WASHINGTON — An FBI background check for Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Defense, was transmitted late Friday to the leading members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the report, just days ahead of his Tuesday confirmation hearing.
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the panel’s chairman, and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the ranking member, are the only senators who have the report, the two sources said.
The 25-member committee does not necessarily need to review Hegseth’s background check to proceed with the nomination hearing, but two committee sources familiar with the process said it was “unprecedented” that the report took this long to get to the panel’s top members.
Democrats on the committee that NBC News spoke with have been frustrated by the delay, and suggest the FBI report may not be thorough, particularly for a Cabinet pick that has been entangled in controversy. One person who worked closely with Hegseth in the past and another who was contacted by Congress regarding Hegseth told NBC News they are concerned the FBI has not reached out to them.
A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment.
Since Trump announced his intent to nominate Hegseth, the military veteran and former Fox News host has been mired in a slew of controversies and negative allegations.
“I don’t think that I’m going to be allowed to look at the FBI investigation before the hearing,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., told NBC News on Friday. “I also think it probably is not comprehensive. … An FBI investigation is not the be-all and end-all, but even that we’re not being allowed to look at it.”
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said the FBI background check should address Hegseth’s “significant personal issues” but said “the biggest problem I have is he just doesn’t seem prepared in any way to do this job.”
Kelly, like other Democrats on the Armed Services Committee interviewed by NBC News, said he would prefer to see the report before the hearing, especially after Hegseth’s team told most Democrats that he would only be available to meet after the hearing.
Three Democratic aides told NBC News the response they received from Hegseth’s team was that they’d see them on Jan. 15, the day after the hearing is scheduled.
Hegseth’s team reached out to a few committee Democrats in the days leading up to Christmas and Hanukkah, but at that point hadn’t submitted the necessary paperwork or scheduled a meeting with Reed, the panel’s top Democrat, according to multiple Democratic aides.
Reed met with Hegseth on Wednesday in his office for less than 25 minutes, and said in a statement after that the meeting “did not relieve my concerns about Mr. Hegseth’s lack of qualifications and raised more questions than answers.”
A Trump transition official called the complaints “partisan blustering designed to slow down the confirmation process at a time when it’s incredibly critical that President Trump has his national security team in place on Day One.”
“Mr. Hegseth and his team have been proactively reaching out to all SASC Democrats (and in fact all Senate Democrats) for weeks,” the official said. “We even reached out to several SASC Democrats well before Thanksgiving, and I would note that those offices either didn’t respond or declined to meet with Mr. Hegseth throughout December.”
Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, declined a meeting with Hegseth, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.
“Senator Hirono has not met with any of the President-elect’s nominees. She wants to hear from them publicly, on the record,” said a Hirono spokesperson.
According to an aide to a senator who sits on multiple high-profile committees, Hegseth is the only nominee who has declined an invitation to meet with them. “It’s the art of the jam,” this aide told NBC News.
But the transition official pushed back: “Despite a poor response rate and multiple communications attacking the nominee before these Senators have even met with him, Mr. Hegseth is doing his level best to meet with as many Democrat Senators as he can before and after his hearing.”
Aside from Reed, Democrats on the panel will have to wait until after the hearing, and in some cases, after Trump’s inauguration, to meet with Hegseth, according to multiple Democrats who revealed their plans.
“I can’t think of any other secretary of defense nominee who has not made themselves available to all members on the committee of jurisdiction,” said a longtime Democratic aide on the panel with a high degree of familiarity of the confirmation process, spanning several administrations.
“And we have not had a SecDef nominee where people are concerned about the FBI background check in at least two decades. This is standard stuff,” the aide added. “I would have been shocked to hear someone ask the question, ‘Do we have [Mark] Esper’s background check? Or [Lloyd] Austin? Or Ash Carter?’”
Hegseth’s attorney Tim Parlatore told NBC News that their understanding is that the FBI’s background check concluded earlier this week. He said that Hegseth’s team had not been given anything to review by the FBI and that they didn’t expect to get a copy before the hearing.
There has been intense media scrutiny of why Hegseth was forced to step down from leading two military organizations, Vets for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America. A Dec. 1 story in the New Yorker detailed allegations of Hegseth’s repeated intoxication at work events and other inappropriate behavior, in addition to financial mismanagement. Hegseth has denied these allegations.
But key leaders who had worked at the organizations said that as of this week and as recently as Friday afternoon, the FBI had not contacted them to participate in a Hegseth background check.
In the case of Vets for Freedom, Republican megadonor Paul Singer, one of the top financial backers of the group, had ordered a financial audit, a forensic accounting, at the organization in 2009 after it ran out of money under Hegseth’s leadership, according to a former Vets for Freedom employee. The audit took months, revealed roughly half a million dollars in debt, and copies were given to, among others, Singer and two Vets for Freedom advisers, political adviser Dan Senor and political commentator Margaret Hoover.
After the audit, Singer asked Brian Wise, head of another group aiding Blue and Gold Star families, Military Families United, to take over Vets for Freedom and incorporate it into his group, the former employee said. Hegseth has not responded publicly to the audit.
There was no immediate response to an email sent to Elliott Investment Management, the firm Singer founded and where Senor is a partner. Wise said he had not been contacted by the FBI and declined to answer any questions about Hegseth’s nomination.
Senate Armed Services Democrats have raised concerns about Hegseth’s stewardship of these veterans’ groups. These Democrats have requested internal reports from these two military groups but have not received them, a Senate aide said.
“Your record of gross mismanagement of organizations you previously led raises alarm about your ability to manage a department with a budget of almost $850 billion,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wrote Hegseth in a letter this week, “which accounts for over half of requested discretionary federal spending.”
Still, Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., who had concerns over Hegseth’s past — specifically his drinking — told NBC News on Thursday there are no known “no” votes from Republicans on the committee.
“There are certainly some people that haven’t said yay or nay,” Cramer added. “But I think he’s going to be OK.”
