The Iowa senator is known for her work to curb sexual assaults in the military. How will she reconcile that with allegations against Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary pick?
A good decade ago I spent a few days riding around Iowa in Joni Ernst’s RV. It was her first run for the U.S. Senate, and at one campaign stop another journalist pulled me aside to say he had heard a rumor that something had happened to Ernst many years ago, and he wondered if it had been a sexual assault.
Hegseth’s nomination has been imperiled by reports that he was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a California hotel in 2017. With Republicans’ slim Senate majority, Hegseth’s appointment could be torpedoed if he loses only a few votes, and Ernst’s initial reaction to his naming was noncommittal.
Maybe Ernst believes that. But her statement is tricky. In casting aspersions at “anonymous sources,” it sounds as if she’s demanding that Hegseth’s alleged victim produce herself in a Senate hearing room to testify publicly about her alleged assault - something the woman has not been able to do because Hegseth paid her an undisclosed financial settlement that prohibited her from speaking publicly about the matter.
The alleged 2017 assault was reported to the police, and the report filed has become available to the public. What does Ernst make of this woman’s account: that the woman, an organizer with a Republican women’s group, had originally tried to escort Hegseth away from the hotel bar because she thought he was pestering another woman there.
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