joining me now is the author of that barnburner of a story, jane mayer.orrespondent for the new yorker. jane, it's great to see you. i read your piece again today. it is the best prep for preparing to cover and watch these hearings. and i wanted to just ask you about some of this reporting, because you've gone more in depth, it seems, than perhaps the fbi. so one of the leaders of the senate armed services committee received an fbi background check on hegseth late friday. but as recently as that afternoon, former key leaders of the two veterans organizations you talk about in your piece that hegseth ran said they had not been contacted by the fbi for the checks. i mean, you have obviously covered him extensively, but you've covered confirmation hearings extensively and national security officials extensively. does that surprise you? and what could they have learned if they'd contacted them? >> well, thanks so much. >> yes, i can confirm what your reporting is, too, which is that the fbi, it appears in its background check, skipped most of the key sources

this is his history. >> jane mayer, thank you so much for joining us tonight with that report. and coming up, as pete hegseth waits to see if he has the votes to become secretary of defense, senator ric all nominees tend to do before their c to. >> step into big shoes. >> and still walk. >> on. >> your own path. >> with ambition. >> like that, you. need someone. >> who. >> elevates advice. >> to a craft. >> at ubs, we match your vision with. >> insight and expertise to >> insight and expertise to shape a unique. outcome for you. my moderate to severe crohn's symptoms kept me out of the picture. now i have skyrizi. ♪ i've got places to go and i'm feeling free. ♪ ♪ control of my crohn's means everything to me. ♪ ♪ control is everything to me.♪ and now i'm back in the picture. feel significant symptom relief at 4 weeks with skyrizi, including less abdominal pain and fewer bowel movements. skyrizi helped visibly improve damage of the intestinal lining. and with skyrizi, many were in remission at 12 weeks, at 1 year, and even at 3 years. don't use if allergic. serious allergic react

. >> as the new yorker's jane mayer reports this week, the amount of private money being spent on the effort to confirm hegseth is staggering. for a cabinet nominee, the sum is rivaled only by the cash that has been spent to pressure senators into confirming supreme court justices. one group, american leadership pac, reportedly plans to spend $1 million to muscle wavering republican senators in five states into approving hegseth, according to the most recent fec records. the group barely exists other than as a political piggy bank for four enormously wealthy right wing mega-donors. those four mega-donors are timothy dunn, a texas oil magnate. bill koch, a member of the right wing mega rich koch family. >> richard uihlein, the wisconsin billionaire who happens to be a major funder of election conspiracy groups. and thomas klingenstein, the head of the ultra conservative claremont institute, which he founded. >> with trump's election denying coconspirator john eastman. and all of that money appears to have been well spent, it has paid off. at today's hearing, senator ernst began her que

colleagues to review an article that appeared in "the new yorker", "pete hegseth's secret history" by jane mayer, who talks about some of these instances, not anonymous smears he says so many of them were, but in sourced and substantiated account of the kinds of misconduct that were detailed in a whistleblower report and other documents. again, not an anonymous smear. specific and explicit facts that were claimed. we don't have eye witness proof in sworn testimony before the armed services committee, but this report is powerful in what it shows. i hope that my colleagues, in the hours that we have left before we will vote again on mr. hegseth's nomination, will reconsider perhaps their vote earlier today, that they will recognize they will be responsible if things go wrong, and we hope to god always that nothing goes wrong, especially all of us who have family members who have served, mine in the united states marine corps, my oldest son is a combat veteran, and my second son, michael, is a navy seal. the responsibility of the secretary of defense to order men and women into harm's way is a trul

the woman was treated at a hospital and had a rape kit examination done, though in december, jane mayerrth's work for two veterans groups, writing that hegseth was, quote, forced to step down by both of the groups that he ran in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct. a lawyer for hegseth said the new yorker's reporting was based on claims from a disgruntled former associate just a few days after that report, ten current and former fox employees told nbc news that pete hegseth drank in ways that were concerning. two of them said they smelled alcohol on him before he went on the air. on more than a dozen occasions. did i mention it was a morning show? a spokesperson for the trump transition team said the allegations were, quote, completely unfounded and false. after that reporting, hegseth reportedly told republican senators that he promised he would stop drinking if and when he was confirmed as secretary of defense. and maybe he would do that. maybe he would be able to do that. maybe. maybe that promise alone helped to set

you may have seen there's now new reporting in "the new yorker" from jane mayer, citing three sources says senators, including joni ernst and susan collins, turned down offers to hear privately from hegseth's accuser. i'm just asking, would you want the chance to meet with that accuser privately to be able to see through your due diligence in this advice-and-consent role? >> again, it's unfortunate that we would deal with anonymous allegations and sources. if these people want to come forward and publicly make those claims, they would be much more credible and taken more seriously. but that hasn't happened. and the democrats and the committee repeated these anonymous allegations today. i can't speak to other senators and who they have heard from. amna: senator banks, if i may, to clarify, i'm asking if you would meet privately with this woman who was behind the accusation in 2017. >> sure. but no one has reached out to me to do that. and at this point, we need to get pete hegseth on the job in the role as the secretary of defense to clean up the mess over the last four years. and that

and yet my colleague jane mayer is reporting tonight in the new yorker. there's real questions about what kind of vetting he was really subjected to by the fbi, and whether this was actually the kind of thorough fbi report on him that i think a lot of people have been expecting. so that, i thin, raises real questions tomorrow. is it just going to be a kind of republicans rushing through kind of a hearing, or is there going to be new information that is presented or corroborating information that's presented about some of the many very serious allegations hegseth is facing? >> let's go back to that background check, carol, because nbc news has confirmed that reporting that neither of pete hegseth. s ex-wives were interviewed, nor anyone associated with that sexual misconduct allegation. what's your take on that? one would think those would be some some key people when it comes to a background check. and of course, i do want to make it clear he has denied that allegation. but but i would think that the fbi would have some questions, might have some question

. >> one of the things that comes out in your reporting and in some of jane mayer's reporting here is that, you know, senators genuinely as partizan, they are do take the advice and consent thing seriously, partly because it's their turf and they have big egos and they don't want, you know, they don't like to roll over, like they take it seriously. and i know millions of stories, both on the record and off of democratic senators giving democratic presidents a hard time on nominees. i mean, a really hard time that this process has been a bull rush intended to essentially break any inclination senators might have to exercise that, that judgment. >> yeah. it's also meant to break the functionality of this committee. this is a committee that historically has operated in a bipartisan fashion, where there pretty decent relationships between people. when you talk about joni ernst, you're talking about somebody who just, you know, within the past year, i think, passed legislation alongside elizabeth warren. this is a this is this is a committee where they have taken bipartisanship very seriou

bret stephens was arguing that that hegseth was looking like a very rocky confirmation until the jane mayerh drinking, his the accusations of harassment. all of that stuff made it made it more imperative for republicans to confirm him. >> yesterday, a lot of people thought that collins and murkowski were lost. right. and now we're talking about tillis. there's still questions even about mcconnell. i mean, this this is going to be on a friday night for the entire world to see. and i hope that everybody is making this case, not just to president trump, but to those republicans who can make a difference here and can put our national security over partizanship and over loyalty to donald trump. >> courtney was telling me, courtney, who does our pentagon reporting, says that there's a lot of it's he's a divisive figure within the pentagon as well, that there are people that think he's completely unqualified, don't want him anywhere near it. but there are also men and women in the military that like him, and they like that he has had his boots on the ground, dirt on his boots, as he said, sand on

early december for hegseth was there was reporting in the new yorker that came under the byline of jane mayer, who republicans really turned on in the wake of what she did. all the kavanaugh reporting and, excuse me, that was a moment that seemed to coalesce republicans around hegseth. and this background check was conducted differently. i mean, the fbi reportedly did not speak to the woman who is the subject of the nda. who was, you know, paid, settled with pete hegseth after the allegation of sexual assault. roger wicker, the chairman, came out afterward and said he understood that he wasn't sure she wanted to talk to the committee. and of course, i mean, the experience that christine blasey ford had with kavanaugh had to have been weighing there. >> yeah, i think, you know, look, the way these hearings have been done and the way that the background checks have been done has not been acceptable, i think, to the american people. i think the democrats are doing the best that they can, knowing that they cannot really stop his confirmation and doing the best they can to bring some of this stuff