Pete Hegseth was on Fox News’ payroll for 10 years. There’s no way the network didn’t know anything about his sleaziness as revealed in new reporting by The New Yorker.

Of course, it’s much more alarming that Donald Trump thinks the utterly unqualified and squalid Pete Hegseth is a good candidate to lead the Department of Defense – and didn’t bother with much vetting. As the news came out that Hegseth was accused of sexual assault – and paid off his accuser – the Trump team blamed him for their ignorance on the subject.

But let’s not let Fox News off the hook for keeping this guy as a host. In her new bombshell report, The New Yorker's Jane Mayer wrote about documented events that happened during Hegseth's tenure at the network.

As Mayer noted, Hegseth became a Fox News contributor in 2014 and a host in 2017. Mayer reported this, which happened during his time as a contributor (with my emphases added):

Hegseth’s record before becoming a full-time Fox News TV host, in 2017, raises additional questions about his suitability to run the world’s largest and most lethal military force. A trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues, indicates that Hegseth was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran—Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America—in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.

A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events. The detailed seven-page report—which was compiled by multiple former C.V.A. employees and sent to the organization’s senior management in February, 2015—states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team. The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization’s female staffers, whom they divided into two groups—the “party girls” and the “not party girls.” In addition, the report asserts that, under Hegseth’s leadership, the organization became a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by a female employee that another employee on Hegseth’s staff had attempted to sexually assault her at the Louisiana strip club. In a separate letter of complaint, which was sent to the organization in late 2015, a different former employee described Hegseth being at a bar in the early-morning hours of May 29, 2015, while on an official tour through Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, drunkenly chanting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!”

…

In January, 2016, Hegseth resigned from Concerned Veterans for America, under pressure. … [A]ccording to three knowledgeable sources, one of whom contributed to the whistle-blower report, Hegseth was forced to step down from the organization in part because of concerns about his mismanagement and abuse of alcohol on the job. 

“Congratulations on Removing Pete Hegseth” is the subject line of an e-mail, obtained by The New Yorker, that was sent to Hegseth’s successor as president of the group, Jae Pak, on January 15, 2016. The e-mail, sent under a pseudonym by one of the whistle-blowers, included a copy of the report, and went on to say, “Among the staff, the disgust for Pete was pretty high. Most veterans do not think he represents them nor their high standard of excellence.” The e-mail also stated that Hegseth had “a history of alcohol abuse” and had “treated the organization funds like they were a personal expense account—for partying, drinking, and using CVA events as little more than opportunities to ‘hook up’ with women on the road.”

Mayer cites several other incidents like that, including the whistleblower stating, “A Fox News contributor, with the rank of captain (at the time) in the National Guard, and the CEO of a veterans’ organization . . . was in a strip club trying to dance with strippers.”

It’s possible Fox never knew about any of these specific incidents but Hegseth's character, or lack thereof, was clearly no secret. In fact, Mayer quotes a former Fox colleague saying about Mayer, “He had a kind of what-happens-in-Vegas-stays-in-Vegas kind of attitude, while his wife and kids were in Minnesota. … He was a huge drinker. I can’t say if he had a problem, but he was very handsy with women, too. I’ve certainly seen him drunk.”

The alleged sexual assault occurred in October, 2017. That was more than a year after Roger Ailes and nearly six months after Bill O’Reilly had been booted from Fox News over sexual misconduct. Hegseth claimed he had only agreed to a financial settlement with his accuser because he was afraid of losing his Fox News job. But Hegseth acknowledged he had been “visibly intoxicated” and he claimed that the sex was consensual, even though he was still married to Wife and Baby Mama #2. Baby Mama #3, whom he was living with, was at home with their newborn at that time.

As former Sen. Claire McCaskill pointed out today on MSNBC, in the video below, the accusations Mayer reported on did not come from liberals or "woke" individuals. The accusations were made by “people who worked with Pete Hegseth - and he worked in conservative Republican organizations that were centered around veterans, but some of them were just purely political organizations trying to help Republican candidates, conservative Republican candidates, get elected.”

In short, Hegseth's inappropriate behavior was repeated over and over and over again. Television work is collaborative. After seven years as a host, preceded by three years as a contributor, Fox News couldn’t not know what kind of abusive and unscrupulous person they employed.

Either the network turned a blind eye to such conduct or else approved of it.

(Hegseth photo via Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)