President-elect Trump’s choice to lead the department of defence, Pete Hegseth, paid a woman who had accused him of sexual assault as part of a settlement agreement with a confidentiality clause, but Hegseth insists it was a consensual encounter, his lawyer said Saturday.
Trump’s transition team was only recently alerted to the payment by Hegseth, a Fox News commentator and a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hegseth’s lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, said that his client had done nothing wrong. “Mr Hegseth is completely innocent,” he said. “Not only did she take advantage of him, but we believe she then extorted him knowing that at the height of the #MeToo movement the mere public allegation would likely result in his immediate termination from Fox News.”
Parlatore said the woman began making statements about Hegseth that he said were false about two years after the alleged incident and that she had suggested to people that she might file a lawsuit against Hegseth. He sent the woman a cease-and-desist letter in early 2020. The settlement came months after that letter, although the amount was unclear.
The Trump team was rocked this past week when a woman sent a memo to the transition claiming her friend had been sexually assaulted by Hegseth. Late on Thursday the Monterey police department in California said it had investigated an allegation of sexual assault involving Hegseth in 2017. No charges were filed.
Hegseth was a speaker at a conference of the California Federation of Republican Women at the Monterey hotel in early October 2017 when the encounter occurred. The woman had been with the Republican women’s group. According to the police statement, the complaint was filed four days after the encounter, and the complainant had bruises to her thigh.