Blindsided Trump team now 'weighing the future' of major Cabinet nomination: report

Donald Trump's presidential transition team was blindsided by reports that Fox News host Pete Hegseth had been accused of sexual misconduct — and is now reportedly considering their options over his nomination to head the Pentagon.

Trump nominated Hegseth for secretary of defense this week, but The Washington Post reported that the team is now "weighing the future" of the nomination.

"The transition team was caught by surprise by the detailed allegations and now fears more negative revelations about Hegseth," the Post wrote, citing a person familiar with the complaint.

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“There’s a lot of frustration around this,” the person said. “He hadn’t been properly vetted.”

The Trump team decided to outsource all vetting of the candidates to a private company rather than use the FBI. According to CNN, Trump's team believes FBI background checks take too long.

Hegseth's lawyer, Tim Parlatore, said that the allegations of assault never resulted in any criminal charges. The evidence provided in the report was a bruise on the inner thigh of the accuser, police reports said.

The incident reportedly happened when Hegseth attended a California Federation of Republican Women conference. One incident took place between midnight on Oct. 7, 2017, and 7 a.m. at the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel and Spa. The report was filed on Oct. 12.

Parlatore promised, “There’s no other skeletons to come out.”

He added, “There’s no reason to withdraw that I’m aware of.”

This comes after a Friday afternoon report that Hegseth was reported as a possible "insider threat" to the Army National Guard.

The complaint came from a fellow Guard member who was the unit’s "security manager and on an anti-terrorism team at the time," according to The Associated Press.

Hegseth has been married three times. His first divorce stemmed from an “irretrievable breakdown” of the marriage and Hegseth’s “infidelity,” the Post noted, according to a divorce filing. During his second marriage, Hegseth fathered a child with another woman, a then-producer at the network. A month after the child was born the second wife filed for divorce.

Read the full report here.