jane mayer says i spoke at length with two people who identified themselves. hegseth, i have seen him drunk so many times, i have seen him drive away and not a few times, but multiple times. to have him at the pentagon would be scary. when those of us who worked at concerned veterans for america heard he was being considered for secretary of defense, it wasn't know, it was hell know. at one such event in virginia beach on memorial day weekend in 2014, hegseth was totally sloshed and needed to be carried to his room because he was so intoxicated. the following month during an event in cleveland, hegseth, who had gone with his team to a bar around the corner from the hotel, was described as completely drunk in a public place. according to the report, several high profile people who attended the organization's event were very disappointed to see this kind of public behavior , though the report does not identify them. nevertheless, in october 2014, the group instituted a no alcohol policy at its events. the following month, however, hegseth and another manager lif

joining us now is jane mayer, chief washington correspondent at the new yorker magazine. ms.king time to be here tonight. >> so glad to be with you. >> did i get any of that the wrong way around or is there anything else from your reporting you want to highlight for our audience to understand in terms of what you learned about mr. hegseth? >> well, thanks so much. you did a great summary and the one thing i would say that is also clear from this report is that we gave a spokesman a lawyer for pete hegseth two days basically to respond and they have not denied a single thing in this report. they just said no comment after being given sort of very careful questions. the other thing i'd like to say is just it's been almost a day since this story came out and my phone has been ringing off the hook. i have been hearing from many more people who worked with pete hegseth who have come out of the woodwork to say they, too, have stories along the same lines, stories of just drinking himself into sort of oblivion, all of which i think is -- you know, i've got nothing against people hav

jane mayer is now reporting well over a decade of reports of pete hegseth in the workplace having very serious drinking issues separate and aside from the rape allegation he denies but having to pay off a woman who made that allegation separate and apart from the adultery stuff and all the rest of it, the decade plus reports of workplace drunkenness, that is the sort of thing that there's probably some jobs for which that's not a disqualifying thing, but secretary of defense is not one and that was proven by john tower in 1989 and i think with mr. hegseth it may be proven again here. >> yeah. because unlike hegseth, john tower was on paper fully qualified to be secretary of defense except for the drinking. that was the problem, the entire problem. >> yeah. with hegseth the new thing that's added with the reporting today is in addition to the sexual misconduct stuff, in addition to the drinking stuff, i mean she also describes this veterans organization that he ran that he was put in charge of and by 2007 within a year, 2008, the group was effectively bankrupt under hegseth's leadership

. >> what jane mayer is now reporting is well over a decade of reports of pete hegseth in the workplace having very serious drinking issues separate and aside from the allegation . the decade plus reports of workplace drunkenness . that is the sort of thing, there are probably jobs for which it is not disqualifying but secretary of defense is not one. that was proven by john tower in 1989 i think with mr. hegseth it may be proven again. >> john tower was fully qualified on paper to be secretary of defense except for the drinking. that was the problem. the entire problem. >> with hegseth, the thing that is added, in addition to the sexual misconduct and the drinking, she also describes the veterans organization that he was put in charge of by 2007, within a year, they were effectively bankrupt to the point where had to be taken over and incorporated into a different organization. to do that when you are an organization between 5 to 10 employees and take that as you are application to become a leader of an organization with 3 million employees, it doesn't extrapolate well. >> and there is

the author, jane mayer, joins us with details and who is kash patel details about trump's new nominee to run the fbi. good evening. tonight, even democratic allies are publicly criticizing president biden's pardoning pardon of his son hunter. one senator today called it wrong. another unwise. a third said it erodes americans faith in the justice system is fair and equal for all. congressman jason crow told the new york times the pardon makes it hard for the party in the future to quote, talk about upholding democracy. and both democratic senators from virginia had this to say to reporters on capitol hill i'm disappointed in terms of the signal. >> it sends to faith in our american system. um and i'll leave it at that. >> are you disappointed by the decision? >> yes, i'm disappointed by the decision. he didn't need to tell the american public. i will not do this. and he did. and when you made a promise, you got to keep it. >> president biden issued the pardon sunday night. accompanying it was a brief statement that repeatedly claimed the justice process was politicized. quote i have wa

"the new yorker"'s jane mayer investigated hegseth's time leading two nonprofits for military veteransncovered allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety and personal misconduct. she joins us now. jane, it's good to see you. thanks for being with us. jane mayer, "the new yorker": thanks for having me. amna: so, you reviewed documents. you also spoke with hegseth's former colleagues at these groups that he ran. what kind of picture did they paint of hegseth as a leader? jane: it really was a picture that was, i would say, increasingly alarming in some ways. it was a picture of a leader who was pushed out of his leadership positions in two groups that were for veterans because there were so many concerns about his financial mismanagement and his personal conduct. so -- and these were relatively small groups with relatively small budgets. and the first group had only 10 people working at it, veterans for freedom. and it raised a lot of questions about how he would manage the largest department in the federal government, the most lethal and largest military in the world. am

of the new yorker, jane mayer wrote anonymously sourced article taken down brett kavanaugh are trying to and there are a lot of republican senators hearing echoes of that here. elizabeth warren also has been really sharp in her criticism and on a lot of these matters if she's sharp on it, a lot of republicans will polarize on the other way. pete hegseth is fighting for the nomination he's hearing taking all questions. i think he's getting some pretty tough questions from some republicans. that's how this process works. and i think if he continues to do that continues to be open and has a good hearing, he's in good shape. >> annie, what do you make of joni ernst's role here? >> i mean, i think it's significant. she's you know, one of the senators who would potentially be a part of a block, who could block him if that's what ends up happening. so any sort of hint as to how she's where she's going or more importantly, whether others are joining in and echoing her concerns because that's how it would work. you're not going to necessarily hear somebody come out and say no. but if you start

here's what jane mayer told my colleague, rachel maddow. >> it's been almost a day since the story came out and my phone has been ringing off the hook. i have been hearing from many more people who worked with pete hegseth who have come out of the woodwork to say they, too, have stories along the sam lines. >> the phone has been ringing off the hook. as rachel likes to say, watch this space. and if at this point you're sensing a theme among trump's cabinet picks, it's not you. it's them. "the new york times" analyzed more than 60 of trump's cabinet picks and potential senior members of the trump administration, and, quote, a number of patterns emerge. some are benign, albeit ironic being his constant griping about elites, but other uniting factors were unprecedented. many of the nominees have denied or questioned the results of the 2020 presidential election. some lack the traditional qualifications shared by their predecessor. it appears that the most important qualifier in trump's mind has been fealty to him, which many of his picks have demonstrated in various ways over the past few

this week the new yorker's jane mayer published on shell reporting with new allegations against hegseth. that reporting alleges that during hegseth's time as the head of a conservative veterans group, he was repeatedly anticipated while acting in his official capacity, so much so that he needed to be carried out of the organization's events. it includes allegations that hegseth once took his staff to a strip club where he was so drunk he tried to get on the stage and dance with the strippers. his own staff reportedly had to intervene to keep hegseth from getting thrown out. of a strip club. it includes allegations that hegseth treated the organization funds like they were a personal expense account for partying, drinking, and hooking up with women on the road. there are allegations that on another work trip, hegseth at a bar, drunkenly chanted kill all muslims, kill all muslims. in response to the new yorker story, hegseth's lawyer said we are not going to comment on outlandish claims laundered through the new yorker, and then went on to a technical ability of award-winning investigativ

and then went onto attack the credibility of award winning investigative journalist jane mayer. and now, tonight, literally just a few hours ago, nbc news released new reporting alleging the concerns about hegseth's drinking continued through his career as a host on the fox news channel. nbc spoke with ten current and former fox news employees who described hegseth's drinking. two people said on more than a dozen occasions during hegseth's time as a cohost of fox and friends weekend, they smelled alcohol on him before he went on air. one of the sources said they smelled alcohol on him as recently as last month. one former fox employee told nbc everyone would be talking about it behind the scenes before he went on air. he should not be secretary of defense, another former fox employee said. his drinking should be disqualifying. now in a normal world, the allegations against pete hegseth would doom his nomination the way similar allegations doomed john tower's nomination 35 years ago but the trump era has made it an open question whether or not republican senators will exhibit any

. >> jane mayer and jeff, both doing great reporting that i recommend you check out. thank you both. >>> still ahead, the list of enemies in the new alarms over the loyalist trump wants to install at the fbi, next. he fb >>> one of the things we've been trying to do is distinguish between what you may call normal nominations from the trump administration and in the choices you might expect from any republican president. senator marco rubio for secretary of state, okay. the four alarm fire picks like matt gaetz for attorney general who withdrew his nomination when it looked like he would not get the votes. a new one worse than matt gaetz, it's the worst one yet. over the weekend, trump announced he wants kash patel to lead the fbi. a guy who has no place running the top law enforcement agency in the u.s. he worked as a federal prosecutors and a public defender in florida for a number of years. he became a congressional staffer to right-wing congressman devin nunes and join the trump administration in 2019. in addition to having zero experience with this work he has ann

your reaction to the report your colleague jane mayer about pig -- i keep saying that. pete hegseth. what does this say about how donald trump is picking people? it keeps getting worse for this guy. >> yeah, stephanie. if you haven't read the piece by jane in the new yorker, i highly recommend it. it's so voluminous. it's not just a report from a single disgruntled employee as that statement that you quoted. there is an enormous amount of information in there spanning multiple jobs that pete hegseth had. the allegations are disturbing. they remind me in some ways of the conduct that saying john towers nomination to be secretary of defense back in the first george hw bush presidency. it goes beyond not only the allegations of potential alcohol abuse in the workplace, but real questions about his ability to manage even two relatively small veterans organizations, to step into the pentagon job, the largest, most powerful military bureaucracy in the world. this does not suggest he has the qualifications to do so and more importantly, it raises the questions, what is going o

i read extensively from, and there's more, from a jane mayer publicly reported piece on pete hegseth. you are used to dealing with background checks. the information is not publicly available, a lot of it, what do you do if your the armed services committee with a report like that? >> well, that's generally the case that most background check processes are totally confidential and handled with discretion and very professionally. we had a great relationship doing this with hundreds of nominations. occasionally, there is public information out there on nominees. if you are the committee, the senators and staff on the committee, you have to take those allegations seriously as part of your review along with whatever is in the fbi file. it needs to be followed up. these are the allegations that, if true, and substantiated, are of a kind that would doom an nomination in the ordinary course. >> one of the things that struck me is there has been expression of concerns about some nominees and as i noted, not everything is a five alarm fire. there are some who are but i thought democrats, a num

according to jane mayer who wrote the piece, a trail of documents corroborated by the accounts of formerthat hegseth was forced to step down by both of the two non-profit advocacy groups he ran, veterans for freedom and concerned veterans for america in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual improp impropriety and sexual misconduct. as a triumph of neoconservatism and helped promote the troop surge in afghanistan was flagged for public intoxication on the job which led to multiple incidents. the detailed seven-page report which was compiled by multiple former 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 dancers on the stage of a louisiana strip club where he had brought his team. according to the same report, under his leadership, the koch brothers-backed concerned veterans for america, had become a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety including an allegation made by a female employee that another staffer on hegseth's team

. >> jane mayer, journalist, female as we are surrounded by entitled whiteman right now. pete. i just love she is doing the vetting. i really wanted to make it all female journalists who won't put up with this crap anymore. these people are unfit for service and don't treat women like -- >> i do want to point out that she didn't make fun of pete or call them out or insult him and she did the homework and the reporting on this man and let the american people know that this is the person who donald trump wants to run the department of the defense and are you okay with that. >> full of facts. and just a great journalism. >> yours? >> a little counterintuitive an organization that had corruption in the past and allegations but miami pd is the nypd and their offices across the city right now trying to find the person who did this and again -- the unitedhealthcare ceo? >> yes. most the time they generally keep the city safe and i think they find this humiliating and infuriating and i think they will get them in the end but i think my brother and brother-in- law were police offi

we have also read in jane mayer's reporting in the new yorker he was forced to step down by two nonprofity groups in the face of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct allegations. his lawyer told the new yorker that these allegations were, quote, outlandish claims laundered through the new yorker by a petty and jealous former associate. joining me is courtney kube, and nancy perish, founder and ceo of protect our defenders, an organization dedicated to ending sexual violence in the military. courtney, tell me first about what was going on at fox and what was the extent of the concern of these coworkers who spoke to nbc news about him, and what is the state of his nomination among republicans, senate republicans? >> so this was ten current and former fox news employees. some of whom worked directly with him on the show fox and friends, the popular saturday morning or weekend show that he's been a host of. and these people all gave us a very similar picture of what they saw during their years working there over the course of various times, from the time pete h

justin talk about the public vetting he did, but the fbi is going to go deeper even than our friend jane mayer at the new yorker could go, even though she's an exceptional reporter. do you foresee that being an issue with any republicans in the senate? i'm sure democrats are going to raise it. if there's no fbi vetting of these including hegseth, can you imagine the republicans are all going to say okay to that? >> i mean, you have to think of levels of credibility. maybe the media is easy to dismiss. republicans can easily get away with saying that's just the left-wing media. what institution would they trust? would they trust a report from the fbi? a lot of the people criticizing pete hegseth were republicans. a lot of people from the veterans organizations. i think if there's any kind of legitimate vetting and more and more details come out, they'll be really hard to dismiss. even the defense we just heard was a defense about imagery. he's been shot at. like senator rick scott said, he's going to scare the crap out of our enemies. it's all macho language which obscures the details of what w

>> these are serious allegations that we've seen both in the jane mayer piece and also in lengthy police reports around the sexual misconduct allegations, charges were never filed, hegseth lawyer said he paid a settlement to the lawyer because he was worried about his career but these are serious questions for any a many to be faced with during and in the beginning stages of the nominating process. i do think though, that senators, at least on the sexual misconduct piece on this, when we caught them in the hallways, they've been willing, if not eager to explain those away, as just hearsay, and it seems at least, when you hear people like senator lammas, who you heard earlier talking about wild child, these are flimsy ways to brush off serious allegations -- >> can i interrupt you for a second? josh hawley was just on camera and he made a pretty lengthy answer to the question essentially that i was asking you, but i want to read the second half of it. he said i would say to some of my republican colleagues that are worried and a number are expressing public concerns, i would say before th

. >> we are going to stay on this, jane mayer, jeff charlotte, both doing great reporting that i recommendu, both. >> thanks so much. >>> still ahead, the list of enemies and the new alarms over the loyalist trump wants to install at the fbi. that is next. there's news, and there's good news. like thousands of patients receiving free life changing surgeries, from volunteer doctors and nurses on hospital ships. all made possible by donations. we love good news. with dexcom g7, managing your diabetes just got easier. so, what's your glucose number right now? good thing you don't need to fingerstick. how's all that food affect your glucose? oh, the answers on your phone. what if you're heading low at night? [phone beeps] wow, it can alert you?! and you can even track your goals. manage your diabetes with confidence with dexcom g7. the most accurate cgm. ♪♪ learn more at dexcom.com how easy is it to play the lottery with jackpocket? step one grab your phone. step two download jackpocket and start ordering tickets for your favorite state lottery game. step three let the good times roll. jackpoc

when jane mayer is on the case, she's on the case. i don't think she's through with this, but it feels like from your reporting and the reporting on this network that his nomination i'm sure is in serious jeopardy, but watch out because the next one up is not going to be much better, i promise you. there's always there, when it comes to alcoholism, when it comes to any kind of sexual issue. you don't do it once. >> what does it tell you about the world we're living in, your party went through an election. people recognize you through all your election commentary, but whatever the outcome was, republicans won, there was a lot of talk about how, oh, maybe the facts don't matter. maybe reporting doesn't matter. maybe they don't want it to matter. now with gaetz, hegseth, and patel who we can get to, it would seem not only do some of the facts matter, who are these people, what are their records, what are they credibly accused of, but even republican senators have to respond to what's out there in the factual world. what do you think of t

. >> i mean, the reporting by jane mayer van, you know, a whistleblower report that claims when hegseth was president of concerned veterans for america, he was, quote, repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization's events. um, as gretchen was saying, there are other accusations of sexual impropriety, misconduct of and also treatment of women at these organizations. you know, being drunk in a bar chanting about killing muslims the the list is a long one. >> yeah. i just don't get it. i mean, the republican party is supposedly a party that wants america to be strong, wants america to be great, wants to put america first. i don't think any of the people who voted for donald trump, who run small businesses, would hire this guy to be a floor room manager. he's just not coming across as the type of person that you would want in any position of authority and and we'll just have to see i do think that maybe we're in an age where a personal valor doesn't matter in the military anymore, but i don't think we're there yet

and again this was jane mayer writing in the new yorker and that event in cleveland, it says that hegsethth three young female staff members and was so inebriated by 1 a.m. that a staffer who had driven him to his hotel in a van full of other drunken staffers asked for assistance to get hegseth to his room because, quote, pete was completely passed out in the middle seat slumped over a young female staff member. the report says it took two male staff members to get hegseth into the hotel. there was also a situation where when he was married, he goes to a louisiana strip club when there, i think this was related to a senate race runoff in 2014. um, and then a report says that hegseth and other members of the management team sexually pursued the organization's female staffers, whom they divided into two groups, the party girls and the not party girls. in late 2015, a different former employee described hegseth being at a bar in the early morning hours of may 29th, 2015, while on an official tour through ohio, drunkenly chanting kill all muslims, kill all muslims! cnn obviously is not indepe

i know i read jane mayer's uh, article, uh and so if i was in the senate, let's say i was a republican senator and obviously want to help the president. let's let's go on the side of that. they want the president to have his picks um, they'd have to be concerned and they would be concerned for the president. so i think one of the things they should be doing is calling the president and saying, hey, this is the tip of the iceberg. if this is what a journalist is finding the fbi has to dig deeper because there's probably more to this story. and we're here actually to protect you. president trump. um, because if this unfolds inside the pentagon, this will be a disaster for the country, and it will reflect very badly on the administration. and so i think that's i think that's where the republican senators have to go on this case. >> interesting so you obviously i'm sure people remember had a whirlwind tenure inside the trump administration. you understand, you know, what it takes to get a job with donald trump and also what happens if he turns on you? what do you think the president, knowi

now, on top of all of that, the reporter uncovered all of this jane mayer. she said that pete hegseth struggled with the basics of just good management in both of these organizations. >> they're nonprofits that pete hegseth was the leader of, and both of them eventually took control away from him they they pushed him out. they felt that, um, he couldn't manage this organization. and it's an organization of just between 5 and 10 people with a budget of between 5 and $10 million. so, i mean, what she wondered was, how on earth is he going to be able to manage the pentagon with an organization that has a budget of something like between you know, $750 billion? >> scott taylor i mean, you're a vet. what do you make of all of this? >> honestly, like, you would think that journalists would learn that you can't write these hit pieces. long hit piece. i read her whole hit piece on pete and no, nobody is on the record uh, no veterans on the record that are corroborating this stuff. it's all unnamed sources again. okay, let me finish, please. because, well, because i'

host: the jane mayer piece that came out on december 1 in the new yorker got a lot of attention.ete hegseth's secret history. trump's nominee to run the pentagon was forced out of previous leadership positions for financial mismanagement, sexist behavior and being repeatedly intoxicated. this is andy in california, independent. caller: good morning. just another loyalist to be appointed. it seems to me we -- it is no surprise. we have lowered the bar to elect a president. we have lowered the bar again. it is just amazing. just because you have a tattoo on your arm we the people and a cross, that doesn't qualify you either. his own mother called him a rat. i think we need to keep the bar higher. it is unfortunate we have a president -- morality does matter. we lowered the bar for president. let's not keep lowering the bar and appointing all of his loyalists. we need to make america great again. host: is there any of donald trump's picks for his cabinet you like? caller: um, i question a lot of them because of the loyalty factor. we need to have loyalty to the constitution. that is

this reporting by jane mayer in the new yorker is devastating.who -- you know, jane is as good an investigative journalist as there is on the planet, and her -- you know, mu references, if you read that whole piece, you just get the impression of this is someone, you were just talking about jerry garcia, grace slick, maybe janice joplin, i'm not sure how many you mentioned there, i'm thinking he's like jim morrison, often appears on stage too drunk to stand up but has a very nice head of hair. beyond that, i'm not sure that a wild child -- the wild child describes anything other than someone who is clearly not on the basis of what is known now or the basis of what that reporting shows, not someone who's going to command the respect of the american military. i think a lot of these republican senators reading those reports are going to have the questions that are already surfacing and the kind of pushback that we might be heading down a path that leads to the same destination as we ended up with matt gaetz. >> yeah. i think a lot of american servic