SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — A woman told police she was sexually assaulted in 2017 by Pete Hegseth after he took her phone, blocked the door to a California hotel room and refused to let her leave, according to a detailed investigative report released late Wednesday.

Hegseth, a former Fox News personality and President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, told police at the time that the meeting had been consensual and denied any wrongdoing, according to the report.

News about the allegations appeared last week when local officials released a brief statement confirming that a woman had accused Hegseth of sexual assault in October 2017 after he spoke at a Republican Women’s event in Monterey.

“The matter was fully investigated and I was cleared,” Hegseth told reporters Thursday at the Capitol, where he was meeting with senators to build support for his nomination.

The report does not say that police found the allegations to be false. Police recommended that the case report be forwarded to the Monterey County District Attorney’s Office for review.

Monterey County District Attorney Jeannine M. Pacioni said Thursday that her office declined to file charges in January 2018 because it did not have “proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Tim Palatore, Hegseth’s attorney, has said the woman who made the allegations received an undisclosed sum. 2023 as part of a confidential settlement to quit the threat of what he described as a baseless lawsuit.

The A 22-page police report was released in response to a public records request, offering the first detailed account of what the woman allegedly happened — one that contradicts Hegseth’s version of events. The report cited police interviews with the alleged victim, a nurse who treated her, a hotel employee, another woman at the event and Hegseth.

The woman’s name was not released, and The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually assaulted.

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

Investigators were first alerted to the alleged assault, according to the report, by a nurse who called them after a patient requested a sexual assault investigation. The patient told medical staff that she believed she had been assaulted five days earlier but could not remember much of what had happened. She reported that something may have slipped into her drink before she ended up in the hotel room where she said the assault occurred.

Police collected the unwashed dress and underwear she had worn that night, according to the report.

The woman’s partner, who was staying at the hotel with her, told police he was worried about her that night after she didn’t return to their room. At 2 o’clock he went to the hotel bar, but she was not there. She returned a few hours later and apologized that she “must have fallen asleep”. A few days later, she told him that she had been sexually assaulted.

The woman, who helped organize the California Federation of Republican Women gathering where Hegseth spoke, told police she had watched the TV anchor act inappropriately throughout the night and watched him fondle several women’s thighs. She texted a friend that Hegseth gave off a “sneaky” vibe, according to the report.

After the incident, the woman and others attended an after-party in a hotel suite where she said she confronted Hegseth and told him she “didn’t appreciate the way he treated women,” the report said.

A group of people, including Hegseth and the woman, camped out against the hotel bar. That’s when “things got fuzzy,” the woman told police.

She recalled having a drink at the bar with Hegseth and others, the police report states. She also told police she argued with Hegseth near the hotel pool, an account supported by a hotel employee who was sent to deal with the disturbance and spoke to police, according to the report.

Soon, she told police, she was in a hotel room with Hegseth, who took her phone and blocked the door with his body so she couldn’t leave, according to the report. 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 said. Hegseth served in the National Guard and rose to major.

After Hegseth finished, she remembered him throwing a towel at her and asking if she was “OK,” the report states. She told police that she did not remember how she got back to her own hotel room and had since suffered from nightmares and amnesia.

At the time of the alleged assault, Hegseth, now 44, was going through a divorce from his second wife, with whom he has three children. She filed for divorce after he fathered a child with a Fox News producer who is now his third wife, according to court records and social media posts by Hegseth. His first marriage ended in 2009, also after Hegseth’s infidelity, according to court records.

Hegseth, who joined Fox News as a contributor in 2014 before co-hosting “Fox” & Friends Weekend,” left the network after Trump announced his intention to nominate him.

Hegseth said he attended an after-party and drank beer but no liquor, admitting he was “buzzed” but not drunk.

He said he met the woman at the hotel bar and she led him by the arm back to his hotel room, which surprised him because he had no intention of having sex with her in the first place, the report said.

Hegseth told investigators that the sexual encounter that followed was consensual, adding that he explicitly asked more than once if she was comfortable. Hegseth said this morning that the woman “showed early signs of remorse” and he assured her he would not tell anyone about the encounter.

Hegseth’s attorney said a payment was made to the woman as part of a confidential settlement a few years after the police investigation because Hegseth was concerned that she was prepared to file a lawsuit that he feared could have resulted in his firing from Fox News, where he was a popular host. The lawyer did not want to disclose the amount of the payment.

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Slodysko reported from Washington and Linderman from Baltimore.