The battle over Pete Hegseth’s confirmation to lead the U.S. Department of Defense marched into its next chapter on Tuesday as CNN’s chief congressional correspondent caught up with U.S. Senate Republicans eager to avoid talking about the latest allegations against him.
Hegseth was the target of a New Yorker article on Monday that relied on allegations from a former employee that he was dismissed from several prominent veterans charities for abusing alcohol and sorting female employees into “party girls” and “not party girls” categories, among other salacious items.
Through attorney Tim Parlatore, the former Fox News anchor denied the allegations and hit back at the liberal publication for relying on a “disgruntled” anonymous employee as a source. The drama was avoided at all costs in Capitol hallways on Tuesday as Republican senators ducked questions or feigned ignorance about the story.
“The Pentagon needs a serious course correction, so I’m going to have a lot of questions for him,” Alaska Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) said about Hegseth, “but I think he’s the kind of guy who can do that.” Asked by reporter Manu Raju if he planned to question Hegseth about the latest round of allegations, Sullivan demurred.
“There’s a process for that. Sometimes you’ve gotta take these allegations seriously. Sometimes, even when you take them ’em seriously, they turn out to be inaccurate.”
In his report, Raju indicated that Hegseth has also met with Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) as he works the backchannels on his way to a full confirmation hearing by the Senate. A vote will not take place until at least January after President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration and after the new Senate is seated and sworn in. Tuberville told the CNN correspondent that the New Yorker allegations “did not come up” in their meeting and said he would “support Hegseth’s nomination going forward.”
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Having already suffered the withdrawal of Matt Gaetz’s nomination, President-elect Trump can only afford defections by three Senate Republicans and still see Hegseth confirmed with Vice President-elect J.D. Vance serving as the tiebreaker.
Last month, Senate Republicans mostly held their fire when confronted with a New York Times story alleging that Hegseth’s mother admonished him decades ago for being an “abuser of women,” remarks which she has since retracted.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who is seen as key to most confirmation battles, said at the time, “Clearly we’re going to have to have a full background check and Senate committee investigation and public hearings, which is standard.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), another moderate and senior colleague to Sullivan, told The Hill she is “going to do what everybody should do on all of these [nominations] is, let’s see what the incoming brings.”
