Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to head the Pentagon, is scheduled to appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday to answer questions on a range of issues, including a sexual assault allegation, his lack of management experience and his comments against women serving in combat.
Mr. Hegseth, a former Fox News host, has a slew of commentary, opinions and allegations to explain, as Democratic lawmakers get their chance to question him about his qualifications to lead the Defense Department, an $849 billion enterprise with nearly three million employees.
Eyes will also be on Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, who is an Army Reserve and National Guard veteran and a sexual assault survivor. Ms. Ernst received a barrage of criticism from Trump supporters last month after she said that Mr. Hegseth needed to address issues including the role of women in the military and sexual assault prevention. Her support is viewed as critical to Mr. Hegseth’s confirmation chances.
Whether Mr. Hegseth has the votes to be confirmed remains an open question. After the committee hearing, the full Senate must vote on the confirmation. If all Democrats oppose him, he can afford to lose the support of just three Republican senators.
A former Army major who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and a member of the National Guard until 2021, Mr. Hegseth will presumably need a congressional waiver that is required for any Pentagon chief who has been retired from active-duty military service less than seven years.
The waivers became big issues during the confirmation hearings for the current defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, and for Jim Mattis, who served as defense secretary during the first Trump administration.
But it has rarely been mentioned ahead of Mr. Hegseth’s hearing because there have been so many other issues to discuss.
The top members of the Senate Armed Services Committee were briefed late Friday on the findings from the F.B.I.’s background check of Mr. Hegseth. Other members of the committee expressed concern that they might not have relevant information for Mr. Hegseth’s confirmation hearing.
“I need to see his F.B.I. background check. We need to see his financial disclosures,” said Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois. “And we need to know about any other potential lawsuits he might be facing, any other allegations he might be facing.”
Democrats and Mr. Hegseth’s backers have both complained that the other side has been unresponsive to attempts to arrange meetings with Mr. Hegseth.
Senator Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the committee, is the one Democrat who as of last week had met with Mr. Hegseth. Mr. Reed said in a statement after the two talked on Wednesday that the meeting “raised more questions than answers.”
In addition to the sexual assault allegation against Mr. Hegseth, accusations have also emerged detailing episodes of public drunkenness, workplace sexual improprieties and mismanagement of the veterans nonprofits he ran. Mr. Hegseth has said the sexual assault allegation arose from a consensual encounter. He also told reporters last month that he was “a different man than I was years ago.”
The allegations against Mr. Hegseth have failed to sway most Republican senators, many of whom have argued that senators should discount such claims unless the accusers are willing to come forward publicly.
Mr. Hegseth, who has been married three times, has also acknowledged having extramarital affairs. The New York Times reported last month that his mother, Penelope Hegseth, wrote him an email in 2018 saying he had routinely mistreated women for years and displayed a lack of character.
Mrs. Hegseth later said that she had written the email “in anger, with emotion,” at a time when he and his wife were going through a difficult divorce, and that she apologized for what she had written.
Extramarital affairs and public intoxication can leave officers and troops in the military subject to disciplinary action. Some senior military leaders have questioned privately whether Mr. Hegseth’s confirmation could send conflicting messages to troops about discipline.
Mr. Hegseth’s commentary and writings on a number of issues are also likely to provide fodder for the hearing. In his book “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,” Mr. Hegseth complained about “woke” generals who he said had made the military “effeminate” by pushing diversity policies.
He said that Gen. Charles Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a position that usually works closely with the defense secretary, should be fired for being too “woke.” General Brown is African American.
“America’s white sons and daughters are walking away” from the military, he wrote, “and who can blame them.”
Before he was nominated by Mr. Trump to be defense secretary, Mr. Hegseth said that he did not believe that women should be in combat. “I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles,” he said in a podcast hosted by Shawn Ryan on Nov. 7. Having women in combat, he said, “hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.”
A month later, he offered some clarification. Asked about the issue on the podcast “The Megyn Kelly Show” in early December, Mr. Hegseth said that “if we have the right standard and women meet that standard, roger — let’s go.” But, he added: “If they can’t, and that’s a product of physical differences because the standard is high, then that’s just the reality.”
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