny over an alleged sexual assault from 2017, detailed in a police report that has drawn extensive coverage from every major news outlet — with one glaring exception.
While only cursory details of the incident were known before Wednesday, a police report obtained through a public records request to the City of Monterey, California, revealed the allegations against Hegseth in graphic detail.
The 22-page report included interviews with the alleged victim, who remains anonymous and was referred to by the report as Jane Doe, a nurse who treated her, a hotel staffer, and others. According to the allegations, Hegseth brought the woman to his hotel room, blocked the door when she tried to leave and took her phone before sexually assaulting her. Read the full details here.
Police did not charge Hegseth in connection with the allegations, which he denied at the time in an interview with police and denies publicly now through his lawyer. He insists the sex was consensual. His attorney acknowledged that in 2023, he paid the woman a settlement for an undisclosed amount of money with a confidentiality clause. His lawyer stated that Hegseth paid the woman to avoid “a baseless lawsuit.”
While cable news organizations like CNN and MSNBC have pored over the shocking detail in the police report, each mentioning it dozens of times, Fox News has almost entirely ignored the scandal engulfing one of its top stars.
The only mention of Hegseth’s case since the revelation of the police report came on Thursday in a curiously vague 45-second segment on Special Report with correspondent Chad Pergram.
At the back end of a news report on Matt Gaetz withdrawing from contention for attorney general amid his own sexual misconduct scandal, Pergram mentioned Hegseth as “another controversial cabinet hopeful.”
Pergram, however, did not mention why Hegseth was “controversial” and sidestepped the police report entirely. The segment featured no explanation from Pergram about the nature of the allegations, but instead a brief clip of Hegseth stating to reporters that he’d been “completely cleared” since no charges were filed after police “fully investigated” the incident. The question he is responding to must ostensibly be about the assault allegation, but it was inaudible to viewers.
Later in the brief segment, Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) addressed the allegations indirectly, saying “I don’t know the young lady situation, but I believe she’s going to be just fine.” He then added “I think as she goes through this process, you’re going to hear more and more about the actual what took place. And you guys will find out that the guys are a solid, solid candidate.”
Viewers of the segment had to have been confused about what women he was referencing or “what actually took place,” which led to the controversy in the first place.
FoxNews.com was equally vague in its coverage. Online, a report on Thursday by Paul Steinhauser for Fox News Digital passingly mentioned the police report in an article about the cabinet picks causing Trump trouble. The article cited Hegseth’s comments to journalists as featured in Pergram’s report.
In the week prior to Wednesday, Fox News had made mention of the allegations against Hegseth around four times in total. Host Laura Ingraham and MediaBuzz host Howard Kurtz both cited the Washington Post’s scoop on the payment to his accuser during their shows, as did Bret Baier.
Fox News has said it was entirely unaware of the allegation and settlement during Hegseth’s tenure as an employee.
Watch above on Fox News.
