Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s wife Jennifer Rauchet has stood by her man through a dizzying array of scandals: cheating, allegations of abuse and now glaring national security breaches.
The former Fox News producer is making headlines of her own this week after it was reported that she had applied for security clearance and was included in a Signal group chat where Hegseth discussed upcoming strikes on Houthi militants in Yemen.
Hegseth had shared “detailed” information on the March 15 airstrikes before they happened, including flight schedules for the planes, according to The New York Times.
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His brother and personal attorney, who have official positions in the Defense Department, were also in the group, which was separate from the one The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added to.
Before news of the second Signal chat broke, Rauchet had already been raising eyebrows for accompanying Hegseth to high-level meetings at the Pentagon where sensitive military information was discussed, according to the Wall Street Journal.
CNN reported that Rauchet has also submitted paperwork to receive security clearance, but it is unclear whether it was approved, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Still, according to Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson, Rauchet has “never attended a meeting where sensitive information or classified information was discussed,” CNN reported.
Hegseth and Rauchet met at Fox News when Hegseth was still married to his second wife, Samantha Deering. Rauchet was a producer on Fox and Friends Weekend, where Hegseth was a co-host, and they began an extramarital affair that reportedly led to Rauchet being moved to another Trump-friendly show, Watters World.
Their relationship followed something of a pattern; Hegseth had been married to his first wife, Meredith Schwarz, when he began dating Deering, with whom he later had three children. He has admitted to having five affairs during his first marriage.
Rauchet became pregnant with Hegseth’s child in early 2017, and two months before she gave birth, Hegseth was accused of sexually assaulting a woman at a conference in Monterey.
The woman told police she believed Hegseth had drugged and sexually assaulted her on the night of Oct. 7, 2017.
Hegseth told an investigator the sex was consensual, but he agreed to pay his accuser $50,000 as part of a confidentiality agreement, he said during his Senate confirmation hearings. He described the case against him as a “nuisance claim” and said he settled in order to prevent his accuser from trying to tarnish his career at Fox. No charges were ever filed in the case.
Six months later, after his daughter with Rauchet had been born, Hegseth was in the middle of a contentious divorce with Deering. His mother Penelope sent him and email calling him “despicable and abusive.”
“You are an abuser of women — that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth,” she wrote.
Penelope has since said she was angry when she sent the email and later apologized for it.
The divorce was finalized in July 2018, and in 2019, Hegseth and Rauchet married at Trump National Golf Club in Colts Neck, New Jersey. Before the wedding, they posed in red “Make Weddings Great Again” hats.
He often refers to Rauchet as his “rock,” according to The Independent.
She supported him throughout his contentious Senate confirmation hearing, during which he faced allegations of cheating, alcohol abuse and financially mismanaging two veterans’ organizations he’d worked for.
As reports of the alleged assault dominated headlines, Rauchet wrote on social media, “They won’t stop with Pete. It’s not him they’re after. It’s your values.”
