The Media Dishonestly Reports the Pete Hegseth Story
by John D. O’Connor
The following is an article originally published on Biz Pac Review. Read it HERE.
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The results of the recent election should be viewed in part as the voters’ indictment of the major media for false reporting on important issues. If so, these same media should stand convicted for their deceptive stories about Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth. To be sure, the Hegseth nomination is now all but dead, as the media finally nailed him on allegations of drinking allegedly excessively.
At this point, there may be no saving Hegseth, since the media did not afford him the courtesy they showed to the personal habits of Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. But, by the same token, their success in destroying Hegseth should not excuse their initial dishonesty in trying to ruin him by a false allegation of sexual assault.
Before November 20, 2024, there had been broad and vague allegations that Hegseth had in 2017 been accused of sexual assault, for which he was not criminally prosecuted. The country’s – indeed, the world’s – attention had been alerted to this story, albeit without a firm reported conclusion.
But on November 20, an opportunity arose to understand this important narrative, when a local news outlet in Monterey, California, gained the pertinent police report, complete with emergency room records, witness statements, videos, text messages between the victim (“Doe”) and her husband, and records of phone calls to her phone. These materials were sufficient for a clear, conclusive resolution of the competing claims.
The oppositional dichotomy of stories between Hegseth and Doe could not have been starker. In her report to an emergency room, oddly, five days after the claimed occurrence, Doe described herself as having been in a near-blackout state the prior Saturday night, claiming someone had likely slipped “something” into her drink at a sports bar after a Republican women’s conference banquet where Hegseth spoke.
She claimed to have barely remembered that night and did not suspect a sexual assault until the following Monday, two days later. She vaguely remembered being assaulted in an “unknown room”, from which the vaguely remembered Hegseth had blocked her exit. She hazily recalled repeating “no” and Hegseth having taken her phone. She could remember Hegseth’s emissions on her stomach. Doe returned to her room at 4:00 a.m., but could not remember how she got there. She did not report the story, she said, for five days because her memory of an assault was only “triggered” the following Monday night when she had sex with her husband.
Hegseth, in the middle of a divorce, admitted to investigating police that he had sex that night with Doe, but described her as being alert, eager, and willing. According to Hegseth, he was surprised that after they walked together to his hotel room, Doe stayed. He explained that he had earlier talked at length with another female, but not with Doe. After things “progressed”, Doe asked Hegseth if he had a condom, which he did not, but she then volunteered to go forward without one. Hegseth expressed concern that she might get in trouble with her waiting husband. She told Hegseth not to worry, that she would tell him that she had fallen asleep.
Up to this point, their stories were he-said, she-said. But the police report, detailing all salient evidence, clearly resolved the issue of assault.
It was unlikely, as these things go, that the public would read the original 22-page police report and exhibits. Most legacy media reporting this story did not link the report to their readers, and it was unlikely in any case that most would seek to peruse it. Rather, the reviewing citizenry would rely on the truthfulness of the media’s summary of the compendium of evidence.
In so reporting, our legacy media had a golden opportunity to show their educational value to our democracy – that is, the form of government that they have told us Donald Trump threatens, one plagued by MAGA “disinformation.”
The police report was quickly covered on November 21, 2024, by major media outlets, including CBS, CNN, NPR, Washington Post, ABC, NBC, and AP. They reported almost identical versions of the story, focusing on the allegedly helpless, seemingly drugged, near-blacked-out victim being raped by a strong man who imprisoned her in a room and took away her phone. This, of course, was the hazy and blurred recollection of the victim Doe, as she related it to emergency room nurse and police.
There was, however, one serious flaw in these almost identical renditions by the media of the victim’s story: her tale had been proven clearly false by the investigation. The most common means of fraud, we all know, is by omission, such as Enron not reporting billions in liabilities, Madoff concealing his Ponzi scheme, or, more prosaically, a selling homeowner painting over black mold. Such fraudulent concealment is precisely what the major media practiced in order to defame Hegseth.
All of the legacy media ignored, as if by pre-direction, that the other female witness, a hotel employee, Doe’s husband, two video clips, phone records and her multiple texts with her husband through 2 a.m., all showed Doe to be perfectly alert, walking and speaking well, and not in any way substantially intoxicated.
The other female described Doe aggressively keeping Hegseth from her, as the two were flirting at the sports bar, with Doe’s purposefully intervening “crotch block”, as the female termed Doe’s actions. The video showed Doe, after her successful “crotch block,” walking out of the bar arm-in-arm with Hegseth. Seemingly, Doe had won the big trophy, the admittedly “dreamy” Hegseth. While texting hubby she was unimpressed with Hegseth (“a tdb”), she also texted: “our ladies are freaking drooling over him!”
Text messages showed Doe’s phone still in hand, messaging her husband, shortly after 2:00 a.m., then failing to answer his subsequent texts, or phone calls at 2:56 a.m. and 3:40 a.m. Doe admitted she used a condom with her husband the following Monday. Hegseth, unaware of that, also reported that Doe had requested a condom, strong corroboration of Doe’s knowing and alert agreement to sex. Hegseth said Doe told him she would tell her husband she fell asleep, while her husband told police, when she returned at 4 a.m., that she said she had fallen asleep. The husband also told police she was walking well and not slurring her words.
In short, Hegseth’s story was consistently corroborated, while Doe’s was consistently debunked. The centerpiece of Doe’s story, her heavily intoxicated, near-black-out state, was clearly, provably false. Yet, the major media treated hers as being most likely true, while ignoring facts that give the lie to them. Anyone reading or reviewing the reports of these major media derives an intentionally given, false impression of who was telling the truth.
These virtually identical reports by different major media journalists could be the result of industry-wide carelessness or plain incompetence. But all of these by-lined reporters could not be so unintelligent, thus most strongly probative of partisan dishonesty of the anti-Trump media. There is no clearer case that the most dangerous threat to our democracy is not from Trump, MAGA, or election skeptics but rather a group to whom we grant press passes, special access, and First Amendment protection.
As their mendacity becomes clear in future post-mortem analysis, will any of them apologize for defaming a nominee for an important government position?
Or, far more likely, will they double down on their falsity, relying on the irrational mob factionalism our Founding Fathers sought to avoid with, ironically, the First Amendment?
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John D. O’Connor is a former federal prosecutor and the San Francisco attorney who represented W. Mark Felt during his revelation as Deep Throat in 2005. O’Connor is the author of the books, Postgate: How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate and Began Today’s Partisan Advocacy Journalism and The Mysteries of Watergate: What Really Happened.