The New Yorker magazine published an article on Monday which accused secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth of heavy drinking and other inappropriate behavior during his time as head of Concerned Veterans for America (CVA).

However, a fellow veteran who worked with Hegseth at CVA maintains that President-elect Donald Trump's decision to nominate Hegseth has been vindicated. 

Hegseth accused of trying to get on stage at a strip club

The New Yorker cited a whistleblower who claimed to have observed Hegseth "being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity."

The whistleblower alleged that Hegseth's intoxication was at times so pronounced that he had "to be carried out of the organization's events."

Those assertions appear in a seven-page internal CVA report which included testimony from multiple figures who worked at CVA.

In one instance, a drunken Hegseth is said to have been forcibly prevented from climbing on stage at a Louisiana strip club and dancing alongside the women there.

Hegseth's work praised by fellow veteran

Meanwhile, Breitbart noted that Hegseth was defended in a statement by Army veteran Sam Rogers, who worked for CVA as an employee and a volunteer.

"When you do grassroots advocacy work you meet people where they are, sometimes it’s a church, sometimes it's a bar, sometimes it’s a hospital," Rogers stressed.

"When I reached out to my VA hospital from my third Afghanistan tour and asked for a counseling appointment over mid-tour leave, I was told they were scheduling 6-9 months out and that I should call back after my deployment," he recalled.

"Pete Hegseth led the organization that ultimately secured the most significant veteran healthcare reforms in my lifetime that kept many veterans from suffering similar — though Joe Biden has aggressively undone some of that work on behalf of the VA’s labor union," Rogers continued.

"Pete's work got me into public policy advocacy work and showed a real third way for veterans who wanted to see change in politics," he went on to add.

Hegseth admitted to struggling with alcohol after serving overseas

Rogers concluded by saying, "He has far more in common with the shared experiences of regular troops than the retired generals sitting on defense boards making money off of the broken systems they perpetuated."

For his part, Hegseth acknowledged in a 2022 interview with Reserve & National Guard Magazine that he struggled with alcohol after serving in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I drank a lot trying to process what I had been through while dealing with a civilian world that frankly just didn’t seem to care," Hegseth told the publication.