Pete Hegseth: Victim, Not Perpetrator

by John D. O’Connor

The following is an article originally published on American Greatness. Read it HERE.

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There may be good arguments against Pete Hegseth’s confirmation as Secretary of Defense, but his alleged 2017 sexual assault is not one of them.

One investigative document released by the Monterey City Attorney’s Office more than suffices, containing the police report, text messages of Jane Doe to and from her husband that night, witness accounts, and video surveillance footage. This evidence is strong.

On October 12, 2017, “Jane Doe” visited an emergency room to ask for a sexual assault examination. Oddly, the alleged sexual assault had occurred four days earlier, on the night of October 7-8, 2017. Since Doe had engaged in sex with her husband since then, it would make no sense for the examiner to determine if there had been recent sexual penetration, a major element of a SART exam. The only seeming purpose would have been to trigger a report of rape by the hospital, a mandatory reporter.

The “victim” said she did not remember most of the events of the night in question, indeed, suggesting something may have been slipped into her drink, resulting in her having only a hazy recollection that she may have been assaulted the previous weekend. Later, apparently gaining some vague memory when being interviewed by police, she related that Pete Hegseth had kept her from leaving his hotel room and had eventually ejaculated on her stomach.

Unanswered were the questions of how Doe had come to be in Hegseth’s room early in the morning, and how her clothes came to be removed, without, it seemed, any suggestion of tearing. If she was as drunk as claimed, could she deny that she had consented? After all, she did not recall any assault, she told police, until the following Monday, when her memory was “triggered” by having sex with her husband, notably, it becomes significant, with a condom.

At the outset, then, this looked like, at worst, a drunken sexual encounter with a she-said, he-said cast. But witnesses, surveillance footage, and text messages that came thereafter told a far different, and quite conclusive, story. This evidence clearly portrays an alert, perhaps lightly “buzzed”, woman energetically competing for the “dreamy” Hegseth’s attention, luring him away from a female with whom he was having close conversation. Indeed, the other female described to police that Doe had performed a successful “crotch block” to keep her from having sex with the widely admired (Doe: “Our ladies are freaking drooling over him”) Hegseth.

Doe had texted throughout that night with her husband, who was apparently staying in his room while his wife attended the all-women banquet at which Hegseth was speaking. At 12:15 a.m., she texted him that she was headed to a bar with the “CFRW ladies,” and in fact, she was arriving at Knuckles sports bar at that time. The curious husband later texted her that he could not remember the last time she was “socializing at 2 a.m.” She answered that text vaguely, but then ignored subsequent texts and phone calls, worrying her husband. Phone calls at 2:56 and 3:40 went unanswered.

Concerned about her well-being, the husband says he visited Knuckles around 2:00 a.m. (since he had texted her at 2, he clearly went there later), and found no one there, so he returned to their hotel room. Doe returned to the hotel room at 4:00 a.m., telling her husband that she must have fallen asleep. The husband noted that she did not have trouble walking, nor was she slurring words.

Surveillance video showed Hegseth, Doe, and another female proceeding to Knuckles at 11:58 p.m. The female told police that she was having a private conversation with Hegseth at Knuckles. The female said Hegseth had placed his hand on her knee, with which she was not uncomfortable, and he had asked her to accompany him to his hotel room, whereupon Doe entered the conversation to perform what the female called the “crotch block.”

At around 1:15, Doe and Hegseth, per video, left Knuckles arm in arm, both walking well. At 1:30 the front desk received a complaint of loud talking near the swimming pool. The employee encountered Doe and Hegseth there, whereupon Doe placed her arm around Hegseth and led him away. The employee said that while Hegseth appeared intoxicated, Doe did not. According to Hegseth, Doe accompanied him to his room, but to his surprise, sat down and did not leave. Hegseth told the police he was confused by this since he had done far more talking at Knuckles with another woman, but had not thought of Doe.

Eventually, though, per Hegseth, things “progressed” between him and Doe. Doe asked him if he had a condom, which he did not, but she then said she would go forward without one, which they did, with her on top. Hegseth expressed concern that Doe would get in trouble with her husband, but Doe assured him that she would tell her husband that she fell asleep. She did tell her husband, when she finally arrived at her hotel room at 4 a.m., that she had fallen asleep.

Every person interviewed noted no signs in Doe of any extreme intoxication, confirmed by the video, hotel employees, the other female, and Hegseth. So, Doe’s claim that she had only a blurred, drunken memory of a possible assault was part of the cover story to justify her delayed realization and report of an assault and her 4 a.m. arrival in her room. In other words, her allegedly blurred memory explains how she was an assault victim, not an aggressive, designing adulterer. And it is the only way she can explain not answering her husband’s phone calls at 2:46 a.m. and 3:40 a.m.

Both Doe and Hegseth confirm the stomach ejaculate, the obvious result of the lack of the preferred condom, strong corroboration by Hegseth, since Doe’s subsequent sex with her husband was with a condom. All evidence, in short, points to an encounter quite willingly pursued by Doe.

Accordingly, while citizens and the Senate should vet Hegseth’s qualifications to be Secretary of Defense, among the issues assessed should not be this claimed sexual assault.

The media appear, however, determined to parrot the allegation, without even superficial scrutiny, reminiscent of their failings regarding Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh. While the admirably restrained Hegseth stays quiet, good citizens should voice strong disapproval of a legacy media whose partisan reporting interferes with the good government processes a democracy requires.

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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.