Trump’s nominee for defense secretary Pete Hegseth brings no discernible qualifications to. the position. Like some of the other nominees, his main qualification seems to be that he looks good on TV. But today a new report by investigative reporter Jane Mayer of the New Yorker has a whistleblower making serious allegations about his behavior when he was the head of a non-profit. He looks so bad that Matt Gaetz, who was forced to withdraw his nomination as attorney general, looks good by comparison.

Hegseth’s record before becoming a full-time Fox News TV host, in 2017, raises additional questions about his suitability to run the world’s largest and most lethal military force. A trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues, indicates that Hegseth was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran—Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America—in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.

A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events. The detailed seven-page report—which was compiled by multiple former C.V.A. employees and sent to the organization’s senior management in February, 2015—states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team. The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization’s female staffers, whom they divided into two groups—the “party girls” and the “not party girls.” In addition, the report asserts that, under Hegseth’s leadership, the organization became a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by a female employee that another employee on Hegseth’s staff had attempted to sexually assault her at the Louisiana strip club. In a separate letter of complaint, which was sent to the organization in late 2015, a different former employee described Hegseth being at a bar in the early-morning hours of May 29, 2015, while on an official tour through Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, drunkenly chanting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!”

You can see why Trump might see him as perfect for a top level cabinet post. He would be a good fit. But others think that, apart from all his other problems, he simply cannot handle such a massive organization as the Pentagon.

In January, 2016, Hegseth resigned from Concerned Veterans for America, under pressure. An account in the Military Times said that Hegseth had “quietly resigned,” in a decision that was “mutual” with the organization, amid “rumors of a rift between the former C.E.O. and the group’s financial backers.” Hegseth, who had no other job lined up at the time, gave no explanation for his departure, other than saying, “Sometimes it just makes sense to make a transition.” C.V.A., for its part, released a statement saying that it thanked Hegseth “for his many contributions” and wished him well. But, according to three knowledgeable sources, one of whom contributed to the whistle-blower report, Hegseth was forced to step down from the organization in part because of concerns about his mismanagement and abuse of alcohol on the job.
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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.”

Hegsetth has also been dogged by rumors about his personal life. Like Trump and another GOP luminary Newt Gingrich, he has had three wives, marrying the second and third after having affairs with them while still married to their predecessors.

But those involve his private morals. More damaging are the allegations of abusive behavior towards women, including a charge of rape, that he has denied. Now comes the release of an email that Hegseth’s own mother sent to him in 2018..

A 2018 email from Penelope Hegseth accused her son of routinely mistreating women and displaying a lack of character.

“You are an abuser of women – that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego,” Penelope Hegseth wrote in the email obtained by the New York Times.

“You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth,” she added, advising her son to “get some help and take an honest look at yourself”.

You can see the full text of the email here and it is pretty brutal. In addition to the above, she says:

I am not a saint, far from it.. so don’t throw that in my face,. but your abuse over the years to women (dishonesty, sleeping around, betrayal, debasing, belittling) needs to be called out.
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I know you think this is one big competition and that we have taken her side… bunk… we are on the side of good and that is not you. (Go ahead and call me self-righteous, I dont’ care)

Don’t you dare run to her and cry foul that we shared with us… that’s what babies do. It’s time for someone (I wish it was a strong man) to stand up to your abusive behavior and call it out, especially against women.
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I don’t want an answer to this… I don’t want to debate with you. You twist and abuse everything I say anyway. But… On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say… get some help and take an honest look at yourself…

This is very strong stuff and her subsequently saying that she did not really believe it does not ring true. Mothers tend to side with their sons over their daughters-in-law and it would take a lot for a mother to unload on her son like that.

Penelope Hegseth told the New York Times she had written the message “in anger, with emotion” while her son was going through an acrimonious divorce from his second wife, Samantha, the mother of three of his children, and had immediately apologized to her son in a second email.

She rejected her earlier characterization of her son to the outlet. “It is not true. It has never been true,” she said. She added: “I know my son. He is a good father, husband.” She said that publishing the contents of the first email was “disgusting”.

I was curious as to how the New York Times got hold of this email at all. Surely emails sent by one person to another cannot be obtained without some kind of warrant? It must have been sent to the newspaper. But by whom? Who would have access to it? One possibility is that the mother copied someone else on the email (maybe her daughter-in-law) and she in turn shared it with close family and friends as people tend to do when they are going through difficulties in their relationships and seek counsel and support. Thus quite a few people in Hegseth’s circle may have received it and the likelihood of someone leaking it to the press increases rapidly with the number of people who know the secret.