WASHINGTON — Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, was on Capitol Hill on Thursday to meet with Republican senators as a police report detailing 2017 sexual assault allegations was made public.

The meetings came one day after Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman who resigned last week, was holding meetings with GOP senators alongside Vice President-elect JD Vance and on the same day Gaetz announced he was dropping out of consideration to be the next attorney general amid sexual misconduct allegations of his own.

Hegseth has denied any wrongdoing. His his lawyer has said Hegseth paid the woman an unspecified amount in 2023 to avoid a lawsuit. Trump’s team has continued to stand behind Hegseth as the president-elect’s pick to run the U.S. military and key Republican senators publicly affirmed their support on Thursday.

“As far as the media is concerned, it's very simple: the matter was fully investigated and I was completely cleared, and that's where I'm gonna leave it,” Hegseth told members of the media on Thursday after being asked if he sexually assaulted the woman, who has not been publicly identified.

Hegseth was similarly being shepherded by Vance, the Ohio senator, and secured public endorsements from Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin, Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, and Tennessee Sens. Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn. The Trump campaign also touted previous positive remarks about Hegseth’s nomination from Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, Florida Sen. Rick Scott, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, North Carolina Sen. Ted Budd and North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer, though some of those came before the sexual assault allegation became public.

Republicans are expected to hold a 53-seat majority in the Senate in the new year, meaning Trump can afford to lose three votes on any nomination with Vance available to break ties as vice president and Democrats expected to universally vote against the incoming president’s most controversial nominees.

Wicker told a reporter with the Washington Examiner that he did not discuss the sexual assault allegations with Hegseth when they met on Thursday, arguing “no charges were brought by authorities, we only have the press reports.” Hagerty dismissed the allegations as “a he-said, she-said thing” and called it a “shame” that they were being raised at all. And Mullin told reporters at the Capitol that he doesn’t believe Hegseth has any weaknesses as a nominee to lead the Pentagon.  

“Pete Hegseth is a strong nominee to lead the Department of Defense. We had an excellent discussion about the need for America’s military to remain the best in the world,” said Barrasso, the second-ranking Senate Republican, in a statement on Thursday. “Pete pledged that the Pentagon will focus on strength and hard power – not the current administration’s woke political agenda.”

The 22-page police report, made public late on Wednesday by officials in Monterey, Calif., details the woman’s allegations that Hegseth sexually assaulted her in October 2017 after he spoke at a Republican women’s event in the California coastal city around 100 miles south of San Francisco. The woman said Hegseth took her phone, blocked the door of a hotel room and refused to let her leave. She also told police she remembered “saying ‘no’ a lot,” the report said.

Her next memory was of lying on a couch or bed with a bare-chested Hegseth hovering over her, his dog tags dangling, the report states. Hegseth served in the National Guard, rising to the rank of major and earning two Bronze Stars, among other accolades, for his service in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The report cited police interviews with the alleged victim, a nurse who treated her and who was the first to report the alleged assault, a hotel staffer, another woman at the event and Hegseth. The woman helped organize the California Federation of Republican Women gathering at which Hegseth spoke.

A spokeswoman for the Trump transition said Thursday that the “report corroborates” what Hegseth’s legal team has been saying “all along.”

Hegseth faces an unclear path to helming the Department of Defense for reasons beyond the alleged assault. Veterans, critics in the national security industry, Democrats and some Republicans have raised objections to  his relative inexperience, opposition to women serving in combat roles, belief that Islam is at war with the West and Christianity, defense of service members accused of war crimes, and plans to overhaul the military’s leadership and policies.

Ernst, the Iowa Republican, serves on the Armed Services Committee and is the first female combat veteran elected to serve in the Senate. Although she is a Trump loyalist and praised Hegseth’s nomination, she told reporters last week she wanted to clarify Hegseth’s position on women serving in combat roles, according to The Hill. She also said this week that the sexual assault allegation merits “discussion” and said on Thursday she wants to see an FBI background check of Hegseth. She has yet to meet with the nominee. 

The revelations about the alleged sexual assault come as Gaetz stepped aside from his nomination for attorney general in part because of allegations he had sex with a 17-year-old during his time in Congress and paid other women for sex and drugs. Hegseth and Gaetz are not alone among nominees for Trump’s next administration who have been accused of sexual misconduct.

Trump himself has long faced numerous accusations of abusing and mistreating women and was found liable by a jury last year for sexual abuse and defamation of a woman in the 1990s, resulting in a $83 million judgement the president-elect was ordered to pay his accuser. Other nominees for his second administration have also faced allegations for sexual misconduct, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk. 

And Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Education, World Wrestling Entertainment co-founder and former Small Business Administration head Linda McMahon, faces a lawsuit filed in October that alleges she, her husband Vince McMahon and others knowingly enabled sexual exploitation of children by a WWE employee for years.

McMahon denied the allegations through her attorney. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.