Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez delivered a low blow Wednesday by questioning whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was drunk when he texted details about the Houthi strike in the now-infamous leaked Signal chat.
Hegseth has vehemently denied struggling with alcohol — and even promised to not drink while serving as the head of the Pentagon — but Gomez took the cheap shot anyways.
“The main person who was involved in this thread that a lot of people want to talk to is Secretary of Defense Hegseth, and a lot of questions were brought up regarding his drinking habits in his confirmation hearing,” Gomez said as he began to question Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard at a House Intelligence Committee hearing.
“To your knowledge, do you know whether Pete Hegseth had been drinking before he leaked classified information?”
“I don’t have any knowledge of Secretary Hegseth’s personal habits,” she replied.
Seated next to her, CIA director John Ratcliffe briefly rolled his eyes and grew visibly irritated at Gomez’s question when it was his turn to answer.
“No, I’m going to answer that. I think that’s an offensive line of questioning. The answer is no,” he defiantly fired back. “You don’t want to focus on the good work that the CIA is doing that the intelligence community [is doing].”
Gomez quickly cut Ratcliffe off and reclaimed his time.
The California Democrat then peddled dubious accusations that Hegseth had drank alcohol during a press conference after a NATO meeting in February.
There is no evidence that Hegseth consumed alcohol during that trip.
Viral images that online showed Hegseth drinking a brown-tinted substance at the press conference podium, but higher quality video of the presser showed that the liquid was actually clear.
Here is the latest on the Yemen Signal group-chat:
“This was a question that’s on the tops of minds of every American. He stood in front of a podium in Europe, holding a drink,” Gomez said, spewing the dubious claim. “So, of course, we want to know if his performance was compromised.”
“Was his performance compromised because of a successful strike?” Ratcliffe clapped back.
Ratcliffe was later given time to respond to Gomez’s line of questioning.
“We’re getting questions about whether or not someone has drinking habits,” he said. “And, you know, I just wish in an annual threats hearing, where the American people want to hear about threats, that’s what we would be talking about.”
During the run-up to his confirmation, Hegseth had faced accusations, including from nearly a dozen anonymous former co-workers claiming they had concerns, about his drinking habits while he worked at Fox News.
A slew of Fox News anchors and other employees who worked with Hegseth had publicly denied he had a problem with alcohol.
Additionally, a woman late last year accused Hegseth of sexual assault.
His lawyer told The Post last year that the soon-to-be Pentagon boss “had way too many drinks” during the night of the encounter and that “this woman who was sober took advantage of him, and she was the aggressor.”
The Post reached out to a Gomez rep for comment.
Wednesday’s hearing before the House Intelligence Committee was intended to discuss the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s annual threat assessment report.
But that report got overshadowed by the Signal chat leak in which Hegseth detailed plans to strike Houthi outposts in Yemen earlier this month.
Atlantic magazine editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg had been inadvertently added to the encrypted Signal chat, which featured 18 Trump administration officials including Gabbard, Ratcliffe, Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and others.
Hegseth denied sharing sensitive “war plans” in the text exchange — though more details emerged Wednesday showing his blow-by-blow messages to the rest of the group.
