Politics

Republican senator Lindsey Graham says Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host who Donald Trump nominated to lead the defense department, told him that he has allowed a woman who accused him of sexual assault to speak publicly.

While police brought no charges over the alleged assault, Hegseth reportedly paid the accuser a settlement, in exchange for her signing a nondisclosure agreement about the allegation. In a Sunday interview with NBC News, Graham said that Hegseth “told me he would release her from that agreement”.

Graham, who had expressed some concerns about Hegseth as the sexual assault allegations and reports of other bad behavior came to light, otherwise spoke positively about the defense secretary nominee:

I’m in a good place with Pete unless something I don’t know about comes out. These allegations are disturbing, but they’re anonymous. I asked him point blank, were you drunk in a bar and got up and said, let’s kill all the Muslims. He said, no. There’s one allegation on a police report about sexual assault, that person has the right to come forward to the committee. But about mismanagement of money, about, you know, having a drinking problem and saying inappropriate things, all of these are anonymous allegations.

He’s given me his side of the story. It makes sense to me, I believe him. Unless somebody’s willing to come forward, I think he’s going to get through.