America At War
Pete Hegseth was forced out of every organization he led before Fox News—amid allegations of sexual assault, chronic drunkenness, and financial ruin. Now he commands the world’s most powerful military
Part I: A Portrait of Impunity
Pete Hegseth’s American success story should terrify us. Man allegedly commits sexual assault, pays $50,000 to make the woman go away, signs the NDA, and continues climbing. Man drinks himself into such raging stupors that his wife hides in closets and develops a secret escape plan involving safe words texted to friends. Man bankrupts two veteran organizations, gets a six-figure severance, signs another NDA, and moves on. Man fails upward until he’s running the Pentagon. And then—here’s where the story gets truly goes off the beam—man starts killing people in international waters based on secret evidence, with no legal authority, and calls it national security.
Welcome to the Pete Hegseth experience, where the pattern is always the same: violate rules, pay for silence, face no consequences, advance to greater power. It’s a masterclass in how impunity breeds more impunity, each transgression preparing for the next, until the scale isn’t $50,000 settlements but 75 dead bodies floating in Caribbean waters and a looming war that could kill tens of thousands.
October 2017, Monterey, California. A Republican women’s conference. A woman goes to the hospital and tells a nurse she believes she was sexually assaulted. Undergoes a forensic rape examination. According to the police report, she tells investigators she remembered saying “no” repeatedly. That Pete Hegseth took her phone and physically blocked her from leaving his hotel room. That she believes something may have been slipped into her drink because she can’t remember most of the night.
A hotel employee tells police Hegseth seemed very drunk and “grew belligerent when confronted.”
Hegseth was never charged. He claimed it was consensual. But he paid the woman $50,000 to settle. His attorney acknowledged the payment was made because Hegseth “feared his career would suffer if her allegations were made public.” Not “because the allegations were false.” Because publicity might damage his career.
At the time? Hegseth was still legally married to his second wife while having recently fathered a child with the woman who would become his third wife.
When the FBI conducted Hegseth’s background check for Secretary of Defense—a position controlling 2.8 million people and an $850 billion budget—they didn’t interview the woman. This isn’t oversight. It’s deliberate negligence.
The drinking deserves its own paragraph. A sworn affidavit from Hegseth’s former sister-in-law, signed under penalty of perjury, describes a man who “regularly became so drunk that he passed out, threw up, and had to be carried out of family events and public settings, sometimes shouting sexually and racially offensive statements.”
This isn’t a college kid at a keg party. This is a grown man, a military veteran being considered for cabinet positions, getting so drunk at family gatherings that relatives have to physically remove him while he screams bigoted obscenities.
Here’s the detail that should have ended everything: Hegseth’s second wife “feared for her personal safety during their marriage” and “often hid in a closet.” She developed an escape plan—the kind domestic violence advocates teach women whose partners might kill them—involving texting a code word to friends when she needed urgent extraction. That plan was executed at least once.
Safety planning isn’t for difficult marriages. It’s for dangerous ones. It’s for situations where trained professionals assess that violence is likely and the victim needs protection.
At Concerned Veterans for America, a whistleblower report documented repeated intoxication at organizational events. He had to be restrained from joining dancers at a Louisiana strip club. He passed out in a party bus and urinated in front of a hotel. He was noticeably drunk at a Christmas party despite a no-drinking policy.
May 2015, Ohio. On a work trip, Hegseth and a colleague closed down a hotel bar and chanted “Kill all Muslims!” multiple times in what a staffer described as “a drunk and violent manner.” An employee later wrote about “despicable behavior” that “embarrassed the entire organization.”
This man now commands Muslim service members and works with Muslim-majority nations.
The organizational failures reveal someone who shouldn’t be trusted with a lemonade stand. At Veterans for Freedom, Hegseth raised $8.7 million in 2008 but spent over $9 million. By January 2009, the organization had less than $1,000 and owed $434,000. Revenue collapsed from $265,000 in 2010 to $22,000 in 2011. At Concerned Veterans for America, deficits exceeded $400,000 twice, with $75,000 in credit card debt when he departed.
When Hegseth left CVA, he received a six-figure severance and signed an NDA. Same pattern: pay money, sign papers, silence concerns, move on without accountability.
Senator Elizabeth Warren enumerated the concerns: mismanagement of two nonprofits, sexual assault accusations, drinking problems, support for war crimes, threats to politicize the military. Senator Jack Reed stated the sworn affidavit would disqualify any servicemember from any military leadership position.
The Senate confirmed him anyway, 51-50, with Vice President Vance breaking the tie.
This validated the lesson Hegseth learned throughout his career: rules are for other people, accountability can be purchased, and if you keep moving forward with enough confidence, institutions will capitulate.
What happened next was inevitable.
Part II: Clearing the Field
The first thing Hegseth did upon taking office was ensure no one could stop him. It’s what every petty autocrat does, what every CEO planning fraud does: eliminate oversight, fire the lawyers, purge anyone who might ask uncomfortable questions.
Since January 2025, Hegseth has systematically dismantled the Pentagon’s senior leadership. He fired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. CQ Brown Jr. and five other top officials. He removed Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first female Navy chief. He announced plans to eliminate roughly 100 generals and admirals—nearly one-eighth of the entire senior officer corps.
But the truly revealing move was firing all three service branch top military lawyers—the judge advocates general. These officers ensure military operations comply with U.S. and international law. Georgetown Law professor Rosa Brooks nailed it: “It’s what you do when you’re planning to break the law: You get rid of any lawyers who might try to slow you down.”
In September, Hegseth summoned hundreds of generals and admirals to Virginia for what was essentially a loyalty oath ceremony. He told them: if his words made their hearts sink, they should resign. Translation: get in line or get out.
Five former defense secretaries—including Jim Mattis—condemned the firings as reckless and called for congressional hearings. No hearings were held. Rep. Seth Moulton warned this was creating “an authoritarian military—the way militaries work in Russia and China and North Korea.”
For servicemembers, the psychological burden became acute. You’ve been trained to follow lawful orders, to understand rules of engagement, to know that international law constrains what you can do. But now the lawyers who define what’s lawful are gone. The generals who might question operations are gone. And expressing concerns will end your career.
This creates moral injury—psychological trauma that occurs when you’re forced to transgress your own moral code. It’s distinct from PTSD because it’s not about fear, it’s about shame. Veterans carrying moral injury describe intrusive thoughts, nightmares, profound guilt, inability to forgive themselves. Many never recover. Suicide rates are significantly elevated.
Hegseth systematically created an organizational structure designed to produce mass moral injury. He removed legal constraints, eliminated dissenting voices, and created a climate where following orders meant potential complicity in illegal operations while refusing meant professional ruin.
With the lawyers gone, the generals cowed, and dissent crushed, Hegseth was ready to do what people like him always do when given unchecked power: use it.
Part III: The Body Count
Here’s what makes the Caribbean strikes different from every other sketchy thing the U.S. military has done: it’s not even pretending to be legal.
The first boat exploded on a September morning. Hegseth posted the video himself—a vessel moving through Caribbean waters, then fire, then bodies. Four dead. He announced it like he was sharing football highlights. “Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike.” Exclamation points. Promises that “these strikes will continue!!!”
The messaging was pure Hegseth: aggressive, theatrical, utterly divorced from legal niceties like evidence or authorization or the Constitution.
Trump declared drug cartels “unlawful combatants” and asserted the U.S. was in “armed conflict” with them. Based on this unilateral declaration—without asking Congress, without presenting evidence to courts, without following any constitutional process—the administration claimed authority to kill people in international waters.
The Constitution explicitly gives Congress, not the president, the power to declare war. Article I, Section 8. The foundational allocation of war powers designed specifically to prevent presidents from unilaterally starting wars.
Hegseth’s response when pressed on legal authority? “We have the absolute and complete authority to conduct that.” No legal citation. No statutory basis. No precedent. Because none exists.
International law is clearer. UN human rights chief Volker Turk warned of “strong indications” of extrajudicial killings occurring “in circumstances that find no justification in international law.” Brian Finucane, former State Department legal adviser, was direct: “Outside of armed conflict, there is a word for the premeditated killing of people, and that word is ‘murder.’”
A former State Department lawyer—someone predisposed to find legal justifications for U.S. military action—is calling these strikes murder.
As of November 10, 2025, at least 75 people are dead in 19 strikes. The administration claims all were narcoterrorists but provides zero verifiable evidence. Despite posting explosion videos like TikTok content, they won’t disclose who was killed, their nationalities, what drugs were supposedly carried, or where vessels were headed.
Pentagon officials briefing senators couldn’t provide a list of the designated terrorist organizations supposedly being targeted. The administration claims it’s fighting designated terrorist organizations in armed conflict, but can’t tell Congress which organizations.
No drugs have been publicly displayed from any of the 19 strikes. Not one brick of cocaine. Not one kilo of heroin. Nothing. No cartel affiliations proven. No terrorist connections documented.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro stated flatly that at least one victim was a Colombian fisherman. He accused the U.S. of murder. Governments and families say many were civilians—fishermen trying to feed their families.
How many of the 75 dead were cartel members? How many fishermen? How many migrants? The administration refuses to say. They’re killing people based on secret evidence, refusing oversight, and expecting trust.
This is the man who paid $50,000 to silence a sexual assault accuser, who bankrupted organizations, who got so drunk his wife needed an escape plan—and we’re supposed to trust his judgment about who deserves summary execution?
For servicemembers carrying out these strikes, the burden is profound. They’re killing people based on intelligence they can’t verify, in operations legal experts call murder, under orders from leadership that fired all the lawyers. When Colombian officials say fishermen were killed, when no evidence supports claims, when senators can’t get basic information—what does that do to the 18-year-old pressing the button?
Research shows veterans who killed civilians, even following orders based on faulty intelligence, experience severe moral injury with dramatically elevated rates of PTSD, depression, substance abuse, and suicide. The damage lasts decades. Often a lifetime. Hundreds of military personnel now carry that burden.
For months, lawmakers demanded information. A bipartisan Senate group—Tim Kaine, Rand Paul, Adam Schiff—introduced a war powers resolution to block unauthorized force. It’s exactly what the Constitution requires: Congress checking executive overreach.
On November 7, Senate Republicans voted it down. They chose party over constitutional duty, enabling an illegal war.
But this illegal war isn’t about counternarcotics. Venezuelan opposition figures, Trump administration sources, independent analysts—everyone not reading from administration talking points—says the real objective is regime change. The Wall Street Journal reported U.S. officials identified land targets in Venezuela. Trump confirmed in a 60 Minutes interview that he authorized covert CIA operations there. When asked if Maduro’s “days were numbered,” Trump said “I would say yeah.”
So we have illegal strikes in international waters, based on secret evidence, without congressional authorization, killing people who may be fishermen, as prelude to what appears to be an illegal war aimed at toppling a foreign government.
Hegseth learned throughout his career that rules don’t apply to him, that allegations can be settled with money, that institutions will ultimately capitulate. Now he’s applying that lesson at the scale of international law, constitutional constraints, and human lives.
Seventy-five people are dead. The number grows weekly. And no one is stopping it.
Part IV: The Catastrophe Waiting
The 75 dead are just the beginning. What comes next—if this illegal operation continues toward full war—will be measured in tens or hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, and a generation of American veterans carrying psychological wounds that never heal.
Venezuela’s 28 million people already face humanitarian catastrophe. The health system has collapsed—hospitals lack supplies, vaccination programs disintegrated, maternal mortality doubled. Now add military conflict. Research from Iraq, Syria, Yemen shows indirect deaths from health system collapse, disease outbreaks, and malnutrition typically exceed direct combat casualties by ratios of 3:1 or higher.
Conservative estimates suggest even brief conflict would cause tens of thousands of excess deaths. Prolonged war could kill hundreds of thousands. Infectious disease outbreaks from water system destruction. Maternal deaths from lack of emergency obstetric care. Diabetics dying without insulin. Kids starving because food distribution collapsed.
Venezuela’s neighbors already host 7.7 million refugees—one of the largest displacement crises globally. Military conflict would trigger exodus of millions more. Mortality rates in refugee camps, particularly among children, often exceed baseline rates by factors of ten.
The U.S. has deployed six warships to the Caribbean, sent F-35 stealth fighters to Puerto Rico, and ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group to the region. This isn’t drug interdiction hardware. This is preparation for war.
Matthew Waxman of the Council on Foreign Relations: “The White House may have reason to believe drug trafficking threatens Americans, but it hasn’t made the legal case that cartels are waging war against the United States.” Without that legal foundation, using military force—with all its catastrophic consequences—isn’t just unwise. It’s illegal. It’s criminal.
But Hegseth is someone who learned that illegal acts don’t carry consequences if you’re shameless enough. Sexual assault allegation? Pay $50,000, sign an NDA, keep climbing. Wife terrified and hiding in closets? Leave the marriage, pay the settlement, move on. Organizations bankrupt with hundreds of thousands in debt? Take the severance, land at Fox News.
Every transgression rewarded with advancement. Every rule broken without penalty. Every institution that should have stopped him—FBI background checks, Senate confirmation, military leadership, congressional oversight—failed or capitulated.
Now he’s applying that lesson to international law and constitutional constraints.
As of November 10, 2025, with 75 people dead in 19 illegal strikes, not a single accountability mechanism has engaged. No congressional hearings. No independent investigation into whether fishermen were murdered. No review of whether these operations serve any legitimate purpose.
The same Senate that confirmed him 51-50 despite overwhelming evidence of unfitness has failed to hold a single hearing. Senate Republicans voted down the war powers resolution that would have provided minimal constitutional oversight.
Every senator who voted to confirm Hegseth shares responsibility for these 75 deaths and whatever comes next. Every Republican who voted down the war powers resolution is complicit. They chose to enable a man whose entire career demonstrated he should never be trusted with power—and now that man is killing people without legal authority while planning what appears to be a war that could kill tens of thousands more.
Hegseth’s personal history wasn’t a series of unfortunate incidents. It was a training program in how to accumulate power without accountability. Now he’s running that program at the Pentagon, with constitutional violations instead of settlement checks, with body counts instead of bankruptcy filings, with illegal wars instead of toxic work environments.
Seventy-five people are dead. Hundreds of American servicemembers carry moral injury from potentially murdering civilians based on lies. Venezuela edges toward catastrophic war. Regional stability hangs by a thread. And the man responsible should have been stopped at every previous level but wasn’t—because institutions kept choosing expedience over accountability, party loyalty over constitutional duty, short-term political advantage over long-term consequences.
The real question isn’t whether Hegseth is unfit. That was answered by the sexual assault allegation, the wife hiding in closets, the bankrupted organizations, the drunken genocidal chanting, and the systematic pattern of buying silence. The real question is whether any institution—Congress, courts, military leadership, the press, the American people—will finally say enough.
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