Defense head pick Pete Hegseth now dogged by questions over alcohol use

Questions continued to dog Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, on Monday following reports he was twice ousted from previous organisations he led over financial mismanagement and improper behavior, with reporters asking him directly if he had an alcohol problem.

Hegseth, 44, who was visiting Capitol Hill to drum up support for his troubled nomination, did not respond when a journalist asked “Do you have an alcohol problem?” as he arrived for a meeting with Republican senators.

Later, another reporter, from CBS, buttonholed him in a corridor and asked him: “Were you ever drunk while traveling on the job?”

“I’m not gonna dignify that with a response,” Hegseth, until recently a Fox News host, answered, adding: “I’m talking to all the senators and I look forward to their discussions.”

The New Yorker magazine recently reported whistleblower accusations that Hegseth was forced out of leadership roles in two military veterans organisations following allegations of financial mismanagement, aggressive drunkenness and sexist behaviour.

The disclosures have further complicated Hegseth’s chances of winning over Republican senators at confirmation hearings after an earlier revelation that police in California investigated a sexual assault allegation made against him in 2017. The investigation did not result in criminal charges and Hegseth later reached a financial settlement with the woman who made the complaint.

The magazine reported that Hegseth had to be carried to his room at a Memorial Day veterans event in Virginia Beach in 2014 after getting “totally sloshed”, and on another occasion reportedly had to be restrained from joining female dancers on stage at a Louisiana strip club.

One witness recounted him shouting “Kill all Muslim, kill all Muslims” at a bar in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, in 2015. The episode was the subject of a written complaint to the Koch-backed group Concerned Veterans for America (CVA), of which Hegseth was then chief executive officer.

Hegesth was also said to have financially run another veterans outfit, Vets for Freedom, into the ground financially during his tenure as chief executive.

A lawyer for Hegseth has dismissed the allegations. CBS cited a source close to him as saying the claims were false but adding that Hegseth had acknowledged he “drank too much” in the past.

“That’s not the kind of life that Pete lives right now. He certainly has matured a lot in the past decade,” the source told CBS.

Hegseth appeared to win backing among rightwing Republicans he met on Monday accompanied by his wife, Jennifer Rauchet. Rick Scott, a senator for Florida, said Hegseth, an army veteran without previous Pentagon management experience, was “clearly committed to making sure we have a lethal military that scares the crap out of our enemies”.

“A year from now, military recruitment numbers will have skyrocketed under Secretary Hegseth,” added the Texas senator Ted Cruz, who accused Democrats of trying to make “a spectacle” out of the nomination – though the real threat may come from Republicans, some of whom Hegseth is due to meet in further visits to Capitol Hill this week.

Joni Ernst, a GOP senator from Iowa who sits on the Senate’s armed services committee, has stopped short of supporting Hegseth, the Washington Post reported.

“I know there’s a lot of information out there,” she said. “I want the best for the president, right? I want the best for the president, and he deserves a nominee that will work for him and do the absolute best that our country needs.”

Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who will chair the committee when the new Senate is sworn in on 3 January, has been pressing for nominees to undergo standard FBI background checks, which Trump’s transition team has been resisting.

He told reporters that checks could be agreed “in the next few days”, potentially spelling trouble for Hegseth.

“I do think there will be FBI background checks,” Wicker told Politico.

“My preference is that we honor the precedent that has been in place since the Eisenhower administration, and be informed by the agency that does background checks.”