Former aides to Pete Hegseth are denying sweeping allegations of financial mismanagement and sexual impropriety against the current Defense Secretary-designee when he led a veterans advocacy group – including a drunken trip to a strip club with colleagues. Was involved.
Shawn Parnell, Hegseth’s former senior adviser at Concerned Veterans for America, told The Post in a phone interview Tuesday that the ludicrous details shared anonymously in a New Yorker article about the Army vet were completely false. were “not reflective” to whom he came. Known as the President of the organization.
“If you read that article, I mean, I think you come away thinking that CVA was some kind of slush fund for parties or something,” said Parnell, who worked under Hegseth from 2013 to 2016. Was – and nothing could be further from the truth.” ,
“There was no strip club involved as far as I remember,” he said. “Sometimes the staff – after the show was over – we would go out and drink. But it was never any crazy, crazy thing like that article.”
According to two former employees as well as excerpts of emails and a 2015 whistleblower dossier New Yorker pieceHegseth was asked to step down from leading CVA and Veterans for Freedom, another advocacy group, after he became “completely disinterested” in events and when male members of his senior management sexually harassed female colleagues. So he looked the other way.
The Fox News personality once reportedly got so drunk that he “tried to get on the stage and dance with the strippers” during a CVA junket in Louisiana in November 2014 — and a female coworker “had to get him off it.” Before the security guards threw them out.
At another point, reports claimed Hegseth was on a CVA tour of Ohio in May 2015 – and began shouting “Kill all Muslims!” Kill all Muslims!” With an unnamed person traveling in a group of people.
According to one email, the future Pentagon pick also generally “treated the organization’s funds as if they were a personal spending account — spending on partying, drinking, and using CVA programs.” Little more than opportunities to ‘hook up’ with women on the street. Posted by Hegseth’s successor Jay Pak in January 2016.
Parnell, who himself visited the Pelican State 10 years earlier, said none of those allegations were true, describing CVA’s actions as generally “super positive” and “patriotic events.”
He added, the description given in the New Yorker article “does not reflect the organization I was a part of, nor does it reflect the type of person and leader (Hegseth) really was.”
The ex-CVA senior adviser also said he had not heard of the whistleblower report – despite it being compiled during his years at the organization and sent to top members of management.
According to Parnell, neither Hegseth nor he misused the funds themselves, rather, the pair had disagreements with other high-ups in CVA over foreign policy positions as they gradually embraced Trump’s isolationist leanings. – which caused a rift with the group’s more aggressive donor base.
But Parnell, who himself was awarded two Bronze Stars and served as an Army Ranger combat infantryman during the Afghanistan War, said Hegseth was never fired.
“The people who funded the CVA at the time … did not necessarily align with Trump’s foreign policy vision,” he said. “But it was quite popular and because of those policy differences, Pete left.”
Another former colleague who worked with Hegseth at CVA told Compact MagazineJoe was the first to report on Parnell’s vigorous denial that the dirty behavior presented in the report did not pass the smell test – and it came from colleagues who had been fired.
“All lies,” said the veteran, who also served in a senior role under Hegseth. “These were false allegations made by a group of disgruntled employees fired by Pete.”
The vet also suggested that the whistleblowers were blaming her former boss, who was awarded a Bronze Star for combat deployment during the Iraq War, for his own misdeeds.
“He left because his role was growing at Fox and he had a book deal,” the second vet told Compact. “‘Pete never had another job,’ but shortly after his departure, he became a full-time ‘Fox & Friends’ host,” the article said.
Parnell, who wrote the New York Times bestseller “Outlaw Platoon” about their combat deployment, also speculated that the source of the allegations may have come from Washington.
He hinted that some at the Pentagon would likely be unhappy with Trump’s selection of Hegseth, as the soon-to-be 47th president could gut the bureaucracy and cut funding — so there could be a backlash.
“President Trump was elected as a disruptor,” Parnell said. “And I think some of (his) Cabinet selections reflect what (he) hopes to achieve with those reforms.”
(TagstoTranslate)Politics(T)US News(T)Donald Trump(T)Pete Hegseth
