www.montereycountynow.com FEBRUARY 20-26, 2025 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 17 IN MARCH OF 2021, PETE HEGSETH WAS A FOX NEWS PERSONALITY, appearing as a political commentator and weekend co-host of Fox and Friends. It would be three-anda-half years until he would become a household name across the United States as the nominee for Secretary of Defense. His email to the Monterey Police Department’s records supervisor at the time went unnoticed by the press. “My name is Pete Hegseth, and I am personally requesting that the files related to my case #YG1705129 be emailed to me.” He attached a copy of his New Jersey driver’s license to verify his identity, but it was not needed. In California, police reports generally are not treated as disclosable records no matter who is doing the asking, even the alleged victim or perpetrator of a crime; they are exempt from the California Public Records Act. But for reasons that remain unknown because of a citywide policy not to speak about the matter, Monterey city officials agreed to release a redacted copy of the 2017 police report to Hegseth. It details their investigation into allegations from a woman, identified as Jane Doe, that Hegseth raped her in his hotel room at the Hyatt in 2017. Hegseth later told members of the U.S. Senate that he paid Jane Doe $50,000 in a nondisclosure agreement regarding the incident. Back in 2017, the Monterey Police Department forwarded its findings to the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office, which declined to file charges against Hegseth. It must have seemed, four years later, that the whole episode might disappear. But after Donald Trump was elected for a second term as president of the United States and announced his intention to nominate Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, the Army veteran faced renewed scrutiny. On Nov. 14, Vanity Fair first reported that Hegseth had been investigated for an alleged sexual assault in Monterey in 2017. The media inquiries started coming, by the dozen. Reporters from national outlets called the city manager’s office and the police department, and stopped by in person. The city issued a press release to confirm the bare-bones facts. “Date, time, and location of occurrence: Between 10/07/2017 at 2359 hours and 10/08/2017 at 0700 hours, 1 Old Golf Course Road,” it offered. “Name/Age of Victim: Confidential.” Beyond that, city officials were firm: Police reports are exempt from the California Public Records Act, so those basics were all the public would get. By Nov. 20, six days after the initial flurry of inquiries, City Attorney Christine Davi realized that the city had already released the police report to Hegseth in 2021. “Therefore, the exemptions claimed in the City’s prior response are not applicable,” she wrote in her analysis. In a Nov. 18 email, Hegseth’s attorney Timothy Parlatore asked the City Attorney not to release the report. “Mr. Hegseth does not consent to the release of this information,” Parlatore wrote. “Mr. Hegseth is not making any requests for copies of documents.” But once a document is released to any member of the public—even if it’s to the future Secretary of Defense, or to the subject of an investigation—it is released to all members of the public. Hegseth is treated no differently than any other individual or organization, including the press. “If an agency voluntarily discloses a record to one person, it has to disclose it to anyone else who asks for it,” says David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition. In this case, “anyone who asks” turned out to be pretty much the entire American press corps. Eventually, it was also the United States Senate. MOST OF WHAT WE KNOW about what happened on Oct. 7-8, 2017 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel and Spa in Monterey comes from Incident Report #YG1705129 completed by Monterey Police Officer Brad Holden five weeks later, on Nov. 16. Hegseth was a keynote speaker at a biannual conference hosted by the California Federation of Republican Women, and was staying at the Hyatt. The woman known as Jane Doe was attending the conference for work, and staying with her family at the hotel. She told police that she didn’t like Hegseth even before she met him, after observing him rubbing women’s legs during the event. When they were introduced in the evening as the afterparty was beginning, she “commented on how she did not appreciate how he treated women,” according to the police report. In text messages exchanged with her husband—screenshots of which are included in the report—she indicated it was the first time she’d heard of Hegseth. “He is a Fox contributor,” she wrote. “Our ladies are drooling over him. He doesn’t look even remotely familiar. But apparently all the women know who he is.” During the afterparty and book signing, she continued texting with her husband, who asked if he should wait to wind their kids down for the night; no, she said, she expected to be out late. Late got later and later. Eventually her husband texted, after falling asleep and then waking up again. “Holy smokes lady…I don’t remember the last time you were socializing at nearly 2:00am,” he wrote. That was shortly after two separate hotel guests called the front desk to complain about a disturbance near the Monterey City Attorney Christine Davi released a redacted version of the police report, drawing extensive coverage in national news outlets. Her office responded to 66 California Public Records Act requests from Nov. 14-Dec. 20, 2024. DANIEL DREIFUSS
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