The family dynamics of Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, have come to light after an email from his mother criticizing her son for his treatment of women and calling him a “woman abuser” was leaked to a newspaper had leaked.

In a 2018 email, Penelope Hegseth accused her son of regularly abusing women and showing lack of character.

“You abuse women – that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for men who belittle, lie, cheat, sleep around and abuse women for his own power and ego,” Penelope Hegseth wrote in the email she sent received the New York Times.

“You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it hurts me and I’m embarrassed to say it, but it’s the sad, sad truth,” she added, advising her son to “get help “to pick up and take” an honest look at yourself”.

Penelope Hegseth told the New York Times that she wrote the message “in anger and emotion” as her son was going through an acrimonious divorce from his second wife, Samantha, the mother of three of his children, and immediately apologized to her son a second email.

She rejected her previous characterization of her son to the outlet. “That is not true. That was never true,” she said. She added: “I know my son. He’s a good father, husband.” She said publishing the contents of the first email was “disgusting.”

The letter’s release comes ahead of Hegseth’s Senate confirmation hearings after Trump’s inauguration on January 20, which will put the veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan under scrutiny.

Hegseth, a former Fox & Friends host, is already facing questions about payments he reportedly made to a woman who accused him of sexual assault — an encounter he says was consensual.

Hegseth’s attorney said his client was “visibly intoxicated” at the time of the incident at a Monterey, California, hotel in 2017, and that police who investigated the woman’s claim concluded that “the complainant was the attacker at the encounter”.

In a statement, Hegseth’s attorney, Timothy Parlatore, said his client agreed to pay the woman an undisclosed amount because he feared that disclosing the matter “would result in his immediate termination from Fox.”

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told the Times that the outlet was “despicable” for publishing “an out-of-context excerpt” of Penelope Hegseth’s exchange with her son.