[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 15 (Friday, January 24, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S349-S355]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Nomination of Peter Hegseth
Mr. President, I rise right now and today for the purpose of joining
my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in opposing Mr. Hegseth's
nomination as Secretary of Defense.
I appreciate Mr. Hegseth's military service, indeed, when evaluating
his nomination--his service was what I appreciated most about his
background--but unfortunately it is clear that Mr. Hegseth does not
have the skills, experience, record, or character to lead a Department
that has a budget of more than $800 billion, is the largest employer of
men and women in our country, and is tasked with safeguarding our
Nation's security and freedom.
We take pride as Americans in the fact that our military is the very
best. The standard of excellence and professionalism set by the men and
women of our Armed Forces is central to our military's success and to
our country's success. This high standard of competency and character,
of both unmatched ability and uncommon virtue is why America's Armed
Forces command the respect of our friends, the fear of our foes, and
the abiding faith of freedom-loving people everywhere.
America boasts the greatest fighting force in the history of the
world. The heroes who serve in our Armed Forces deserve a leader who is
worthy of that greatness, and Mr. Hegseth is plainly not up to that
task.
Like many of my colleagues, I have concerns regarding Mr. Hegseth's
character--the documented accusations about his excessive and
uncontrolled drinking, his sexual harassment, sexual assault, and now
accusations of being abusive to his ex-wife.
It is ironic that Mr. Hegseth and some of my colleagues have
dismissed these concerns as partisan because, sadly, if this weren't a
partisan confirmation process--for example, if my Republican colleagues
were considering hiring Mr. Hegseth to join their staffs--we would all
agree that these accusations would immediately be disqualifying.
Mr. Hegseth dismisses these multiple accusations from disparate
people as a ``coordinated smear campaign.'' I don't think that the
concerns of his former colleagues, friends, and family should be
quickly dismissed as smears. Many other of the nominees who are being
considered by this body aren't facing similar accusations even though
there are people who vehemently oppose their confirmations, which begs
the question of why Mr. Hegseth continues to face multiple similar
accusations from different sources.
But, for a moment, let's do as Mr. Hegseth asks and put aside these
accusations. Let us say for a moment that those who occupy the highest
positions in public life shouldn't be above reproach, although indeed
they should. Let us say that our servicemembers do not deserve a leader
whose strength of character matches their own, although I believe they
do. And let us say for a moment that character does not count, although
indeed it surely always does. Let us, in short, ignore everything that
Mr. Hegseth demanded that we ignore in his hearing. Even if we did
that, I would submit that based on experience alone, Mr. Hegseth is
mainly unqualified for the job as Secretary of Defense.
The Secretary of Defense is responsible for a budget of more than
$800 billion and is responsible for 3.4 million employees who serve on
every continent across the globe.
To lead the Defense Department is a daunting task that requires
leadership and managerial skills of the highest order. However, Mr.
Hegseth's managerial experience begins and ends with his leadership at
two small nonprofits, and his tenure at both resulted in concerns about
his financial mismanagement at their helm. If Mr. Hegseth could not and
did not effectively manage organizations with around 100 employees,
surely no one can actually believe that he is ready to manage one of
3.4 million people.
We live in a dangerous and uncertain world. Iran and its proxies
continue to menace our forces in the Middle East. Vladimir Putin is on
the march in Europe. North Korea persists in testing our allies and
testing its missiles. China--China--looks with a conqueror's gaze
toward Taiwan.
To my Republican colleagues, I understand that you wish to support
President Trump, but Presidents are sometimes wrong. We are talking
about our Nation's vital security. We are considering the confirmation
of the person who will be entrusted to marshal our resources as the
enemy approaches, attacks our cyber defenses, or invades an ally. It
matters--it matters--that we have the right person in this job. It
matters that we get this one right.
Surely, there is someone in this great country of brilliant and brave
people of all political stripes who is more capable and who has the
experience and character necessary to forge under pressure the judgment
that will keep us safe and free.
This is America. We have the finest fighting force ever assembled. We
have more strength and power than any fighting force has had in human
history. In the past, when we have looked for leaders of our Armed
Forces, we have searched for our country's best and brightest, the most
gifted minds of America's boardrooms, the brightest stars to come out
of West Point, the most revered public servants to serve in these
Halls. We did not need then nor do we need now to turn to the green
rooms of cable TV networks for the Secretary of Defense.
Tomorrow marks the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge--a
campaign in which my father served. In freezing temperatures,
outnumbered and often undersupplied, our forces held the line against
Hitler's onslaught. Our soldiers won because they were brave, they won
because they were skilled, and they won because they were well led.
Surely, the Armed Forces of the United States of America--the victors
of the Ardennes, of Gettysburg, of Midway, and of 1,000 places in
between and since--surely, they need a leader who they can have full
faith in. Surely, America's best deserves the best.
Government's most important task is to keep America safe, secure, and
free. It is a complex, fast-moving, and evolving challenge. It is a job
that at times presents its occupant--the Secretary of Defense--no good
or easy options. It is, in short, a deadly serious job where both
success and failure have enormous ramifications. It is a job that
depends on experience and character--the prerequisites for good
judgment like no other.
No Senator should vote for someone who they can only hope will learn
on the job--not for the Secretary of Defense. No Senator should vote
for a nominee in the hope that he will display more personal discipline
once he
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gets the job. There are strong, experienced, and able members of the
President's party whose views align with his who could be exceptional
leaders of the Department of Defense. Mr. Hegseth is not one of them. I
urge my colleagues to reject this nominee.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I come to the floor to join many of my
colleagues in expressing grave alarm over the choice of Pete Hegseth to
run the Department of Defense.
It is not hyperbole to say that we have never seen a candidate--at
least in modern times--to lead our soldiers and our troops who is as
dangerously and woefully unqualified as Pete Hegseth.
I think everybody understands his primary qualification. He was on TV
during the weekends, when Donald Trump would watch FOX News--period,
stop--because as we have learned more about Pete Hegseth--his history
of sexual misconduct, his history of public drunkenness, his history of
financial mismanagement--it appears as if there must be thousands of
other people who were easily more qualified.
But I want to talk today about his qualifications, his views that he
has made known on television, that he has expressed to the committee
about how he would do the job.
I think his history of personal misconduct, in and of itself, is
disqualifying. It is just an embarrassment to the country, at a moment
when we want to win more friends and allies. It is just the wrong match
for a Department that oversees the moral and professional development
of young men and women to have somebody like that, with that kind of
history, leading the Agency.
But it is also important on the views that he has expressed on how he
would run the Department of Defense, because I fear he will run it into
the ground.
First, let me talk about the politicization of the Department of
Defense. Listen, I don't like the fact that all across government, the
design seems to be that if you don't agree with President Trump's
political ideas, that if you don't pledge loyalty to President Trump,
you don't have any future in the Federal Government. That is not how we
have ever run the Federal Government.
Yes, we have always had a class of political appointees. Yes, you
want the people at the very top of each Department to be broadly
aligned with your view of the world. But this administration--most
recently, by reclassifying thousands of employees in the Federal
Government to make them political, to make them immediately fireable--
is a fundamental rewrite of the way that we traditionally view
government.
We want civil servants, people whose oath, whose loyalty, is to the
American public, is to the Constitution, is to the law, not simply to a
political party or to a political ideology.
Kash Patel has made it very clear. He doesn't want anybody in the
Department of Justice who doesn't line up with his particular political
view of the world. And Pete Hegseth seems to be of the same mind.
He seems to be proposing creating a Department of Defense that
abandons its core values and its traditional review processes in favor
of a new culture of paranoia and mistrust, amidst unexplained firings
for even being perceived as having the wrong political leanings.
Now, this didn't happen inside the Department of Defense, but it is
the highest profile firing in the national security chain of command.
On Monday--on Trump's first day in office--he fired the head of the
Coast Guard, Commandant Linda Fagan, without explanation beyond
anonymous statements to the press about vague concerns about Fagan's
approach to programs aimed at improving diversity or opportunity within
the Coast Guard.
Many of us have had the opportunity to work with Admiral Fagan. She
is a straight shooter. She improved morale at the Coast Guard. She has
vigorously defended our shores. She has helped increase readiness.
There is nothing political--there was nothing political--about Linda
Fagan in her career of service to this country to become the first
woman to lead the Coast Guard.
Yet she was fired on Monday without explanation, except for these
anonymously sourced, vague concerns about her focus on trying to bring
more women into the Coast Guard and more cadets of color. It seems to
serve a very clear end: to make everybody wonder what that line is.
Nobody knows the line that Linda Fagan crossed, but now that it is
blurred, everybody is going to hunker down, buckle down, do nothing at
all that may arise the suspicions of the White House.
It seems to me that that is exactly what is going to happen at the
Department of Defense. He has promised to fire top-end military leaders
who are engaged in his nebulous war on woke.
So if you care about making sure that you have got troops from
different backgrounds and different parts of the country, maybe that is
a war on woke. If you promote a woman, maybe that is a war on woke. If
you care about making sure that your troops don't engage in unethical
conduct, maybe that is a war on woke. If you contract with a local
business that may not be aligned with Donald Trump, maybe that is part
of the war on woke.
We have no idea. And so what will happen inside the Department of
Defense is just a constant sense of paranoia, a constant looking over
your shoulder, a grinding to a halt of business as normal because
nobody knows what is a fireable offense and what isn't.
How do I stay on the good side of Pete Hegseth? What gets me on the
bad side?
Second, I want to talk about his views on women in combat. He wrote
this in his book:
Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on
our bikes. We need moms. But not in the military, especially
in combat units.
What an insulting thing to say. What a disgusting thing to believe.
``Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our
bikes.'' My mom taught me to take risks. My dad told me to take risks
too. But is there a single U.S. Senator here who believes that our
mothers, the women in our lives, aren't risk takers, that they didn't
push us to be better?
Pete Hegseth believes--he just believes this--that women hold us
back, that women hold men back, that women hold their sons back. And it
just doesn't matter that he has walked back these statements.
Magically, he had a conversion on the issue of women in the military.
Magically, he started saying less offensive things about women right
after he was nominated to be Secretary of Defense.
Nobody believes this conversion. This is a conversion for political
reasons only. It does not mask the fact that this is what Pete Hegseth
believes, that he believes that women are inferior to men--and again,
not just that they shouldn't engage in combat; he believes that they
are morally inferior, that they have qualities that men don't have.
Many women--most women that I know--who have served bravely and
effectively in combat--some serving with us on Capitol Hill--have taken
grave offense to Pete Hegseth's unfounded denigration of their service.
Many have pointed out the real impacts his ideas will have surrounding
women in combat and what those comments could mean for our more general
readiness. Why? Because there are 360,000 women serving in the U.S.
military today in a variety of capacities. They are essential to
keeping this Nation safe. Now every single one of them knows that the
man taking over the Department of Defense doesn't think they are worthy
to serve and that their prospects for advancement upon his elevation to
the Department of Defense are compromised.
Their ability to get fair treatment inside the Department of Defense
has been compromised, and it won't shock anybody if we see many of
those women leave the service and if we see many fewer women sign up to
protect this country. That would come at an enormous cost--an enormous
cost--to the security of this Nation.
Third, I want to talk about a topic that I hope this body finds a way
to have a nonpolitical, nonpartisan discussion on, and that is the
growing problem of extremism in our military.
Now, I think every large organization has to tackle this issue.
Anytime you have a big, large organization, you are going to have
individuals amongst your ranks that are affiliated with extremists and
dangerous causes, so I don't
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think this problem is exclusive to the U.S. military.
But people who have military experience are about 6 percent, 5
percent of the overall population. They comprise 15 percent of the
people who were pardoned by Donald Trump just 3 days ago--a share three
times greater than that of the general population.
We have watched as a disproportionate share of individuals who have
engaged in mass shootings have had a military background. Now, a lot of
that is connected to post-traumatic stress disorder and our failure to
get services to those individuals. That is on us, and we should have
that conversation as well.
But Pete Hegseth has said that this issue of whether the Oath Keepers
and the Proud Boys have influence inside the military--and there are
plenty of reports that there are lots of active channels of
communication and recruitment between these rightwing groups and the
military--he says that problem is fake. It is fake.
Now, I don't know the extent of this problem, but I know it is
something we should talk about, and I am very, very worried to have a
Secretary of Defense who doesn't believe it is a problem even worth
mentioning.
Lastly, I want to talk about what I maybe think is the most dangerous
part of Pete Hegseth's views on the military, and that is his history
of support for war criminals, his low regard for the Code of Military
Justice, and his disbelief--his nonbelief in the concept of
international law and the laws of war.
It is pretty shocking that we are even having a debate here about
whether the U.S. military should engage in torture or adhere to the
Geneva Conventions. For those of us that served with John McCain, I
cannot believe what he would think about the decision of a Republican
President to appoint a Secretary of Defense who does not believe in the
Geneva Conventions and the basic laws of war and claims that it is weak
or unmanly to believe that there should be some common set of rules
about how we engage in war.
I do think it is legitimate to have a conversation about the rules of
engagement. We should always be willing to revisit the rules of
engagement. It is entirely possible--plausible even--that the rules
that we apply to our soldiers in very difficult, complicated
engagements, where they often don't know who is friend or foe, are
outdated. We should be willing to have that conversation. But that is
not what Pete Hegseth is interested in. He is interested in
obliterating the rules of engagement. He doesn't want any constraints
on our soldiers.
While it is true that many of the enemies that we fight don't follow
any rules at all, it is not good for U.S. security more broadly to give
up on international law, the rules of war, and the rules of engagement
and just accept a race to the bottom.
At the hearing, Ranking Member Reed asked Pete Hegseth about three
instances of clemency granted by President Trump in 2019--grants of
clemency that the nominee supports.
One soldier, a lieutenant in the Army, had been serving for 19 years
in prison and was pardoned after being convicted of two counts of
second-degree murder for ordering a soldier to fire on unarmed Afghan
motorcyclists in 2012. Another was pardoned after being charged with
murder of an Afghan in 2010. Another pardon was for an individual who
posed and took photos with a corpse during a 2017 deployment to Iraq.
This problem is minuscule inside our Armed Forces. It really is. Mr.
President, 99.99 percent of our soldiers, men and women who fight for
us, are never, ever engaged in these kinds of horrific crimes. The
reason for that is, A, because we have good, moral people fighting for
us, and B, because we have a code of conduct, and that deterrent helps
to make sure that the instances of misconduct are very, very small--are
infinitesimal. If all of a sudden that code of conduct is obliterated,
then it becomes harder for our military leadership to make sure that
when we are in war, we are following those rules of engagement.
Remember, our power in the world is our tanks and our soldiers, our
airplanes and our aircraft carriers, but it has always been our moral
authority. We have never been perfect. We have never had leadership
that was perfect. But to voluntarily give up on our belief that U.S.
troops are held to a higher standard than our enemies--that shrinks our
power in the world that makes enemies run away from us.
In a world today where there is just a dissent from truth, right--
that is what Putin wants. Putin wants to obliterate objectivism in this
world, to believe that there is no right or wrong, that everything is
just an individual's viewpoint. When we retreat from those long-held
and consensus-developed ideas about, for instance, not torturing our
enemies during times of war, it provides a lift and assist to people
like Putin who are trying to make us believe that there is no such
thing as right or wrong in the world, that it is all just different
shades of gray.
So I understand that much of the debate here will be about this
litany of really ugly personal misconduct, and I think that is reason
alone to say: You know what, find somebody else.
It is not as if Pete Hegseth is the only person qualified to run the
Department of Defense. There are other people who are loyal to Donald
Trump, who are conservative, maybe even believe in this campaign
against wokeism, but don't have the history of personal misconduct.
But I also think that these questions about women in combat, about
the political campaigns that will be run inside the Department that
will breed a sense of paranoia, about taking seriously small but
growing, real threats to us, like extremism in the military, and then
this bigger question of making sure we have fealty to the laws of war
and prohibitions against torture--I think all of those really
concerning views of this nominee, even if the misconduct didn't exist,
would be enough for us to say: Find somebody else. Find somebody else
who is just going to do the job instead of trying to bring these
political agendas, whether it is misogyny or anti-wokeism or anti-
multilateralism, into a job that really should be pretty simple. Lead
our troops. Protect the Nation. Lift up America's standing in the
world.
I know the cake may be baked at this point, but I just want to make
one more plea to my Republican colleagues to reconsider their decision
to confirm to lead the Department of Defense somebody who seems just
hellbent mostly on pursuing a political--not military--agenda that I
truly believe is certain to weaken our Armed Forces and threaten our
national security.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Murkowski). The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, a number of serious and concerning issues
were raised in Pete Hegseth's nomination hearing last week; and in the
Hegseth nomination hearing last week, there were a number of important
issues. And I would like to speak to one that is central to both
America's national security and American values: the principle that
every American has the right to know when their government believes
that it is allowed to kill them.
Now I don't believe this ought to be a controversial matter. My
constituents don't believe it should be a controversial matter. The
Bill of Rights says: No one shall be deprived of life . . . without due
process of law.
Government officials have, in my view, a basic obligation to explain
any rules that allow them to ever kill an American citizen. And on
this, the nominee to serve as Defense Secretary has simply flunked the
test. His refusal to answer basic questions before the Senate Committee
on Armed Services ought to trouble every single American.
Now, I want to focus on that fundamental question concerning the
government's power to kill Americans and why Americans have to keep
fighting--and Senators--for transparency.
Over a decade ago, the Obama administration took the position that
their analysis of the President's legal authority to deliberately kill
Americans was secret, and they refused to share that. As I said at the
time, I believe that position was just unacceptable.
And I told the Obama administration: If an American takes up arms
against the United States as part of a foreign army or a terrorist
group, there are, indeed, circumstances where it is legal to use lethal
force against that American, but the limits and the
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boundaries of the President's authority to kill Americans must be
available to the public so that voters can decide whether that
authority has sufficient safeguards.
Now, the Obama administration initially disagreed with me. They were
clearly reluctant to acknowledge specific limits on the President's
power. To be candid, we had a pretty big public argument about that
over a number of weeks. Many other Senators got involved. In fact,
Senator Paul, our colleague from Kentucky, brought the debate to a head
with a 13-hour standing filibuster. I remember coming to the Senate
floor to join Senator Paul, and there were a number of Republican
colleagues who were there as well.
I think one of the reasons it became such a significant debate in a
viral moment is that it was literally exactly what our Founding Fathers
envisioned: Members of the Senate coming together to check the power of
the Presidency.
In response to this filibuster that Senator Paul and others were part
of, the Obama administration came around to doing the right thing.
Attorney General Holder sent Senator Paul a letter stating clearly that
if an American is standing on U.S. soil, not engaged in combat, then
the President of the United States does not have the authority to use
military force against them.
Now, obviously, there are a host of other important questions about
the limits of the President's war powers, but I thought that letter
from Attorney General Holder was an important concession, and I am
proud that Democrats and Republicans worked together on a bipartisan
basis for it.
I was very troubled last week by the answers that Pete Hegseth gave
in his nomination hearing before the Armed Services Committee. For
example, our colleague Senator Hirono asked the nominee directly if he
would carry out an order to shoot American citizens. Mr. Hegseth could
have given the same answer that Attorney General Holder gave us a
decade ago, but this nominee just refused to answer the question.
Madam President, it is even more troubling when our colleague Senator
Slotkin asked an even easier question. Senator Slotkin asked: Is there
such a thing as an illegal order? The answer to that question should
very obviously be ``yes.'' If a President orders the Secretary of
Defense to violate the law or the Constitution, that order is illegal.
And it is, in my view, stunning that the nominee refused to answer this
very straightforward question. Even our youngest soldiers in basic
training know that it is their duty to refuse illegal orders. We should
at least expect that much from our Secretary of Defense.
So I say to my colleagues, in closing, that it comes down to this: I
thought we agreed--Democrats and Republicans, people of a variety of
different political philosophies--believe that what I have discussed
are fundamentally important principles to America. We have fought hard
in America to uphold them, and we did it together. For the life of me,
I don't understand why we are voting today to confirm a nominee who
can't tell us pointblank that he will oppose illegal orders and that he
will uphold the Constitution of the United States.
For that reason, Madam President--I haven't spoken on the matter
until just now--I intend to vote no on Mr. Hegseth's nomination and,
frankly, I wish more of my colleagues across the aisle, for the reasons
that have been outlined here, were joining me in voting no.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, it is nice to see you in the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. It is nice being in the Chair.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am here to add some thoughts
regarding the vote we are going to have on Pete Hegseth for Secretary
of Defense.
Of course, as a Rhode Island junior Senator, I am very cognizant of
the important role that my senior Senator Jack Reed has had on the
committee of jurisdiction, the Senate Armed Services Committee. I want
to give him credit for the way he has conducted himself.
What I can bring to this conversation is a little bit about
background investigations. I sit on the Judiciary Committee. The
Judiciary Committee does more background investigation work than any
other because we have so many people coming through--the judges, the
U.S. attorneys, every marshal--all of it. So we are very busy on BIs.
I took a deep dive into the Brett Kavanaugh background investigation
and put out a report on the flaws and gaps and misdirections that
transpired around that background investigation--specifically, that
supplemental background investigation, a point I will clarify in a
moment.
Let's start with what we do know about the FBI background
investigation into Mr. Hegseth. We know that only one Democrat has even
seen it, and that is the ranking member on the committee, Senator Reed.
And we do know that he has publicly said that that background
investigation was--to use his word--``inadequate.'' So Republicans are
going forward on the basis of an FBI investigation that a very
respected Member of this body has publicly said was inadequate.
What else do we know about it? Well, it has been reported in the
press that the chairman has said that it took three briefings by the
FBI to get through the background investigation. I don't know why that
happened, but we do know that new material emerged in the press about
various kinds of misconduct by this individual after the initial
background investigation took place.
So the likeliest scenario to explain why there were three background
investigations in the light of the recurring release of further
information about his repeated misconduct is that there were
supplemental background investigations after the original full field
FBI background investigation was completed.
Let's presume that to be true. Again, we can't know this because this
is all tied up in so much unnecessary secrecy, in my view. Let's
presume that that is the case.
What does that mean? Well, what we discovered during the Kavanaugh
background investigation is that the regular FBI full field background
investigation takes place under a set of longstanding rules and
protocols and procedures. They have forms that they follow. It has been
routinized to a fairly significant degree. It is different than a
proper FBI investigation. A proper FBI investigation in the criminal
law enforcement front has a whole different set of controls and
protocols and supervisory roles over that. When you get into the full
field background investigation, you are operating under a different set
of rules, but you are still operating under rules.
And you can ask the question to the FBI: Was this background
investigation conducted fully within the rules and the protocols for
background investigations--until you get to a supplemental background
investigation.
Now, one of the objections that I had to the way we were treated as
we tried to get to the bottom of the Kavanaugh background investigation
was that the then-head of the FBI kept repeatedly saying publicly--we
were repeatedly told that the supplemental background investigation was
done consistent with all of the FBI standard protocols and procedures.
What was misleading about that, as we later discovered, is that for a
supplemental background investigation, there are no operating
procedures and protocols. Wray said that they comported with all of
their procedures. Didn't disclose that, in fact, there are no
procedures to comport with.
What is the FBI doing in a supplemental background investigation?
They are doing only and exactly what the White House has instructed
them to do--period, no more, no less, no procedure, no protocol--which
raises a huge question about the adequacy of this background
investigation to the extent that, in its later stages, it was a
supplemental background investigation.
We know that, when the Kavanaugh investigation was going on,
Republican Senators were told that there was no corroboration--
corroboration being kind of an important legal term here--no
corroboration of the charges that had been brought by Dr. Blasey Ford
of his attack on her those many years ago--no corroboration.
What we found out, later on, is that the instructions from the White
House
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to the FBI for that supplemental background investigation related to
her charges were: Don't look for, don't find, and don't report to us
any corroborating information.
We also found out that they never interviewed either Dr. Blasey Ford
about her allegations or Brett Kavanaugh about his conduct.
So there is every reason to believe about this background
investigation, as to the supplemental background investigation part of
it, that it was woefully incomplete; that it was restricted by the
White House to very, very narrow bounds; that we do not know what those
narrow bounds are; and that, very likely, neither Hegseth nor the
individuals making the charges were even interviewed by the FBI. And we
can suspect that because that is precisely what happened in the
Kavanaugh background investigation.
So there is a major, major weakness in what is publicly described as
an inadequate background investigation, to the extent that those latter
two segments of it that caused the three briefings to have to take
place were supplemental background investigations precisely and exactly
controlled by the Trump White House.
Another point that relates to all of this is that, when these
witnesses came forward, the standard counterattack against them was
that they were anonymous. Over and over again, Hegseth said in the
committee: ``Anonymous smears''--``anonymous smears.''
These accusers were not anonymous. Not only were they not anonymous,
they were willing and presented themselves as willing to be able to
come over here and personally brief, in their offices, any Republican
Senator. It is not anonymous when you are willing to show up in a
Senator's office and give a personal briefing.
What they weren't willing to do was to put their names out there
publicly. Now, why would they want to steer away from that? Ask
Christine Blasey Ford what her life was turned into by far-right and
MAGA attacks on her after she came forward with her charges against
Brett Kavanaugh.
Ask the poll workers who were Rudy Giuliani's victims what their
lives turned into after he called them out--conduct against them that
gave rise to the massive, multimillion-dollar verdict that Rudy
Giuliani is still struggling to pay. Evidently, some billionaire paid
it off for him. We will see.
But it is perfectly logical for a person to be willing to come
forward, like many witnesses are, to identify themselves and to speak
privately--the way people often do in a grand jury--to a prosecutor
without yet putting your name out there. And, actually, some are not
anonymous, but we should reject the notion that these witnesses were
anonymous. They were not anonymous. They are real people with real
faces who are willing to come in and tell their real stories, and
Republican Senators simply refuse to hear them. That is a different
thing than anonymity. They couldn't get through the doors of the
offices.
So either our Republican colleagues already know who these people
are--so they are not anonymous--or they are perfectly able to find out
by getting their names and inviting them in and hearing them out. It
seems like a pretty simple ask.
Now, in some cases, for instance, Mr. Hegseth's sister-in-law--ex-
sister-in-law, I guess you would say--has actually put her name on her
affidavit, describing his abusive and drunken misconduct. So she is not
anonymous by any stretch of the imagination. And because the far-right
counterattack team likes to attack people who are willing to come
forward, they actually outed one of the other witnesses in a story. I
won't mention her name because I do not want to make things even worse
for her, but they did out her in a rightwing publication.
So you have at least two names that are out there that are clearly
not anonymous and, indeed, are public. What happens with them? What
happens with them is that they are accused of having evil motive; that
they had a motive to lie about Pete Hegseth, and that is what is
driving what they have been saying.
Well, guess who is really good at interviewing witnesses and looking
at the surrounding circumstances and evaluating a motive--the FBI. The
FBI is. So, if the FBI in this supplemental background investigation
was instructed not to evaluate motive--just to let that be a political
hand grenade to throw with no foundation--then we have an extra layer
of problems with this background investigation.
So there is every reason to believe that the background investigation
was inadequate and specifically directed by the White House away from
relevant evidence, the way the Kavanaugh investigation was directed
away from corroborating evidence. Here, it would have been directed
away from evidence of motive, and you have got a real problem on your
hands.
I urge my Republican colleagues--this is kind of the last call. If
this guy gets in and starts to behave the way reasonable people can
expect him to behave, you are going to own that. And when you say,
``Oh, the background investigation should have brought that up,'' not
if you didn't ask about the background investigation, not if you didn't
get a real one, not if you didn't bring the actual witnesses in to hear
from them themselves.
We have had another little event recently, which are the pardons of
the violent January 6 rioters.
Before those pardons took place, our Republican colleagues said over
and over again that that will never happen; that this is a weird
Democrat pipe dream. ``The very notion of pardoning these violent
rioters who hurt police officers--who attacked and harmed police
officers--is absurd,'' said one colleague. The Vice President said it
wasn't going to happen; that it would be wrong.
And after all of that talk and all of that reassurance, what
happened? Donald Trump went right out and did it.
So, if you think there are guardrails around this individual, it has
already been proven that they are not there. The thing you thought was
absurd, the thing you thought would never happen, the thing you said
was wrong was done, and if that is not a lesson as we go forward into
these other defective nominees, I can't help you; I can't make you vote
any other way.
But it ought to be clear that, with future misconduct by this guy,
whether he is being drunk on duty or erratic or abusive or
inappropriate with female staff and officers or even abusing the power
of our military to accomplish political purposes for President Trump,
there is really no sign of guardrails to prevent that, and an
inadequate FBI report is something that should be cleared up before
Republicans are forced to vote on this.
It is in your power to look into these things and get it done. It is
not in our power in the minority. We are doing the best we can. So I
urge you to consider those dangers as we move forward toward this vote.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. MARKEY. Madam President, we are about to have a monumental vote
out here on the floor of the U.S. Senate on who will become the next
Secretary of Defense for the United States of America.
The defense budget in the United States is $900 billion. The person
who is given that responsibility has to be exceptionally well qualified
in order to deal with all of the responsibilities that are tied to
those military and personnel decisions which have to be made because
there are 3.5 million servicemembers, and there are hundreds of
thousands of aircraft, ships, submarines, combat vehicles, satellites,
and the nuclear arsenal. And a variety of sources, including his own
writings, implicate him with disregarding the laws of war, of financial
mismanagement, of racist and sexist remarks about Americans in uniform,
of sexual assault, of sexual harassment, and other very troubling
issues.
These are perilous times, and the position of Secretary of Defense
demands a leader of unparalleled experience, wisdom, and, above all
else, character. The Secretary of Defense carries an immense
responsibility not only to the American people but to the
servicemembers whom they lead.
If confirmed, Mr. Hegseth will have a responsibility to serve our
servicemembers in a manner that is fair and nonpartisan and
responsible. Yet Mr. Hegseth has demonstrated that he is incapable of
doing so.
He has said:
I am straight up just saying we should not have women in
combat roles.
[[Page S354]]
He is opposed to transgender people serving in the military, despite
their willingness to serve and sacrifice for our country right now.
He called reproductive justice ``absolutely and utterly meaningless''
in the military. He opposed Pentagon policies to help servicemembers
get reproductive care, including IVF to start a family. These are
American servicemembers.
I find Hegseth's record extremely alarming. He is nominated to lead
an Agency charged with defending American freedom abroad. Yet he does
not stand for freedom and dignity and respect for the servicemembers of
the United States of America in the military. Indeed, Mr. Hegseth's own
writings and alleged conduct should disqualify him from holding any
leadership position in the military, much less from being confirmed as
the Secretary of Defense for our Nation.
Donald Trump dared to impugn the legacy of the late, honorable
Congressman John Lewis by saying, ``John Lewis was all talk and no
action,'' but then Trump nominates a Secretary of Defense, Pete
Hegseth, who perpetuates the lie, the racism that Black military
officers are only promoted because of their race. Tell that to Colin
Powell; tell that to Lloyd Austin, that they were only promoted because
of their color. This is not just a failure of leadership; it is a moral
crisis that strikes at the heart of who we are as a people.
It is not enough to just oppose Trump's vision. There are hundreds of
thousands of women in the military right now, and 19 percent of our
military is African American. These are Hegseth's own words about this
very high percentage of the members of our military right now.
So the criticism of Hegseth is bipartisan. Senators from both sides
of the aisle are opposed to this nomination. If you didn't know
anything else about him--if we didn't have any more hearings, if we
didn't have any more documents, if we didn't have any other people
coming forward--we already have enough evidence and eye-watering detail
sufficient to cast a ``no'' vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate on
this nomination. That is because the position of Secretary of Defense
is a serious job. We need someone who will bring their A game, 24/7,
365 days a year; and Pete Hegseth is not that person. His lack of
experience aside, he has not shown the necessary morality, sense, or
judgment to be Secretary of Defense.
Take the issue of nuclear weapons. Is this the person we want
advising the President on whether or not he should launch a nuclear
weapon against another country and possibly begin the end of life on
Earth as we know it?
Secretary of Defense is a very important position. It puts him right
at the heart of these nuclear decisions.
This nomination is a joke. Are you kidding me? Pete Hegseth will be
there helping to decide whether or not we launch nuclear weapons?
Let's be clear. President Trump, as Commander in Chief, has the sole
authority to order the launch of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. This is
crazy, on its face, that one person can determine whether or not we
start a nuclear war, with no consultation with anyone else. That is
just absolutely absurd on its face, because no one person, particularly
not President Trump, should have that unilateral power to start nuclear
war.
I have just reintroduced my legislation with Congressman Ted Lieu in
the House of Representatives to make it the policy of the United States
that no President can use nuclear weapons first without the express
approval of Congress if we have not been attacked with nuclear weapons.
You have got to come to Congress. But that is not the law right now. It
is just the President.
Under the Constitution, Congress gets to declare war, not the
President. But for now, President Trump has that power exclusively. At
any time, for any reason, he can call over the military attache with
the nuclear football and call the war room at the Pentagon and give the
order to launch. Trump does not have to consult with anyone--not
Congress, not the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not the Secretary of Defense.
But if President Trump did want to get a second opinion before
starting a nuclear war which could end humanity, calling the Secretary
of Defense would usually be a pretty good option in order to make that
decision. Do we have any reason to believe that Pete Hegseth has any
clue about nuclear weapons or nuclear policy or nuclear strategy? No,
we do not.
In fact, Mr. Hegseth's only qualification for this job that I can see
is whether he will do whatever the President asks him to do.
Pete Hegseth is a yes-man. If President Trump calls Pete Hegseth at 2
a.m. in the morning and says, Pete, I am about to start a nuclear war,
even though we haven't been attacked with nuclear weapons, what will
Pete Hegseth say? He will say, yes, sir.
So from this perspective, Mr. Hegseth is the worst possible choice to
lead the Department of Defense.
We need someone who can challenge the President's thinking, slow him
down, curb his worst impulses, and give him sober, reasoned advice. And
with Hegseth, that is not going to happen.
There are other monumental decisions on nuclear policy that President
Trump will need reasoned advice on that he is not likely to get from
Pete Hegseth. During the campaign, Trump had just one clear proposal
related to nuclear policy: to build an Iron Dome missile defense system
to ensure that ``no enemy can strike our homeland.''
Now, this is a throwback to former President Ronald Reagan's 1983
proposal called the Strategic Defense Initiative--also called Star
Wars--to build a system of space- and ground-based interceptors to make
nuclear weapons ``impotent and obsolete.'' It made for great slogans.
But after 40 years and some $400 billion, the technology is still not
up to the challenge.
If you try to scale up Iron Dome and cover a country the size of the
United States against hundreds of Russian or Chinese long-range
missiles, it just won't work.
Trump could provoke a new arms race, even without his Iron Dome on
steroids. Trump's allies have called for the United States to build
more nuclear weapons than Moscow and Beijing combined.
This idea is popular among conservatives at the Heritage Foundation
and Project 2025. But let's be clear. Expanding the U.S. nuclear
arsenal is a terrible idea.
We need treaties that end the nuclear arms race. We don't need a
nuclear arms race with AI making these weapons even more deadly, even
more accurate. We need treaties. We need negotiations. We need to come
together on the planet. That is what we should be talking about.
Building more than we need is a waste of money, but it also makes the
world more dangerous, not less dangerous, because it provokes a
response from the other side.
Second, guess what Moscow and Beijing will do if Washington suddenly
builds more bombs. They will do the same.
Third, a U.S. buildup would doom any chances of saving the U.S.-
Russian arms reduction process.
The last remaining treaty, New START, expires 1 year from now. And
unless we replace that treaty, there will no longer be any legal limits
on the United States or Russian warheads for the first time in 50
years.
Do you hear what I said? No limits. We are in a new world now. For 50
years, we have had limits on nuclear weapons. They will all be gone in
a year.
Trump's allies are also calling for the United States to resume the
testing of nuclear weapons for the first time since 1992. We ended
nuclear testing three decades ago and then signed the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty in 1996 banning all nuclear tests. We have conducted
more nuclear tests--over 1,000--than all other nations combined. We
have no need to test. But if we do, other nations will too, like Russia
and China. Beijing has only conducted 45 nuclear tests. We have
conducted a thousand.
Imagine how much China could learn if Trump gives it an excuse to
resume testing, which China is not doing.
The only state in the world today that is still conducting nuclear
tests is North Korea. We should be pressuring Pyongyang to stop, not
reopening this Pandora's box.
So, under Trump, we could see billions of dollars spent on long-range
missile defenses that don't work, the end of arms control and the start
of a
[[Page S355]]
new nuclear arms race with Russia and China, and new nuclear testing.
All of this would make the world a more dangerous place and increase
the risk of nuclear conflict.
If Trump asks Hegseth if he should do these dangerous things, the
answer will be yes and yes and yes. That is where we are going to be.
Now, there is some possible good news, too. Trump, not surprisingly,
gets along well with Russian President Putin. They might end the war in
Ukraine. If they do, that could open up a path to negotiate a treaty,
to follow a New START.
And as President Trump said just this week: We want to see if we can
denuclearize. And I think it's very possible. And I can tell you that
President Putin, if he wants to do it, we should take him up on it.
We should see. We should move in that direction.
As for Mr. Hegseth, the last thing President Trump needs is a yes-man
for Secretary of Defense.
I will just add one final issue. As a national security threat,
climate change, which the Pentagon and which the Joint Chiefs of Staff
have said over and over and over again is a threat multiplier to our
military and our ability to protect the world--it is a threat
multiplier. Having a President who is a climate denier, coupled with
the Secretary of Defense who is a climate denier, just ignores the
reality of the world as it is unfolding in this climate era.
The whole defense budget is $900 billion. Hurricanes Milton and
Helene in October and November, combined with the fires in Los Angeles
right now, $500 billion of damage in three storms. That is half the
entire defense budget for our country.
We can't have a Secretary of Defense who doesn't believe that climate
change is a threat multiplier to our military and to the security of
the planet. We need someone there who can speak truth to power to the
President of the United States.
So I can't more strongly recommend a ``no'' vote on the floor of the
Senate on this nomination. He is unqualified. His confirmation could be
very dangerous to our Nation. We need military personnel who respects
the Secretary of Defense. We will have none of that with Pete Hegseth.
So I very, very strongly recommend to this body that we vote no and
tell the President to come back with someone who is worthy of this most
important of all positions in his Cabinet.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. McCORMICK). The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Maryland.