Hegseth Attorney’s Dual Roles Trip Conflict Of Interest Alarms

Tim Parlatore is a personal attorney and top adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. At the same time, he’s suing the Navy and defending private clients against the U.S. government.

Parlatore, who represented Donald Trump in a criminal case two years ago and rejoined the Navy Reserve in March to aid Hegseth, was recently tapped to coordinate the leak investigation that led to chaos at the Pentagon. The probe was publicly tied to the firings of top advisers and preceded further revelations that Hegseth was careless with classified information. Parlatore was also reportedly in the Signal group with Hegseth’s wife and brother in which the Defense secretary shared details of a strike on Yemen.

But despite Parlatore’s deep involvement at the Pentagon, he is pursuing litigation against the Navy. A review of federal court records shows Parlatore listed as an attorney on 11 cases — though a few appear to be dormant and not all involve the U.S. government. Often his clients are retired military personnel.

The business of Washington is built on government officials leaving their jobs to trade access for private clients and using their connections to achieve client goals. While Parlatore insists his arrangement is above board, it’s highly unusual for a sitting top adviser for a Cabinet secretary to be working in the government while at the same time representing clients suing the government, or working for clients as they fight off the feds.

That tension will be on display in federal court in Washington next week, as Parlatore — wearing his private lawyer hat — leads the defense of retired four-star Adm. Robert Burke against corruption charges. At the trial set to open Tuesday, the Justice Department will seek to prove that Burke, once the Navy’s second-highest-ranking officer, arranged a lucrative contract for a workforce training firm in exchange for a job he took at the company after leaving the Navy.

That means Parlatore is likely to be cross-examining high-level Navy witnesses who know of his close ties with Hegseth and in-uniform responsibility for legal matters of keen interest to the secretary.

And while Parlatore signed up Burke before Trump won last fall’s election, Parlatore’s new, dual role could allow him to capitalize on his ties to Hegseth and his role in the secretary’s office, legal experts say.

“It’s a great advertising possibility that Parlatore has: Take me to be your attorney because I’ve got unusual access,” said former Air Force lawyer and judge Joshua Kastenberg, now a law professor at the University of New Mexico.

“Tim’s business is built around representing service members who are in the military justice system,” said a person who has worked with Parlatore at the Pentagon. “So being close to the secretary and being in his front office provides him an advantage in that business.” This person and two others — one who has worked with Parlatore, as well as a former defense official — were granted anonymity for fear of retribution.

Parlatore said he isn’t marketing himself that way and noted that on his website, he doesn’t mention his work for Hegseth or the fact he’s currently in the Navy Reserve. He said he presents himself “as an attorney who wins cases, and I’ve been winning cases long before I had a client nominated to be the secretary of Defense.”

“The government should be more concerned about my cross-examination skills, not my Navy Reserve duty,” he added. “When a potential client has inquired about using my political connections to benefit their case, I’ve rejected the representations because I’m not selling political influence. I’m selling legal skill. I never have and I never will talk about any political connections or my role for Secretary Hegseth in connection with any potential client.”

Spokespeople for the Defense Department didn’t respond to requests for comment.

A 2002 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Parlatore was recommissioned a few months ago as a Navy Reserve officer, with Hegseth swearing him in and Parlatore posting a photo of the ceremony. After that, he started coming into the office numerous days a week, much more frequently than typical reservists, according to the two people who have worked with Parlatore at the Pentagon. Early in Hegseth’s tenure, Parlatore was on virtual calls with the Defense secretary and his core team, and Parlatore has been in numerous meetings with senior staff after his recommissioning, according to the same people and the former defense official.

Parlatore’s frequent presence in the Defense secretary’s office has raised concerns internally, especially since he does not have top-secret clearance, according to the people who have worked with Parlatore. Parlatore said he’s in the process of getting top-secret clearance.

“When he got recommissioned and they wanted to bring him into the building, they couldn’t give him an office in a SCIF,” or area for viewing classified documents, because he didn’t have a top-secret clearance, said one of the people who has worked with Parlatore.

Charlie Young, the acting general counsel of the Pentagon, was uncomfortable with the arrangement, according to the other person who worked with Parlatore. The former defense official said Young asked a number of questions about Parlatore’s role advising Hegseth and what it would entail.

Young declined to comment.

Among his cases, Parlatore represents former Navy Vice Adm. Thomas Rowden in a Freedom of Information Act suit in which he’s trying to coax the government to release more records about collisions of Navy ships that led to his client’s demotion.

During a hearing last month in the Burke case, a prosecutor raised Parlatore’s ongoing work for the Defense Department as a “potential conflict” and asked the judge to make sure Burke understood the two hats his attorney is wearing.

“We just need to make sure the defendant is aware … that his attorney has a job with the Navy and this trial will involve multiple witnesses from the Navy and involves allegations of criminal conduct while [Burke] was employed by the Navy,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca Ross told U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, according to a court transcript. “We’d like to make sure that the defendant won’t raise it, to preserve everything on appeal.”

Parlatore said he saw no issue. “I don’t know what the conflict would be. I’m in the Navy Reserves, as many attorneys are,” the lawyer said. “I’ve tried many cases back when I was a Navy reservist before, including … in military courts, where I cross-examined people who were very much higher-ranking than me at the time.”

Questioned by the judge, Burke said he was fine with the arrangement. “I have no concerns,” the retired admiral said.

McFadden, a Trump appointee, later said he didn’t view the situation as a conflict and that, in any event, Burke understood Parlatore’s dual role.

However, during the discussion no one mentioned to McFadden that Parlatore is a top adviser to Hegseth who has represented him personally for almost eight years, including as he fought a sexual assault allegation during his confirmation process.

Jeff Hauser, founder and executive director of the watchdog group Revolving Door Project, criticized Parlatore’s dual role and said America’s adversarial judicial process is called into question when the attorney on the other side of the government has “incredible juice within the government.”

While he noted that the arrangement “might be narrowly permissible under current law,” he added: “What is the government attorney on the other side to think if they are up against somebody who helps set Defense Department policy and on whom the Secretary of Defense personally relies?” 

Parlatore, the founder and managing partner of Parlatore Law Group, gained notice as one of Trump’s lawyers in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents and Jan. 6 Capitol attack cases. Trump was accused of holding reams of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, and Parlatore was on the legal team representing Trump as he faced down special counsel Jack Smith. Parlatore eventually quit amid infighting on Trump’s legal team.

Several legal experts consulted by POLITICO expressed concern about Parlatore’s arrangement, although they also said it may not or would not amount to a formal conflict of interest under legal ethics rules.

“It doesn’t quite pass the smell test,” Kastenberg said, noting the potential for witnesses to try to “curry some favor” by shading their recollections. But he also said: “It’s not the role of the courts to bust an attorney-client relationship, unless there’s an actual conflict that hasn’t been waived or wouldn’t be waivable.”

“It doesn’t look good,” added Eugene Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale Law School.

Kathleen Clark, a professor of legal ethics at Washington University, said the prosecutors in the Burke case should be the most concerned, not Burke. She envisioned a potential scenario in which witnesses for the government were cowed by Parlatore’s high-level Defense Department connections.

“The glaring conflict of interest in this case is the one for the government,” she said.

Parlatore said in an interview that his work as an attorney and top Pentagon adviser is not problematic because there are clear conflict of interest rules that apply to reservists that are different from active duty or full-time government employees.

“The Navy Reserves provides a fantastic opportunity for me to return to serving my country while also maintaining a busy civilian private practice,” Parlatore added.

In a post on X after joining Hegseth’s office, Parlatore said he “intentionally declined to take a full-time position because I do not want this to create any conflicts” and that his Pentagon job is “a part-time Reserve position.”

Parlatore has also represented servicemembers in court-martial proceedings, including getting former Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher acquitted of a murder charge in a high-profile war crimes case.

In his Pentagon role, Parlatore has stayed busy as Hegseth has faced numerous controversies, including trying to find the source of leaks on matters including military operational plans for the Panama Canal and Elon Musk’s controversial visit to the Pentagon.

Former Hegseth chief of staff Joe Kasper considered hiring an outside entity, such as another government agency or private company, to manage the leak investigation, according to the former defense official. But in the end, Kasper told Parlatore to take over the supervision of the investigation because of Parlatore’s experience with Trump’s classified documents case. Kasper also told Parlatore that since he was not at the Pentagon at the time of the leaks, he wasn’t a potential suspect so he was in a good position to supervise the investigation, according to the former official.

Besides the leak probe, Parlatore has been discussed inside the Pentagon to potentially do a comprehensive review of how investigative processes work for adjudicating criminal matters for personnel and readiness matters involving the services, according to one of the people who worked with Parlatore and the former official.