Police report details allegations that Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth raped a woman in Monterey in 2017.

According to his bio, Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth—an “author, speaker, fighter”—is a “husband, father, patriot and a Christian.” He is also a host on Fox and an Army veteran. He is now gaining national attention for his possible appointment to President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet.

In his role as an author/speaker/fighter, Hegseth appeared as a keynote speaker at a California Federation of Republican Women conference in Monterey in October 2017 at the Hyatt. And while he was there, a woman identified by police as Jane Doe claims Hegseth raped her in his hotel room. 

The allegations have dogged Hegseth since last week as they have been widely reported in national media outlets, along with reports that Hegseth and Jane Doe reached a settlement and nondisclosure agreement. 

But the details of the allegations have not yet been reported given the confidential nature of police reports in California. The Weekly has obtained a redacted copy of the Monterey Police Department's report on the alleged crime via a California Public Records Act request, after City Attorney Christine Davi reviewed exemptions to the CPRA and determined that because a copy had already been released to Hegseth in 2021, it was no longer exempt from public disclosure. (You can view the report below.)

The report offers more details about what might have happened, although some details are missing because Jane Doe said she did not remember everything that night, after drinking alcohol; she also suspected that maybe she was drugged, as she later told an ER nurse. 

Jane Doe was staying with her husband at the Hyatt for her work, and she expressed misgivings about Hegseth. She told police she was introduced to Hegseth in the evening, after the formal event concluded and an afterparty was beginning. She “commented on how she did not appreciate how he treated women,” according to the police report, noting that she observed him rubbing women’s legs during the event. 

Following the afterparty, a group continued drinking and socializing in the former Knuckles sports bar adjacent to the Hyatt lobby. Various witnesses describe different levels of intoxication, with conflicting accounts of how intoxicated either party was.

The two eventually argued outside near the Hyatt pool, in which Jane Doe said Hegseth responded “that he was a nice guy,” according to the police report. Video surveillance footage showed the two walking arm in arm, seemingly pleasantly, at about 1:15am.

Around 1:30am, two separate guests near the pool called the front desk to complain about a disturbance near the pool; a hotel employee found Jane Doe and Hegseth, and told police that Hegseth started to curse, and said “that he had freedom of speech. Jane Doe intervened and told [the hotel staff member] that they were Republicans and apologized for Hegseth’s actions.”

Hegseth told police he did not remember being chastised by the pool but after that, some of his account aligns with Jane Doe’s. He told police that they returned together to his hotel room, but in his telling, Jane Doe led the way. 

He told police they had sex, which he described as consensual. Both Hegseth and Jane Doe recalled that he wore nothing but dog tags during the encounter. 

Jane Doe then left Hegseth’s room and returned to her own, where her husband was asleep. She told police she had no memory of how she got back to her room early Sunday morning—and that “the incident with Hegseth did not dawn on Jane Doe, until she was home, on Monday.” 

Three days later, Jane Doe went to Kaiser Permanente for a sexual assault exam. An ER nurse there called the Monterey Police Department, identifying herself as a mandated reporter and told them a possible crime had occurred, spurring the investigation. Jane Doe told the nurse that she believed a sexual assault had occurred, but she wasn't sure if there had been penetration. 

No charges were ever filed. 

"This police report confirms what I have said all along that the incident was fully investigated and police found the allegations to be false," Hegseth's attorney Timothy Parlatore writes by email.

The report does not in fact reveal a determination by police of whether they do or do not believe the allegations to be true, but simply documents the evidence gathered, including an interview with Hegseth. Lacking proof beyond a reasonable doubt, prosecutors may decline to file a case. In this case, the Monterey County District Attorney on Jan. 18, 2018, declined to file. "No charges were supported by proof beyond a reasonable doubt," District Attorney Jeannine Pacioni said in a statement.

Lauren DaSilva, executive director of the Monterey County Rape Crisis Center, says it is not atypical for no criminal charges to be filed in such a case—proof beyond a reasonable doubt is the threshold for prosecutors. That does not mean the case should not be taken seriously, she says.

"In general, sexual assault reporting is the lowest reporting of all violent crimes, and Monterey County is no different," DaSilva says. "The vast majority of sexual assault cases do not have criminal charges filed."

While she declines to speak about the specifics of this case, DaSilva says in general, "People who commit sexual assault can only say two things in their defense: That it was consensual or the other person was lying."

She adds that understanding what happened afterward can be complicated for a survivor, especially is a perpetrator offers a clear alternative version: "If theres a lapse in memory, they have to do so much sense-making," DaSilva says. "That [offender] has a lot of power determining what the narrative is. That is a very common experience afterwards."

Jane Doe's husband told police that in the days after they returned home from the conference in Monterey, his wife experienced low energy and would cry out of the blue. She told police she was suffering from nightmares.

Hegseth and his wife Jenny live in Tennesse and have seven children, "all of which they pray grow up to love God and country," according to his website.