Pete Hegseth calls her his ‘rock.’
But DailyMail.com can reveal Defense Department staffers have their own nickname for their boss’s wife: ‘Yoko Ono’.
Jennifer Rauchet Hegseth has recently found herself under scrutiny over her informal involvement in her embattled husband’s job overseeing the nearly three million-strong United States military.
The former Fox News producer was revealed to have been looped in on group messages about sensitive military details of a U.S. strike on Houthi rebels in Yemen before it started on March 15, according to a New York Times report published Sunday.
But unlike Hegseth’s younger brother, Phil, and his personal lawyer, Timothy Parlatore – who were also included in the encrypted chat on messaging app Signal – she does not have an official role or government position in the Defense Department.
Rauchet also raised eyebrows last month for tagging along with her husband on two meetings with high-level foreign defense officials, as the Wall Street Journal first reported.
One was a discussion about Ukraine with his foreign counterparts at NATO headquarters in Brussels, and the other, stateside at the Pentagon with the UK’s two top defense officials about the Trump administration’s decision to stop sharing military intelligence with Ukraine.
It is believed to be unprecedented for defense secretaries to include spouses or any family members in conversations about military strategy, especially those involving details requiring the kind of high-level security clearance that Rauchet doesn’t have.
Meanwhile, two Defense Department sources told DailyMail.com on Monday that the missus – who, public records show, has an email address referring to herself as ‘angeleyes’ – has established an outsized presence at the Pentagon.
One of the insiders who spoke to DailyMail.com said Hegseth relies on her to prepare and supervise him just like she did beyond the scenes on Fox News, and to fill a more personal need to keep his sobriety from slipping, eyes from wandering and pants zipped.
Both said Rauchet has attended meetings during which she has been seen taking notes and photos.
On days when she is not physically accompanying her husband, one said she is apprised of details about his schedule.
And on at least one occasion, the other added, she has urged the DoD’s public relations team to include more about his military service and family values in news releases.
‘I’m sure she’s worried about his infidelity and drinking, but she’s also involved in the shaping of his public image,’ one source said.
‘She’s like his parole officer and PR agent all at once.’
The other likened Rauchet to Yoko Ono, the wife of late Beatles star John Lennon, known for being fiercely protective and controlling of the narrative around her husband.
‘She is a human leash,’ the insider said.
Hegseth’s need for discipline is nothing new.
His first marriage to his high school sweetheart Meredith Schwarz ended with her claims that he serially cheated on her, including with Samantha Deering, the woman he married soon after and with whom he had three children.
That second marriage then ended after Hegseth hooked up with Rauchet, a producer on Fox & Friends.
She, too, was married at the time – to real estate executive Dennis Rauchet, with whom she has three kids.
She got pregnant with Hegseth’s baby soon after he transitioned from making frequent appearances on the show to co-hosting it in 2017.
The daughter they share, Gwen, was born shortly before Hegseth was accused of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman while attending a Republican women’s conference in October of that year.
A police report in Monterey, California, shows that his accuser was having champagne with co-workers when things got ‘fuzzy’ and she later found herself in a room with Hegseth.
Although he claimed the encounter was consensual and no criminal charges were filed, he decided to pay the woman $50,000 rather than fight her allegations in court.
He failed to disclose that confidentiality agreement last fall to then President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team.
It was revealed that, shortly after Rauchet gave birth to Gwen, while Hegseth was still married to Deering and being accused of sexual assault, his own mother called him ‘despicable.’
In an April 2018 email to her son that was leaked last year to the New York Times, Penelope Hegseth wrote: ‘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.’
Penelope later recanted, saying she wrote the letter ‘in anger’. She has since called her son a good father and husband.
Apparently undaunted by public – and private – family dramas, Hegseth and Rauchet married at one of Donald Trump’s country clubs in 2019 with their daughter, Gwen, and six young children from their previous marriages in attendance.
Records show the couple bought an 8,842-square foot house with seven baths and a five-car garage north of Nashville. A real estate site estimates the ranch is currently worth $3.5million.
Both prone to raving about each other on social media, he has referred to her as his ‘rock,’ and she to him as her ‘cowboy.’
‘Happy Anniversary to my EVERYTHING. Blessed to call him husband and father,’ she posted on Instagram in 2023.
‘You are more beautiful, purposeful and wonderful than anyone I’ve ever met. I thank God every day for gracing my life with your soul,’ he posted on her birthday that same year.
Rauchet sat stone-faced, yet steadfastly behind him in January during confirmation hearings in which he was questioned about, among other things, his anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQ and anti-diversity beliefs and record of public drunkenness and allegations of womanizing and sexual assault
One of DailyMail.com’s sources said Hegseth made it immediately clear after his narrow Senate confirmation that his personal circle would play a role in the Defense Department, where many military careerists are critical of his agenda to end the war in Ukraine, nix diversity efforts, prohibit women from combat roles, support travel bans and deportations, pardon military members for war crimes and pursue what he sees as a Christian mission.
Hegseth has been relying on Parlatore, his personal attorney whom he has brought on as a special aide at the Pentagon, to keep him out of legal trouble.
And he has recruited his brother, conservative podcast producer Phil Hegseth, as a ‘special advisor’ to keep him on point politically and with the press.
Phil is believed to be at least partly responsible for using Signal to discuss deeply classified information, and for accidentally including The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg on a separate group chat about the strike on Houthis in March.
Still, it is less clear what purpose Rauchet serves by coming to work with her husband and why she would need to take part in high-level meetings or know about the strike in Yemen.
‘Both are benefitting from the arrangement,’ the source said.
The couple has a pattern of deflecting specific criticisms by blanketly slamming liberals.
‘Your agenda is illegals, trans & DEI – all of which are no longer allowed @ DoD,’ Hegseth wrote to Democrats on Sunday after Democrats gloated about news of yet another questionable group chat.
His message echoed his wife’s post ignoring the litany of scandals he was being questioned about during his confirmation process.
‘They won’t stop with Pete. It’s not him they’re after. It’s your values. We won’t back down. Psalm 27,’ Rauchet posted for her conservative Instagram followers in December.
Standing so closely by her man could backfire this time around.
Although Trump has publicly downplayed concerns about Hegseth’s most recent group chat scandal as ‘a waste of time,’ some news outlets have reported that White House aides are looking for a new defense secretary.