GOP senator claims woman in Pete Hegseth sex assault allegation 'was the aggressor' [View all]
Source: The Independent
Sunday 24 November 2024 19:33 GMT
Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin claims Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary was “falsely accused” of sexual assault, defending his claim days earlier that Pete Hegseth had just been “flirting” with his accuser.
A recently released police report from the 2017 incident revealed that the woman, who has not been identified, told police that Hegseth blocked the door to stop her from leaving his hotel room and took her phone away before sexually assaulting her. Hegseth has maintained that the encounter was consensual.
Earlier this week, the Oklahoma senator told reporters in the Capitol that he had read the police report: “If you read it, you can clearly see that it was two people flirting with each other.” On CNN Sunday, Mullin defended his previous claim and said that be believed Hegseth’s insistence that the encounter was consensual “was accurate,” he said.
“There was no case here. He was falsely accused,” he added. “She was being the aggressor. Pete wasn’t even flirting with her. He was flirting with a different girl, and [the Jane Doe] was trying to flirt with Pete.” In the police report, another woman told authorities that Hegseth had invited her back to his hotel room, but she “politely declined.”
Read more: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/pete-hegseth-sexual-assault-accuser-b2652854.html
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