A woman told police that she was s3xually ass@ulted in 2017 by Pete Hegseth after he took her phone, blocked the door to a California hotel room, and refused to let her leave, according to a detailed investigative report made public late Wednesday.
Hegseth, a former Fox News personality and President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be defense secretary, told police at the time that the encounter had been consensual and denied any wrongdoing, the report said.
This comes a week after local officials released a brief statement confirming that a woman had accused Hegseth of sexual assault in October 2017 after he had spoken at a Republican women’s event in Monterey.
Hegseth’s lawyer, Timothy Palatore, said in a statement that the police report confirms “what I have said all along that the incident was fully investigated and police found the allegations to be false, which is why no charges were filed.”
Hegseth paid the woman in 2023 as part of a confidential settlement to head off the threat of what he described as a baseless lawsuit, Palatore has said.
The 22-page police report was released in response to a public records request and offers the first detailed account of what the woman alleged to have transpired — one that is at odds with Hegseth’s version of events.
The report cited police interviews with the alleged victim, a nurse who treated her, a hotel staffer, another woman at the event, and Hegseth.
The woman’s name was not released, and The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually assaulted.
A spokeswoman for the Trump transition said early Thursday that the “report corroborates what Mr. Hegseth’s attorneys have said all along: the incident was fully investigated and no charges were filed because police found the allegations to be false.”
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