Pete Hegseth, President-elect Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran due to mismanagement of funds, sexual impropriety and reports of intoxicated behavior, The New Yorker reported on Sunday.
The incidents — relayed in a trail of documents and corroborated to The New Yorker by the accounts of former colleagues — took place prior to Hegseth becoming a full-time Fox News TV host in 2017.
Hegseth’s reported booting from both Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America raises further questions about his suitability to take the helm as Defense secretary, a position where he would oversee the country’s largest federal agency that employs more than 2.8 million people.
The publication cited a previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s time as the president of Concerned Veterans for America. That seven-page report, which chronicled his 2013 to 2016 tenure, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity and sometimes needing to be carried out of the organization’s events.
The report had been created by multiple former C.V.A. employees and sent to the organization’s senior management in February 2015.
Among the most damning allegations, Hegseth was so intoxicated he had to be physically stopped from joining dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team in November 2014.
Two people who told The New Yorker they had contributed to the........