‘You’re Playing Gotcha Game’: Hegseth Turns Off The Mic As Jason Crow Blasts Over Crisis In Pentagon

Thank you, Chairman. Mr. Secretary, I want to go in a little bit different direction. Timothy Parlatore served as your private attorney, correct? Correct. And Mr. Parlatore also served as private attorney for President Trump's campaign. I'm not privy to every professional position that he's held. Well, I'll help you out. He did. And you appointed Mr. Parlatore as your senior advisor, correct? He does reserve duty on behalf of the Navy. His title is advisor. You gave him that title, correct? And I would count him as very much an advisor of mine. He travels with you, correct? Tim Palatore has been a long-term friend. He's a great patriot. He travels with you. That's not what I asked. I reclaimed my time. He travels with you, doesn't he? He travels with you, doesn't he? Correct? There's public Instagram that shows this. Just say yes. Yes, of course. Okay. He sits in meetings with you and advises you, doesn't he? He sits in some meetings on occasion. Yeah, well, he maintains a desk in an office in the Pentagon, does he not? I'd have to check. You don't know? It's a big Pentagon. You directly commissioned Mr. Parlatori in the Naval Reserve as a Navy commander in March 2025, did you not? I was very proud to do so. And when you did, because he's a Navy Reserve officer, he didn't have to go through the PPO process, the White House Presidential Personnel Office, right? He wasn't vetted by a White House PPO. Uniformed service members don't get vetted. The answer is yes. He didn't have to be vetted by White House PPO. He didn't go through the Senate confirmation process either, did he? The answer is no. I don't know what you're getting to, but Tim is a fantastic... I'll tell you what I'm getting to. The answer is no, right? He does great work. Okay. He didn't maintain a security clearance when you appointed him as special advisor. Is that right? I'd have to check. You don't know? I mean, anybody that has access to sensitive material is going to have the appropriate clearance. Okay, so when you appointed a special advisor, he had a security clearance? I don't, you're trying to piece together a timeline. No, I'm asking a simple question. One of your special, most sensitive advisors, did he have a security clearance? No, you're playing a gotcha game like you do on TV and everywhere else. You're trying to thread together details that are connected about something else. Clearly you're concerned about my line of questioning, aren't you, Mr. Secretary? Because you know where it's going, don't you? I think you do. So, does Mr. Parlatori represent foreign governments? He has a private law practice, does he not? From what I understand of his law practice, he does a lot of great work for service members in the military and other... He maintains a private law practice. Does he represent foreign governments or foreign persons in that private law practice? Uh, I don't know. You don't know? Somebody who's sitting in on your meetings, a special advisor, you don't know? Uh, does he represent any senior officers who are currently under consideration for promotion by you or your office? The only person that makes determinations about senior officers. Answer the question. Does he represent senior officers who are under consideration for promotion by you? No. I'm the one that makes decisions about choosing. Does he represent them, Mr. Secretary? Does he represent them? He doesn't represent anyone. He's a legal advisor and always has been. But he has clients. Does he not? He's a legal advisor to me on reserve duty, and he always has been, and he does a fantastic job. Is it true that Mr. Parlatori was removed from an investigation by the White House last year? I don't know what you're referring to, but not that I'm aware of. You're not aware of it. Was it true that you were also removed from that same investigation? The answer is yes. No, not that I'm aware of. You're not aware of it. That's interesting. Well, is it true that Mr. Parlatori disparaged President Trump? Uh, I don't know what you're referring to, but no. Is it true that Mr. Parlatore was accused by President Trump and his lawyers of lying? What you're accused of is a cute line of questioning that's going nowhere. Well, it's going somewhere, which is why you're not answering the question. Was it true that he was accused of lying by the president's legal team? I'm not familiar to, you'd have to give me the context of that article, and anybody can blow up a quote and claim it says something, and that's what you're doing, and a little stunt. Secretary Hegseth, what I'm really concerned about is you purport to have unfaltering loyalty to President Trump, and yet you are continuously going back and forth. Oh, you care a lot about President Trump, don't you? This is a huge waste of your five minutes, a huge, huge waste of your five minutes that led nowhere. You are repeatedly going behind President Trump's back, appointing people who he has accused of a line, who the White House has accused of a line, and you are not being honest with President Trump. From South Carolina, Ms. Mace. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I request unanimous consent to enter a number of documents into the record. The first of which is a statement from, the first of which is a statement from Corey Mills, first sergeant, stating his forms and accounts of his military service are falsified. The second document is a picture of Corey Mills wearing a bronze star from 2019 before he ever got a bronze star. The third document is a document that conveys a bronze star medal and his life-saving care to the wounded. And according to the soldiers who were there, they said it never happened, according to the men who were there. The next document is a transcript of a conversation I had with Brigadier General Arnold Gordon Bray, who confirmed that he did not review, did not read, did not physically sign the Form 638 that Mills submitted for a Bronze Star. And to be candid, he said, quote, I didn't look at it. I asked to review the email that he sent to Mills' staff about authorizing his signature for a form he did not review. And he said that he would not share it with me. That's a future subpoena. I would like to enter to record a picture of Corey Mills who says this is the second time he got blown up. But what he wouldn't tell people that the blood on the pant leg in this photo is the blood of Sergeant Ray. It is not Corey Mills' blood. And the same series of photos he shares when he said he was, quote, blown up are images of a Humvee that exploded with. Severe damage, that is not his Humvee. His Humvee purportedly was 50 yards away and suffered no damage and was not blown up. This is a copy of Corey Mills' marriage certificate with a 9-11 imam at a 9-11 mosque, entered for the record and redacted with family members' names redacted and protected. This is a picture of Corey Mills with a purported Russian hooker in Afghanistan, which he, of course, denies. And then last but not least, I would like to request unanimous consent to enter into the record a restraining order Order against Corey Mills for. For dating violence. Thank you. I just buried my father on Thursday, Mr. Chairman. My father died with shrapnel in his body. He had three tours of combat, two in Vietnam, one in 1965 during the coup d'etat of the Dominican Republic. And I take stolen valor seriously because we have men and women in uniform that have given their lives. And an individual that steals the stories of dead soldiers or injured soldiers have no right to serve in this body, let alone on this committee. Um, and so I take it very seriously. I want to thank you, Mr. Secretary and the folks that serve under you in the department of war. As my father lay dying on April 14th, there was only one thing that calmed him down that gave him the courage to pass on to the next life. And that was for me to read stories and testimony from three different soldiers that we didn't have. Family previously didn't have, we've been doing a lot of research on my father's service when he received the Distinguished Service Cross with V-Device in 1968 in Dongzhai. He rescued every man in that battle, in that firefight over a two-day period. He rescued them dead or alive on his own. He stood up to take fire over and over and over again. He called on artillery, heavy artillery, onto his position. Within 100 meters of his position, the man should have never made it out of Vietnam alive. And in fact, his commanding officers... Kept him back in many cases because they thought he was on a suicide mission because he was just so dangerous out there, but he saved the lives of so many soldiers. And so as he was taking his final breaths, I was provided by the department of the army, some testimony of soldiers we didn't have and diagrams and information. It was the one thing that calmed him down so that he could could pass away knowing that he was a war hero and knowing that Jesus loved him. And It changed our family's life, and it changed his life in his last moments, his last breaths, his last hours. And for that, I am so grateful for the ship that you're running at the Pentagon and the Department of War. I have heard from people in the way that you're trying to innovate and trying to change the way we do business there. And I'm glad that you're firing people. There are people there that are getting in your way. They need to go. And the efficiencies that you want to bring, whether it's shipbuilding, whether it's cyber, whether it's AI, whether it's public-private partnerships, we have never seen a secretary at the Department of War who has been as innovative as you have. So I can't say enough. Good things about you right now. I was impressed. I was concerned about troops on the ground in Iran early on. And I was impressed with where we are today, how those soldiers were evacuated that were that gotten that flight that crashed. But everything I have seen, you have surpassed all of my expectations. And I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. And God bless you.