Trump Defense Secretary Nominee Pete Hegseth’s mother apologized to her son immediately after sending him an emotional email in 2018 accusing him of mistreating his ex-wife in the midst of their difficult divorce, according to an email viewed Saturday by Breitbart News.
In the follow-up email, sent on May 1, 2018, Penelope Hegseth apologized for sending an email the evening before out of emotion and frustration, saying she should know better.
She added that the divorce had been difficult and frustrating for her and that she had felt desperate. She also added that she knew he loved the children he shared with his ex-wife and that he wanted to be in their lives, and that she wanted to support that.
The email had a completely different tone than the one she wrote the evening before, which was published by the New York Times on Friday against her wishes.
In the initial email she sent on April 30, 2018, she berated her son about his treatment of his ex-wife Samantha, the mother of three of her grandchildren, and whom Hegseth was married to from 2010 to 2017. Hegseth’s mother forwarded that email to Samantha, which somehow made it to the Times.
When Hegseth’s mother was told by the Times that they would publish the email, she told them in a phone interview that she had sent her son an immediate follow-up email apologizing for what she had written.
She also told the Times that she had fired off the email “in anger, with emotion” at a time when her son and his now ex-wife were going through a very difficult divorce.
She also defended her son to the Times and disavowed what she had said in her email about his character and treatment of women.
She told the paper, “It is not true. It has never been true,” adding, “I know my son. He is a good father, husband.” She also called publishing the email’s contents “disgusting.”
Nonetheless, LaFraniere ran with the story, even promoting it on her X account and letting readers know that it was a “gift” or free article and not behind a paywall.
LaFraniere — who was part of the Times’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Russia collusion hoax — was personally biased against Hegseth, according to a New York Times source.
The source said, “She said that Pete Hegseth can’t be SECDEF and that she’s going to see to it. I kind of looked at her like she was crazy and wondered how she was going to see to it, but now I guess I don’t have to wonder anymore.”
According to a source close to Hegseth, several media outlets were aware of the original email but had opted not to publish its contents.
The source said she did not send her follow-up email to the Times because she did not trust them, and that she would trust Breitbart News with it instead. The source did not want the email published so as not to continue the cycle of publishing private communications between mother and son.
Author and combat veteran Sean Parnell blasted LaFraniere for publishing the email, calling it “despicably low” and “sickening.” He wrote on X:
The New York Times is publishing a 6 year old private email between a mother & her son. This is despicably low on so many levels. Families have issues. All the time. To make those issues public for the sole purpose of tanking a nomination is evil. Period. Pete has children. They will read this. Their friends will read it. It is irresponsible as hell to even publish such a thing. Democrats don’t have to deal with this BS. It’s sickening.
Parnell also slammed LaFraniere for promoting the story on her X account:
She’s so proud of publishing a 6 year old private email between a mother and her son that she’s offering you a way around the NYT paywall.
President Trump is right about scum like this — #EnemyOfThePeople.
“It’s an understatement to say that the media is the #EnemyofthePeople. To exploit the private pain of a family during a very difficult moment is loathsome beyond belief. Especially when small children are involved. The Hegseth family doesn’t deserve these BS attacks,” he added.
Megyn Kelly, podcast host and former Fox News anchor, also derided the Times for publishing the email. She posted on X:
ICYMI @PeteHegseth’s mom sent him a “you are behaving very badly” email during his divorce (she’s a good mom!) and the NYT is ALL IN on it. Next we will hear from his aunt who accused him of being late in sending his thank you cards after Christmas six years ago.
The Times‘s reporting of the private email comes after what appears to be a concerted smear campaign against Hegseth, a Washington-outsider, in an effort to sink his nomination to lead the government’s largest agency.
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