00:00Thank you, Chairman. Mr. Secretary, I want to go in a little bit different direction.
00:04Timothy Parlatore served as your private attorney, correct?
00:11Correct.
00:12And Mr. Parlatore also served as private attorney for President Trump's campaign, correct?
00:19I'm not privy to every professional position that he's held.
00:23Well, I'll help you out. He did.
00:25And you appointed Mr. Parlatore as your senior advisor, correct?
00:31He does reserve duty on behalf of the Navy.
00:34His title is advisor. You gave him that title, correct?
00:37And I would count on him as very much an advisor of mine.
00:40He travels with you, correct?
00:44Tim Parlatore has been a long-term friend. He's a great patriot.
00:47He travels with you. That's not what I ask. He serves the country.
00:49He travels with you, doesn't he? He travels with you, doesn't he?
00:53Correct?
00:55There's public Instagram that shows this. Just say yes.
00:58Yes, of course.
00:58Okay. He sits in meetings with you and advises you, doesn't he?
01:04He sits in some meetings on occasion.
01:06Yeah, well, he maintains a desk and an office in the Pentagon, does he not?
01:10I'd have to check.
01:12You don't know?
01:14It's a big Pentagon.
01:16You directly commissioned Mr. Parlatore in the Naval Reserve as a Navy commander in March 2025, did you not?
01:23I was very proud to do so.
01:24And when you did, because he's a Navy Reserve officer, he didn't have to go through the PPO process, the
01:31White House Presidential Personnel Office, right?
01:33He wasn't vetted by a White House PPO.
01:36Uniformed service members don't get vetted by a White House PPO.
01:38The answer is yes. He didn't have to be vetted by a White House PPO.
01:41He didn't go through the Senate confirmation process either, did he?
01:46The answer is no.
01:48I don't know what you're getting to, but Tim is a fantastic person.
01:50I'll tell you what I'm getting to. The answer is no, right?
01:53He does great work.
01:54Okay.
01:56He didn't maintain a security clearance when you appointed him as special advisor. Is that right?
02:05I'd have to check.
02:06You don't know?
02:08I mean, anybody that has access to sensitive material is going to have the appropriate clearance.
02:12Okay. So when you appointed a special advisor, he had a security clearance?
02:17I don't. You're trying to piece together a timeline.
02:19No, I'm asking a simple question.
02:20One of your special, most sensitive advisors, did he have a security clearance?
02:23No, you're playing a gotcha game like you do on TV and everywhere else.
02:27You're trying to thread together details that are connected about something else.
02:31Clearly you're concerned about my line of questioning, aren't you, Mr. Secretary?
02:34Because you know where it's going, don't you?
02:36I think you do.
02:39So does Mr. Parlatore represent foreign governments?
02:42He has a private law practice, does he not?
02:46From what I understand of his law practice, he does a lot of great work for service members
02:50in the military and other...
02:51He maintains a private law practice.
02:53Does he represent foreign governments or foreign persons in that private law practice?
02:57I don't know.
02:58You don't know.
02:59Somebody who's sitting in your meetings, a special advisor, you don't know.
03:03Does he represent any senior officers who are currently under consideration for promotion
03:08by you or your office?
03:11The only person that makes determinations about senior officers...
03:16Answer the question.
03:17Does he represent senior officers who are under consideration for promotion by you?
03:21No, I'm the one that makes decisions about choosing...
03:24Does he represent them, Mr. Secretary?
03:26Does he represent them?
03:27He doesn't represent anyone.
03:28He's a legal advisor and always has been.
03:30But he has clients, does he not?
03:32He's a legal advisor to me on reserve duty and he always has been and he does a fantastic
03:36job.
03:36Is it true that Mr. Parlatore was removed...
03:38I reclaimed my time.
03:39Is it true that Mr. Parlatore was removed from an investigation by the White House last
03:43year?
03:44I don't know what you're referring to, but not that I'm aware of.
03:47You're not aware of it.
03:49Was it true that you were also removed from that same investigation?
03:53The answer is yes.
03:54No, not that I'm aware of.
03:55You're not aware of it.
03:56That's interesting.
03:59Well, is it true that Mr. Parlatore disparaged President Trump?
04:06I don't know what you're referring to, but no.
04:07Is it true that Mr. Parlatore was accused by President Trump and his lawyers of lying?
04:15What you're accused of is a cute line of questioning that's going nowhere.
04:19Well, it's going somewhere, which is why you're not answering the question.
04:22Was it true that he was accused of lying by the President's legal team?
04:28I'm not familiar to...
04:30You'd have to give me the...
04:31Well, it's right here.
04:32You want to look at the statement from President Trump's legal team?
04:34Anybody can blow up a quote and claim it says something and that's what you're doing
04:37and a little stunt.
04:38Secretary Hegseth, what I'm really concerned about is you purport to have unfaltering loyalty
04:42to President Trump, and yet you are continuously going...
04:45Oh, you care a lot about President Trump, don't you?
04:47This is a cute waste of your five minutes.
04:49A huge, cute waste of your five minutes that led nowhere.
04:54You are repeatedly going behind the President's back.
04:57The gentleman from Colorado's time.
04:58Go ahead, Mr. Crow.
04:59You are repeatedly going behind President Trump's back, appointing people who he has accused of a line,
05:05who the White House has accused of a line.
05:06The gentleman's time has expired.
05:07And you are not being honest with President Trump.
05:08The gentleman from South Carolina, Ms. Mace.
05:11Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
05:13Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
05:14I request unanimous consent to enter a number of documents into the record.
05:18The first of which is a statement from Corey Mills' first sergeant stating his forms and accounts of his military
05:25service are falsified.
05:27The second document is a picture of Corey Mills wearing a bronze star from 2019 before he ever got a
05:32bronze star.
05:33The third document is a document that conveys a bronze star medal and his life-saving care to the wounded,
05:41and according to the soldiers who were there, they said it never happened, according to the men who were there.
05:46The next document is a transcript of a conversation I had with Brigadier General Arnold Gordon Bray,
05:54who confirmed that he did not review, did not read, did not physically sign the form D, I guess, 638,
06:02form 638,
06:03that Mills submitted for a bronze star.
06:05And to be candid, he said, quote, I didn't look at it.
06:08I asked to review the email that he sent to Mills' staff about authorizing his signature for a form he
06:15did not review.
06:16And he said that he would not share it with me.
06:19That's a future subpoena.
06:21I would like to enter to record a picture of Corey Mills who says this is the second time he
06:24got blown up,
06:25but what he wouldn't tell people that the blood on the pant leg in this photo is the blood of
06:29Sergeant Ray.
06:30It is not Corey Mills' blood.
06:32In the same series of photos he shares when he said he was, quote, blown up,
06:36are images of a Humvee that exploded with severe damage that is not his Humvee.
06:43His Humvee purportedly was 50 yards away and suffered no damage and was not blown up.
06:47This is a copy of Corey Mills' marriage certificate with a 9-11 imam at a 9-11 mosque,
06:53entered for the record and redacted with family members' names redacted and protected.
06:57This is a picture of Corey Mills with a purported Russian hooker in Afghanistan, which he, of course, denies.
07:03And then last but not least, I would like to request unanimous consent to enter into the record
07:08of restraining order against Corey Mills for dating violence.
07:14I just buried my father on Thursday, Mr. Chairman.
07:19My father died with shrapnel in his body.
07:22He had three tours of combat, two in Vietnam, one in 1965 during the coup d'etat of the Dominican
07:28Republic.
07:29And I take stolen valor seriously because we have men and women in uniform that have given their lives.
07:36And an individual that steals the stories of dead soldiers or injured soldiers
07:41have no right to serve in this body, let alone on this committee.
07:46And so I take it very seriously.
07:48I want to thank you, Mr. Secretary, and the folks that serve under you in the Department of War.
07:54As my father lay dying on April 14th, there was only one thing that calmed him down
08:00that gave him the courage to pass on to the next life.
08:03And that was for me to read stories and testimony from three different soldiers that we didn't have,
08:09our family previously didn't have.
08:11We've been doing a lot of research on my father's service when he received the Distinguished Service Cross
08:16with V device in 1968 in Dong Zhai.
08:18He rescued every man in that battle, in that firefight, over a two-day period.
08:24He rescued them dead or alive on his own.
08:27He stood up to take fire over and over and over again.
08:30He called on artillery, heavy artillery, onto his position within 100 meters of his position.
08:36The man should have never made it out of Vietnam alive.
08:38And in fact, his commanding officers kept him back in many cases because they thought he was
08:44on a suicide mission because he was just so dangerous out there.
08:47But he saved the lives of so many soldiers.
08:50And so as he was taking his final breaths, I was provided by the Department of the Army
08:55some testimony of soldiers we didn't have and diagrams and information.
08:59It was the one thing that calmed him down so that he could pass away knowing that he was
09:05a war hero and knowing that Jesus loved him.
09:08And it changed our family's life and it changed his life in his last moments, his last breaths,
09:16his last hours.
09:17And for that, I am so grateful for the ship that you're running at the Pentagon and the
09:22Department of War.
09:22I have heard from people in the way that you're trying to innovate and trying to change the
09:26way we do business there.
09:28And I'm glad that you're firing people.
09:30There are people there that are getting in your way.
09:32They need to go.
09:33And the efficiencies that you want to bring, whether it's shipbuilding, whether it's cyber,
09:37whether it's AI, whether it's public-private partnerships, we have never seen a secretary
09:42at the Department of War who has been as innovative as you have.
09:46So I can't say enough good things about you right now.
09:50I was impressed.
09:51I was concerned about troops on the ground in Iran early on, and I was impressed with
09:55where we are today, how those soldiers were evacuated that got in that flight that crashed.
10:01But everything I have seen, you have surpassed all of my expectations, and I just want to
10:07say thank you from the bottom of my heart.
10:09And God bless you.
