Live: Trump’s defense secretary pick Pete Hegseth testifies amid sexual assault claims

Watch live as Donald Trump’s defense secretary pick Pete Hegseth faces questions from the Senate on Tuesday, 14 January.
The former Fox News host, 44, will be grilled about his lack of management experience, his alleged heavy drinking, as well as his previous opposition to women serving in combat roles in the military.

There is also a possibility he could be asked about accusations that he sexually assaulted a woman in a California hotel room in 2017 - something he has denied.

The confirmation hearing comes after the president-elect criticised special counsel Jack Smith over a landmark report that found Mr Trump tried to criminally overturn the 2020 election.

Smith said Trump “inspired his supporters to commit acts of physical violence” in the January 6 Capitol riot and knowingly spread a false narrative about fraud in the 2020 election.

“When it became clear that Mr Trump had lost the election and that lawful means of challenging the election results had failed, he resorted to a series of criminal efforts to retain power”, Smith writes in the 174-page filing.

Those efforts included, he argues, “attempts to induce state officials to ignore true vote counts; to manufacture fraudulent slates of presidential electors in seven states that he had lost; to force Justice Department officials and his own vice president, Michael R Pence, to act in contravention of their oaths and to instead advance Mr Trump’s personal interests”.

Responding, Trump slammed Smith as a “deranged lamebrain prosecutor” in a furious tirade posted to his social media platform TruthSocial.