Header Image- Timothy Parlatore
The defense secretary made his personal lawyer a Navy commander in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. The closer one looks, the worse it appears.
MSNBC
By any fair measure, Pete Hegseth’s new career as secretary of defense got off to a rough start. In the weeks immediately following his confirmation, the former Fox News host faced heckling and protests from military families at U.S. European Command headquarters; he made public comments that even Republicans panned as a “rookie mistake”; and he inexplicably brought a right-wing influencer and conspiracy theorist with him on an overseas trip.
But as the Republican settles in at the Pentagon, conditions are clearly getting worse, not better.
In the wake of his early stumbles, Hegseth has ordered U.S. Cyber Command to halt offensive cyber operations and information operations against Russia. And made indefensible hires. And derailed the Defense Department’s efforts to take the climate crisis seriously. And shuttered the Office of Net Assessment, the Pentagon’s internal think tank for the last half-century that focused on long-term security threats.
But perhaps most important of all, Hegseth fired several key officials, including the top lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force. The removal of three judge advocates general sent shockwaves through the military community and triggered a stunning New York Times op-ed from Frank Kendall, the former secretary of the Air Force.
“Our country is in uncharted territory,” Kendall wrote. “We have an administration that is waging war against the rule of law. The evidence is everywhere. We don’t yet know how far it will go as it seeks to control, reinterpret, rewrite, ignore or defy legal constraints, including the Constitution itself. The replacement of the military JAG leadership is one skirmish in that war, but it’s time for the American people, across the political spectrum, to recognize what is happening. America has a rogue president and a rogue administration, and we need to acknowledge that and respond.”
A couple of weeks after that piece was published, Hegseth began the process of replacing the JAG — and he started by hiring his own personal lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, as a Navy commander in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps.
