Trump Defense Secretary Nominee Pete Hegseth’s lawyer Tim Parlatore said in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News on Saturday that sexual assault allegations from seven years ago — in 2017 — were “completely investigated” at the time and that he is “completely and totally innocent.”
“He is completely and totally innocent. It was completely investigated. She was the aggressor,” Parlatore said in a phone interview, referring to the woman who claimed she was assaulted.
Parlatore said that in 2017, Hegseth, the host of Fox News’ Fox & Friends, was invited to speak at an event hosted by the California Federation of Republican Women conference in Monterey. After the event, he and event organizers were at a bar, where he had “too many drinks.”
The accuser, who was allegedly sober at the time, took him back to his room, Parlatore said.
“She took advantage of him. She led him. She was, by all accounts, both video and eyewitness, she was sober. He was drunk. She grabbed him. She took him to his room. She’s like walking arm in arm with him. And really putting it on, and she gets him into his room. And then the police honestly, when they looked at it, even though she was the one that reported it, when they looked at the video, they considered charging her,” he said.
“But that didn’t go anywhere, because obviously Pete’s not gonna sit there and say, ‘I was raped,’” he said.
This incident happened at the height of the Me Too Movement when a number of high profile men in media became the focus of allegations of sexual assault and harassment.
Parlatore said Hegseth heard nothing about the encounter for a couple of years, but Parlatore claims that after the accuser was fired from her job at the organization, she started talking about suing Hegseth, and other women then reached out to Hegseth to let him know.
Parlatore said that is when he got involved in the situation, sending the accuser a cease-and-desist letter back in 2020, threatening to sue her for defamation. Nothing happened, but about a year later, the accuser hired a lawyer and threatened to sue, according to Parlatore.
“Fox News was not going to just sit and wait a couple of years to see what the court said — they were going to fire him,” Parlatore said. “So, of course, we entered into mediation. We ultimately came to a to a settlement.”
Parlatore said the settlement had confidentiality provisions that the accuser or others with knowledge of the case breached this week, when the allegations became public.
“The consequences for breaking it are essentially that the settlement is null and void, but beyond the settlement, obviously she’s going to owe us a little bit of money from that,” he said, adding that she did not get much in the first place.
“But now it opens her up to a lawsuit for defamation and because it’s in California, California has a simple extortion statute, so we could sue her for extortion, too,” he said.
But, he added, next steps depends on what happens next. Parlatore said the accuser’s lawyer said she has no plans to come forward, and if Hegseth is confirmed, there will likely be no further steps.
However, he said, “If she decides to out herself and try 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.”
“It’s one of those things where, depending on how the next couple of months play out, I have a lot of options at my disposal of how to deal with the breach of the agreement,” he said.
Parlatore said he suspects someone in the Trump transition team may have leaked the allegations to stir the pot and sink his nomination.
However, the incoming-Trump administration is standing firmly behind him.
Steven Cheung, the incoming White House Director of Communications said in a statement:
President Trump is nominating high-caliber and extremely qualified candidates to serve in his Administration.Mr. Hegseth has vigorously denied any and all accusations, and no charges were filed. We look forward to his confirmation as United States Secretary of Defense so he can get started on Day One to Make America Safe and Great Again.
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