Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough floated the question as to whether President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team “directed the FBI” to “not talk to the people” who may have “the most germane evidence against Pete Hegseth” – nominee for defense secretary.
The remark came as the host talked with MSNBC journalist Ali Vitali about how Senate Democrats are raising alarms over critical gaps in the FBI’s background check on Hegseth.
It was reported in the New York Times late Monday that the bureau allegedly failed to interview Hegseth’s second ex-wife, Samantha Hegseth, in its investigation—just days before his Senate confirmation hearing.
Sources close to the process say that despite reaching out to Samantha Hegseth for a brief conversation on January 8, FBI investigators reportedly did not follow up. Investigators instead left her multiple calls unanswered in attempts to provide further information in the run-up to the confirmation hearing.
Hegseth divorced Samantha Hegseth in 2018, who he has been married to for seven years, following an affair with a Fox producer.
Noting the New York Times story, Scarborough questioned why the FBI failed to pick up on Samantha Hegseth’s offer of more information.
Ali, please feel free to, to give us more insight on what you’re hearing on the hill. But again, the question that’s raised here is who directed the FBI not to talk to the person with the most explosive testimony against Pete Hegseth?
The charges of rape against Pete Hegseth, the police… Again, we all said the police did not press the charges, but the fact that you don’t have this woman that has come forward with all of this information about that California event. And then again, one of his ex-wife’s trying to reach the FBI and not getting return calls.
So is there any suggestion that the Trump transition team directed the FBI to what it could or could not investigate, or would that be the Republicans in the Senate that would tell the FBI, don’t talk to the people that may have the most germane evidence against Pete Hegseth?
In response, Vitali noted that the “client” for the FBI investigation was the Trump transition team and that the job was to provide information to them, not Democratic senators, but that “gaps” in the reporting, given recent allegations about Hegseth’s conduct, were “glaringly obvious.”
Well, we don’t know at this point if that direction was given. But it’s important to remember that as one of our reporters who’s been covering this said to me yesterday on Way Too Early, the client for the people doing the investigation is not Congress. The job is not to give Congress the most information possible, the job is to do the investigating at the direction of the client, in this case, the Trump transition team.
And so that’s going to be important for us to keep in mind when we watch Democrats talk about the gaps in this report. And I think we’re right to lay out how glaring they absolutely are. And it’s something that Democrats are now going to use in their lines of questioning. They were already going to talk about the sexual assault allegation. They were already going to talk about the potential themes around his ex-wives. But now we’re going to see them not just talk about that, but also ask the question of why this wouldn’t have been included in the kind of report that senators have gotten quite used to getting, even if they’re not reading the report itself, being briefed in full on what’s in the report. And it’s clear these are the rules of this committee. That’s not the thing that’s odd here.
The thing that’s odd here is that there are pieces of this report that seem very obvious to have investigators at least ask questions about and bring back to Congress, and that wasn’t done here. And that’s just the gaps in the report on the sexual violence and sexual assault allegation, and also things that his ex-wives might have said. But then there’s also the misuse of funds at veterans organizations. There are the allegations that NBC news has reported on, that he was abusing alcohol. All of that is going to be in this hearing that is going to be quite explosive on Capitol Hill.
Watch above on MSNBC.
