Pete Hegseth

In the reporting: Defense secretary who co-signed the Venezuela oil deal, in which the Pentagon is in line for more than a third of the venture, and who signed the memorandum accepting the Qatari Boeing 747-8 as an "unconditional donation."

Last updated Nov. 6, 2026

This page collects what Letters of Junius has published about this person’s public role, and grows as the reporting does. Inclusion is not an allegation of wrongdoing. Where someone has denied or answered a claim, the response appears with it. Each entry links to the original source and to the article it appears in.

The Qatari Boeing 747-8

Reported
During Trump's visit to Doha in May 2025, the emir's government offered the president a Boeing 747-8 to fly as Air Force One. The Pentagon took it on May 21, 2025. In July 2025, Hegseth and Qatar's minister of state for defense affairs signed a memorandum accepting the plane as an "unconditional donation," ABC News reported after reviewing it. Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi concluded that the gift could be conditioned on transferring the plane to Trump's presidential library foundation by Jan. 1, 2029, about three weeks before he leaves office, CBS News reported.
Source: ABC News; CBS News. From: The Sheikhs on Every Side of the Table.
Contested
Taxpayers are covering the refit, which the Air Force says cost less than $400 million and Democratic senators put above $1 billion.
Source: Breaking Defense. From: The Sheikhs on Every Side of the Table.

The Venezuela oil agreement

Reported
On Aug. 30, 2026, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed an 18-page oil agreement with a Venezuelan billionaire, Alejandro Betancourt, ProPublica reported. The fields are run by Betancourt's company, North American Blue Energy Partners. The United States can take 35 percent of the venture's parent company, which is registered in Barbados, through warrants priced at a penny a share, in a transaction a Pentagon office is to carry out.
Source: ProPublica. From: The Same Deal, Made Eight Times.

CNN and the Warner Bros. Discovery sale

Reported
Paramount bid $108 billion for CNN's parent, Warner Bros. Discovery. In March 2026, after CNN reported on the Strait of Hormuz, Hegseth said he hoped David Ellison would get the network. Paramount closed the deal on Oct. 6, 2026.
Source: TheWrap. From: The Sheikhs on Every Side of the Table.

Where this person appears

October 24, 2026

The Sheikhs on Every Side of the Table

Four days before the inauguration, a buyer tied to the UAE’s spy chief paid $500 million for half of the Trump and Witkoff families’ crypto company. In the months that followed, Washington approved the Emirates’ access to America’s most guarded AI chips three times and cleared the family business to enter the U.S. banking system.

October 20, 2026

The Same Deal, Made Eight Times

Since returning to office, Trump has made the same foreign deal at least eight times. Washington uses a ceasefire, sanctions relief or military force to take a cut of a country’s oil, mines or money, while the private side of the deal goes to the president’s donors, his envoys’ partners and the Abu Dhabi sheikh…

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Photo: Chad McNeeley, U.S. Department of Defense, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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