Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) clashed sharply with secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth over his infidelity and reports of public drunkenness and drunkenness on the job, repeatedly pressing Hegseth on his character and judgment.

Kaine focused on Hegseth’s sexual encounter with a woman at a Republican women’s event in Monterey, Calif., in 2017, which Hegseth tried to dismiss as a “false charge,” though he has previously admitted to what he called a “consensual” sexual encounter.

“At that time, you were still married to your second wife, correct?” Kaine asked. “And you had just fathered a child by a woman who would later become your third wife, correct?”

“Senator, I was falsely charged, fully investigated and completely cleared,” Hegseth asserted.

“So you think you were completely cleared because you committed no crime. That’s your definition of cleared? You had just fathered a child two months before by a woman who was not your wife. I am shocked that you would stand here and say you’re completely cleared and you so casually cheat on a second wife and cheat on the mother of a child who had been born two months before, and you tell us you were completely cleared.

“How is that a complete clear?” Kaine demanded.

Hegseth pushed back by naming his child and calling her a “child of God.”

“And you cheated on the mother of that child less than two months after that daughter was born, didn’t you?” Kaine asked.

“You’ve admitted that you had sex at that hotel in October of 2017. You said it was consensual, isn’t that correct?” he asked, referring to the police report that was filed in Monterrey County at the time.

“You have admitted that you had sex while you were married to wife two after you had just fathered a child by wife three, you’ve admitted that,” Kaine said.

The Virginia senator then asked Hegseth if he had committed a sexual assault and whether that would be disqualifying to serving as secretary of Defense.

“That was a false claim, talking about a hypothetical,” Hegseth responded.

Kaine then asked Hegseth if he had taken oaths in his marriages to remain faithful, just as he would pledge to uphold and defend the Constitution, if confirmed to lead the Pentagon.

Hegseth acknowledged, “I have failed in things in my life and thankfully I’m redeemed by my lord and savior Jesus Christ.”

Kaine pressed harder, asking if the nominee had ever committed an act of physical violence against a spouse.

“Absolutely not,” Hegseth said.

Then Kaine asked if Hegseth agreed that if someone had used violence against a spouse, it would disqualify that person from serving as secretary of Defense.

“Senator, you’re talking about a hypothetical,” Hegseth said.

“I don’t think it’s a hypothetical. Violence against spouses occurs every day and if you as a leader are not capable of saying that physical violence against a spouse should be a disqualifying fact for being secretary [of Defense] of the most powerful nation in the world, you’re demonstrating an astonishing lack of judgment,” Kaine declared.

Next, Kaine moved to the allegations of drunkenness against Hegseth, and made the surprising assertion that Democratic senators have seen the names of people making those claims, even though they are not known publicly.

“They’re not anonymous,” Kaine insisted when Hegseth tried to dismiss the allegations as “all anonymous false claims.”

“One of your colleagues said that you got drunk at an event at a bar and chanted, ‘Kill all Muslims.’ Another colleague, not anonymous, we have this, said you took co-workers to a strip club, you were drunk, you tried to dance with strippers, you had to be held off the stage,” Kaine said.

“One of your employees in that event filed a sexual harassment charge as a result of it,” he said. “Isn’t that the kind of behavior if true would be disqualifying to be secretary of Defense?”

Again, Hegseth claimed: “Anonymous false charges.”

“You claim that this was all anonymous. We have seen records with names attached to all of these including the name of your own mother, so don’t make this into some kind of anonymous press thing. We have seen multiple names of colleagues consistently throughout your career that have talked about your abusive actions,” Kaine said, wrapping up his remarks as Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) interjected to point out that he had run out of question time.