Strib carrying an NYT item: Pete Hegseth’s mother accused her son of mistreating women for years -- Penelope Hegseth made the accusation in an email to her son in 2018, amid his contentious divorce. She said on Friday that she regretted the email and had apologized to him.
Breitbart: Mainstream Media Duped by Decade-Old Jealous Screed from Former Pete Hegseth Coworker
Senators may ask him at confirmation hearings about either. He will have an answer for each.
But will they ask him about those tattoos and his Crusader moods, which need to be addressed, but who knows? If he is not a Christian Nationalist bent on Islam as a perceived evil to be actively eradicated to where he'd attack, I am better able to listen to more other stuff. My litmus test is a super big distrust of that body art as an expression of things I reject as defective and/or extreme thought.
I would rather the Senate turn him down, but I expect the opposite result.
If confirmed, I wish him nothing but success in the job because fucking up at DOD can be a losing idea, and there is no reason I have to say he cannot manage the big budget or will not be sane in cutting heads, where things are open to improvement.
There will be other decision makers and administrative minds there, so, if confirmed, may he have luck in finding those whom he trusts, and in them being, in fact, duly trustworthy. There is room for mistake. And there is room for improvement, such as accurate accounting for money coming in the door in massive amounts. When does it come in, from where, where does it go, and who to, for what?
UPDATE: Breitbart: Mom apologizes, it was a hot headed ill-thought-out moment, so please ignore that email letter. And she apologized in short order, back then, after she had just sent the email. I expect she did not think how it could have career impact, and she did not want to affect his career chances. So, on reflection, she did basically retract it beyond being motherly advice and grief of the moment. Cut her some slack.
FURTHER: More Breitbart, almost as if they'd rather keep the fires burning for you to look here, mom's emailing, rather than looking there, at those freakish tattoos. Create a distraction, one more common than a proposed Secretary of Defense having Crusader tattoos and a Crusader history and mindset.
In terms of past Secretaries of State, James Forrestal either jumped from a high window or was thrown out to his death, and then later had an aircraft carrier named after him.
We may expect a Hegseth term in DOD would not result in any such outcomes.
FURTHER: If THIS is about the same stuff Breitbart minimized as upset and disgruntled former coworker, who knows the truth besides Hegseth and other insiders with it possible Breitbart minimized the truth.
If Hegseth does have a drinking problem, he should face it and describe why he believes it is now under control. Guardian had one late-in-the-item paragraph:
At VFF, a former associate told the magazine that Hegseth had effectively run it into the ground, spending in a way that nearly forced the organization into bankruptcy. The findings of a forensic accountant hired by the organization’s donors were described as “appalling”, and one former staffer described parties that, “could politely be called trysts”.
Guardian links to New Yorker as its source. That item is longer, but in part based on undisclosed sources saying "passed out drunk" where subjective vs objective truth is hard to discern. What the New Yorker does, late in the item. say that seems objective:
Meanwhile, the finances of V.F.F. grew so dire that the group’s donors hatched a plan to take control away from Hegseth. The donors’ representatives hired a forensic accountant to review the books. The findings were appalling. In January, 2009, Hegseth sent a letter to the donors admitting that, as of that day, the group had less than a thousand dollars in the bank and $434,833 in unpaid bills. The group also had run up credit-card debts of as much as seventy-five thousand dollars. Hegseth said that he took full responsibility for the mess, but added that, unless the donors gave him more funds, V.F.F. would have to file for bankruptcy and close down.
One of the group’s backers initially agreed to Hegseth’s request. But, according to the early sympathizer, the donors decided, “Let’s shut this thing down. Pete can get another job.” The donors, who were strong supporters of America’s military role in Iraq and Afghanistan, arranged for another veterans’ group, Military Families United, which represented Gold Star families, to merge with V.F.F. and take over most of its management. “We tried to castrate him,” Hegseth’s former associate admitted. “It was a handoff.” Annual federal tax filings for V.F.F. show the group’s coffers draining and Hegseth’s compensation dwindling. In 2010, the records show, Hegseth was identified as the group’s “Executive Director/President” and was paid forty-five thousand dollars for thirty hours of work a week. The next year, he was identified as the group’s “officer,” and paid a salary of five thousand dollars for thirty minutes of work a week. In 2012, the tax filing again identified him as the group’s “officer,” and his compensation rose to eight thousand dollars, but the total grants received by the group that year totalled a mere eighty-one dollars.
Margaret Hoover, a Republican political commentator and political strategist who worked as an adviser to V.F.F. between 2008 and 2010, recently told CNN that she had grave concerns about Hegseth’s ability to run the Pentagon, the largest department in the federal government, given his mismanagement at V.F.F. “I watched him run an organization very poorly, lose the confidence of donors. The organization ultimately folded and was forced to merge with another organization who individuals felt could run and manage funds on behalf of donors more responsibly than he could. That was my experience with him.” Hoover stressed that V.F.F. was an exceedingly small organization, with fewer than ten employees, and a budget of between five million and ten million dollars. She told CNN, “And he couldn’t do that properly—I don’t know how he’s going to run an organization with an eight-hundred-and-fifty-seven-billion-dollar budget and three million individuals.”
Here, a person is willing to be named, and the money matters are objective.
There is he-said, she-said aspects to the rape allegation, and Hegseth did pay hush money, but his claim that he did not want his FOX job imperiled by scandalous but false allegations has some cred.
Money? That is objective. The beans get counted. Got counted. Donor unease was objectively identified. Dealt with.
However, if Senators give him the job, he will have the job. We'll see.