Former Fox News host and nominee to Donald Trump's Cabinet Pete Hegseth paid off a woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017, per a report from the Washington Post.
Hegseth was tapped by Trump earlier this week to lead the Department of Defense in the president-elect's second term. The sexual assault accusation from 2017 quickly resurfaced, with Trump transition team members admitting that it caught them by surprise.
A memo shared with Trump's team detailed the allegations from the then 30-year-old staffer of a California Republican group. It laid out a version of events in which Hegseth raped her in a hotel room. A statement from Hegseth's attorney received by the Post maintained that the encounter between Hegseth and the unnamed woman was consensual and further alleged that the accuser was "the aggressor in initiating sexual activity.”
The Post reports that Hegseth paid the accuser as part of a non-disclosure agreement more than two years after the alleged assault. Hegseth's attorney said that the settlement was due to the host's fear that allegations “would result in his immediate termination from Fox.”
"Hegseth strongly felt that he was the victim of blackmail and innocent collateral damage in a lie that the Complainant was holding onto to keep her marriage intact,” attorney Timothy Parlatore shared with the outlet.
Parlatore took his version of events a step further in an interview with Breitbart, saying that Hegseth is "completely and totally innocent" and warning the unknown accuser against coming forward.
"[If she tries to] pull some Christine Blasey Ford kind of crap, which I don’t think she will, then she’s going to very quickly find herself in the courtroom,” he said.
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