Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth’s mother reportedly accused him of abusing women years ago. 

The revelation came from a 2018 email that Penelope Hegseth sent her son where she scolded him for displaying a lack of character, particularly because of mistreating women. The email was first reported by The New York Times. 

“On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say … get some help and take an honest look at yourself,” Ms. Hegseth wrote. 

“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 continued. 

In an interview published Friday in NYT, Ms. Hegseth said she sent the email “in anger, with emotion,” when Mr. Hegseth and his second wife, Samantha Hegseth, were going through a bitter divorce. 

Prior to the email, Samantha filed for divorce after Mr. Hegseth impregnated a co-worker, Jennifer Rauchet, an executive producer at Fox News, whom he later married at a Trump golf course. 

Ms. Hegseth said that she disavowed her feelings in the 2018 email to her son and called the publishing of the communication “disgusting.” 

“It is not true. It has never been true,” Ms. Hegseth said. “I know my son. He is a good father, husband.”

The unearthed email comes as Mr. Hegseth readies for confirmation hearings in the GOP-controlled Senate and as questions swirl over a settlement payment he made to a woman who accused him of sexual assault in Monterey, California, an encounter that Mr. Hegseth insisted was consensual and for which he was never charged. 

Mr. Hegseth’s lawyer said that while his client was “visibly intoxicated” at the time of the complaint, the woman was “the aggressor in the encounter.” The quiet settlement payment for an undisclosed amount was made out of fear that Mr. Hegseth would lose his job as a weekend host for “Fox & Friends.” 

No Republican senators have publicly expressed that they would not support Mr. Hegseth through the confirmation process, but the incident could come up during his hearings. 

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for President-elect Donald Trump, said in a statement that NYT was “despicable” for publishing “an out-of-context snippet” of Ms. Hegseth’s exchange with her son and noted that the Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran’s mother “expressed regret for her emotional message and apologized.”

• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.