Hegseth’s legal fixer at the center of Pentagon’s new media restrictions
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bid to impose sweeping restrictions on journalists’ ability to report at the Pentagon was orchestrated with advice from his longtime personal lawyer, whose role on Hegseth’s staff has troubled some defense officials.
Tim Parlatore’s dual status as a mid-ranking military officer and legal fixer for Hegseth has attracted scrutiny internally among other officials, some of whom are leery of the influence he wields, people familiar with the matter said. He was integral in shaping the new media restrictions set to take effect this week, according to people familiar with the matter and a draft of the policy obtained by The Washington Post.
The 21-page policy requires credentialed reporters who sign the document to acknowledge they understand Hegseth’s view that by requesting any information—including unclassified material—that has not been preapproved for release by the Pentagon, they are “soliciting or encouraging government employees to break the law.” Such action, the policy claims, “falls outside the scope” of “newsgathering activities” protected by federal law. Journalists who do not sign must leave the building by Wednesday evening.
The Washington Post is among a number of news organizations, spanning the ideological spectrum, that have declined to sign the new rules. Many have cited the proposed changes’ infringement on the media’s First Amendment protections.
Pentagon officials anticipate one or more media outlets may challenge Hegseth’s policy in court, said people familiar with the matter, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal conversations.
Parlatore, 46, joined Hegseth’s staff in March, upon commissioning into the Navy Reserve. He arrived shortly before Hegseth fired three senior political appointees in April, shrinking a small group of senior advisers he trusted even more, people familiar with the matter said. The part-time arrangement allows Parlatore to remain involved in his private practice - work that included representing Hegseth when the former Fox News personality was accused of sexual assault - while working behind the scenes in uniform, in an ostensibly nonpartisan military role, to shape policy and carry out the defense secretary’s directives.
People familiar with Parlatore’s actions describe him as calculating and brash, at times angering others on Hegseth’s team. He uses a desk in the defense secretary’s front-office suite, and has outlasted several other senior aides who have been either fired or marginalized during a months-long period of infighting and instability among the secretary’s brain trust. Parlatore’s sway with leadership far exceeds his rank, Navy commander, a dynamic that has made some officials uncomfortable, people familiar with the situation said.
“This guy is an officer, who also wears a civilian hat, who is also representing the secretary, who also is in the secretary’s front office, who also still has a private law firm,” one person said. “It’s like, who is he representing here?”
Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement that Parlatore is a special adviser to Hegseth and “has extensive legal experience regarding First Amendment cases and press freedom.” Kingsley Wilson, a spokeswoman for the department, declined to answer additional questions about Parlatore’s activities on Hegseth’s behalf.
Parlatore’s involvement in a number of legal issues has unsettled some in the Defense Department’s Office of General Counsel in particular, whose lawyers advise the defense secretary and other senior officials. In private, some have voiced concerns to other defense officials about his influence and potential conflicts of interest, though it is unclear if anyone has raised a formal complaint. That anxiety, detailed by Politico in May, has endured throughout Hegseth’s tumultuous nine months in office, people familiar with the matter said.
In a phone interview, Parlatore justified the new media restrictions as an essential step to shore up information security. He also defended his other work on behalf of Hegseth and his standing more broadly within the department, saying there are well-established conflict-of-interest guidelines that he follows. No one in the general counsel’s office, he said, has ever raised any concerns to him about how he navigates his civilian and military careers.
“One of the tremendous benefits of being a reservist is the ability to bring in outside experience, and I have a lot of experience in a lot of areas that no active-duty [lawyer] or career attorney in the general counsel’s office could possibly provide,” Parlatore said. “So I do get called upon on various nonroutine matters.”
Parlatore said he is not actively representing the defense secretary in a civilian capacity, but does usually “maintain long-term relationships with clients like that.”
Parlatore played a leading role in Hegseth’s use of polygraph tests to scrutinize officials suspected of disclosing to the news media embarrassing details about the dysfunction among the secretary’s senior aides, several people familiar with the matter said. The practice fostered resentment among staff and eventually faced scrutiny at the White House after a complaint from a senior political appointee, Patrick Weaver.
While Parlatore has downplayed the significance of the issue, saying polygraph tests are routinely used in government, a White House representative instructed Hegseth’s team to stop and Parlatore’s reputation took a hit internally, people familiar with the matter said. Weaver did not respond to questions about the issue. The White House referred questions to the Pentagon.
Parlatore also has interfaced with the Defense Department Office of Inspector General as its investigators conducted a review of how Hegseth and his senior aides handled sensitive information in what has become known as the Signalgate affair, people familiar with the matter said. The inspector general’s findings are expected to address how and why the defense secretary—or someone acting on his behalf—divulged information over the unclassified chat app Signal that derived from a classified email detailing a U.S. bombing operation in Yemen.
Parlatore called his desire to serve on the defense secretary’s team “multifaceted” and said he thinks he can offer a lot to the military based on his background as a criminal defense attorney. Beyond Hegseth, he has taken on a number of high-profile clients, including accused mobsters, and, for a time, President Donald Trump, as he faced prosecution by the Justice Department in a case scrutinizing his handling of classified documents.
“I’m a lawyer, and I represent people across the political spectrum,” Parlatore said. “Everyone is entitled to a defense—whether you agree with it or not.”
The client list
Parlatore grew up as Timothy Payne in the New Jersey suburbs of New York City and graduated from the Naval Academy in 2002. His time in the service included an active-duty stint as a surface warfare officer on the USS Normandy and time in the Navy Reserve overseeing a small military police unit in Italy.
He legally changed his last name to his mother’s maiden name in 2005, around the time he left active duty, according to a legal petition he filed in 2014. He told The Post he did so because he disliked his last name and his departure from the active-duty Navy marked a “clean breaking point.”
He was inspired to pursue a legal career in part by observing the “legends” who served in criminal defense during the “heyday of organized crime,” Parlatore told a podcast in 2020.
Among those Parlatore has represented are Anthony “Skinny” Santoro, described by prosecutors as a member of the Bonanno crime family, and Bruce Cutler, an attorney who won acquittals on behalf of John Gotti, the former head of the Gambino mafia. Parlatore, who also was legal partners with Cutler, represented him in a misdemeanor assault case in which Cutler was accused of punching another lawyer. The charges were dismissed. Cutler died this month.
Also among Parlatore’s clients was Bernard Kerik, the New York Police Department commissioner during 9/11 who later pleaded guilty to tax evasion. Kerik, who received a pardon from Trump in 2020, died earlier this year.
A few years later, he was retained by Hegseth after a woman accused him of sexually assaulting her in 2017. Hegseth paid the woman $50,000 - a revelation that surfaced late last year after Trump selected Hegseth for defense secretary. Hegseth has maintained his innocence, while Parlatore accused the woman of being the “aggressor” that night in a statement to The Post last year.
The scandal nearly derailed Hegseth’s nomination and left him embittered toward the journalists who chronicled his bruising path to confirmation, people familiar with the matter said.
The case that elevated Parlatore to national prominence was that of Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who in 2018 was charged with murder and other crimes in connection with a combat deployment.
Gallagher, in a phone interview, said Parlatore took over his case after Kerik called Gallagher’s wife and offered to help. The retired SEAL said he found comfort in the idea that his lawyer had served in the Navy but not “in the system” as a military attorney.
Parlatore disputed the charges against Gallagher, and spoke out in the news media to portray the prosecution as sloppy and overzealous. Gallagher was acquitted of most of the serious charges but convicted of posing for photos with the remains of a slain militant. The trial received significant attention from Hegseth, who from his pulpit as a Fox News personality compelled Trump to intervene and reverse the Navy’s decision to demote Gallagher.
“He fought like a bulldog the whole time - and he was not afraid to call out lies and corruption,” Gallagher said of Parlatore.
Gallagher acknowledged that his case “got political.” He said he is glad Hegseth, 45, is defense secretary but thinks he is “young” and benefits from having someone on hand like Parlatore “who has beat the system.”
Parlatore became an attorney for Trump in 2022, but had a falling out with another of Trump’s lawyers, Boris Epshteyn, and departed the case, people familiar with the matter said. In interviews, Parlatore later blamed Epshteyn for hindering his access to Trump, and putting him and other Trump attorneys at a disadvantage while dealing with prosecutors.
Parlatore told The Post he did not want to talk about his disagreement with Epshteyn, but disputed that he had problems with other lawyers who’ve represented Trump.
Epshteyn did not respond to requests for comment.
Also among those close to the administration who have clashed with Parlatore is political consultant Arthur Schwartz, who has objected to some of Parlatore’s actions on behalf of Hegseth - including the polygraph tests, people familiar with the matter said. Schwartz, who assisted with Hegseth’s confirmation, acknowledged having issues with Parlatore but declined to say why when contacted by a Post reporter.
“As much as I dislike Tim,” he said, “I dislike you more.”
Parlatore, informed of Schwartz’s remark, laughed and declined to comment.
The media restrictions
Constitutional scholars - including some generally supportive of the Trump administration - have labeled Hegseth’s media restrictions an assault on the First Amendment. Opponents have characterized his pursuit as an attempt to evade accountability.
The Pentagon Press Association (PPA), which represents journalists credentialed to work there, called the policy “an unprecedented message of intimidation.” It has urged Pentagon leaders to reconsider, saying the policy requires reporters to hand in their badges or accept a policy that “gags Pentagon employees and threatens retaliation against reporters who seek out information that has not been pre-approved for release.”
Hegseth has scoffed at such concerns, and his team has claimed the department is still committed to transparency.
The PPA has noted that the new policy devotes significant attention to restricting reporting on “controlled unclassified information,” a vast category that “does not meet the criteria for classification but must still be protected,” according to the Defense Department’s website. The policy claims that the First Amendment “does not permit journalists to solicit government employees to violate the law by providing confidential government information.”
The new restrictions also warn vaguely that service members may be prosecuted for releasing “non-public information” to journalists and state that credentialed reporters posting “public advertisements” online seeking tips—a common practice—is grounds for revocation of a Pentagon badge.
On Fox News recently, Jonathan Turley, a First Amendment scholar who has frequently spoken out in defense of Trump, called the new rules essentially “limitless” and warned that the Pentagon appeared poised to “create a stranglehold on the free press.”
Parlatore disputed any suggestion that the new media policy is an attempt to choke off scrutiny of Hegseth’s missteps in the job. “It has nothing to do with embarrassing the secretary,” he said. “That’s a talking point that people have raised, but this is purely focused on preventing criminal activity.”
Hegseth, appearing with Trump at the White House on Tuesday, falsely stated that journalists once could go “pretty much anywhere in the Pentagon” and that the building is “the most classified area in the world.” Reporters have long been restricted to unclassified parts of the building, which is regularly visited by tourists and foreign military officers as well.
Trump appeared to back Hegseth’s decision, saying the defense secretary finds the news media disruptive, and suggested America’s generals are “not necessarily good” at dealing with the press and could make mistakes.
Tara Copp, Alex Horton, Scott Nover and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.
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