Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin claims Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary was “falsely accused” of sexual assault, defending his claim days earlier that Pete Hegseth had just been “flirting” with his accuser.
A recently released police report from the 2017 incident revealed that the woman, who has not been identified, told police that Hegseth blocked the door to stop her from leaving his hotel room and took her phone away before sexually assaulting her. Hegseth has maintained that the encounter was consensual.
Earlier this week, the Oklahoma senator told reporters in the Capitol that he had read the police report: “If you read it, you can clearly see that it was two people flirting with each other.”
On CNN Sunday, Mullin defended his previous claim and said that be believed Hegseth’s insistence that the encounter was consensual “was accurate,” he said.
“There was no case here. He was falsely accused,” he added. “She was being the aggressor. Pete wasn’t even flirting with her. He was flirting with a different girl, and [the Jane Doe] was trying to flirt with Pete.”
In the police report, another woman told authorities that Hegseth had invited her back to his hotel room, but she “politely declined.”
CNN host Dana Bash pressed Mullin: “From your perspective, you believe his part of the story and not hers?”
“I absolutely do. He wasn’t charged. He wasn’t even kind of charged in this. There was no crime committed. The police dropped everything,” he replied.
While he did not face charges, Hegseth paid the woman in 2023 as part of a confidential settlement to prevent a potential lawsuit, which he labeled as baseless.
“What’s unfortunate in today’s world is you can be accused of anything. And then especially if it’s something like this, you are automatically assumed to be guilty,” Mullin told Bash.
Investigators in Monterey, California were first notified about the alleged incident by a nurse, who told police a patient came to the hospital requesting a sexual assault exam for an incident that had occurred five days earlier, according to the newly released police report.
The patient, identified as Jane Doe in the report, said she struggled to remember what happened, but recalled being intoxicated — and even speculated “something may have been slipped into her drink” because of her memory lapses.
Although she didn’t remember how, Jane Doe said she wound up in Hegseth’s hotel room. She told police that Hegseth “took her phone from her hands” and when she tried to leave his room, and that Hegseth “blocked the door with his body,” according to the report.
She recalled “saying ‘no’ a lot” but “did not remember much else,” the report says.
Meanwhile, Hegseth told police that when they went back to his room, the woman “sat down in the room and did not leave,” which he found “odd.” The sex was “consensual,” they had discussed him wearing a condom, and he “continuously asked Doe if she was [OK] because he did not want Doe to get in trouble,” according to the report.
Hegseth is among several of Trump’s cabinet picks who has been accused of sexual misconduct.
Most of the scrutiny has focused on now-former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, Trump’s initial pick for attorney general who later withdrew his name from consideration.
Gaetz stepped aside after details emerged from two probes, including allegations that he had sexual encounters with a 17-year-old girl. Records obtained by The New York Times and ABC News suggest that Gaetz paid more than $10,000 to two women who testified before the a House Ethics Committee
Following Trump’s election, a startling trend emerged: men started posting the phrase “your body, my choice” on women’s social media posts.
Some of Trump’s own sexual assault accusers have also warned that his return to the White House marks a troubling time for survivors.
“This is not a good time for survivors or victims,” one woman told The Independent in the days after Trump’s victory. “People are not going to speak up because, look, it’s falling on deaf ears. No one cares.”
Trump has denied all the accusations against him.
Trump’s transition team was reportedly caught by surprise when the details of the sexual assault allegation against Hegseth and the reports of his settlement became public.
