Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth’s attorney on Sunday confirmed to NBC News that Hegseth, whom President-elect Donald Trump has named as his candidate for defense secretary, paid a woman an undisclosed amount after she accused him of sexual assault.He also denied that the encounter between Hegseth and an unnamed woman, which she alleges happened in 2017, was sexual assault.
Parlatore’s statement comes after The Washington Post on Saturday reported that a friend of Hegseth’s accuser sent a memo to the Trump transition team detailing the allegations.
NBC News has not independently reviewed the memo, but Parlatore confirmed that it is related to an encounter Hegseth and the unnamed woman had in Monterey, California, during a conference of the California Federation of Republican Women.
The Post reported that the memo said the woman was at the conference with her husband and her children and “didn’t remember anything until she was in Hegseth’s hotel room and then stumbling to find her hotel room” on the night in question.
Parlatore denied the allegation, saying, “This is a situation where a consensual encounter occurred and, unfortunately, the woman had to come up with a lie to explain why the woman had not come back to her husband’s room that night.”
“It wasn’t reported until days later until there was pressure from her husband. It was fully investigated by police and video surveillance as well as multiple eyewitness statements show that she was the aggressor,” he added
