How I Will Make Trump Fire His Ultimate Goon: Rep
One Democratic lawmaker is committed to making Pete Hegseth’s tenure as defense secretary untenable by exposing his “corruption” and “incompetence” to the point where President Donald Trump has to fire him.
Rep. Jason Crow, a five-term legislator from Colorado, said on The Daily Beast Podcast that Hegseth exhibits more than just incompetence. According to Crow, Hegseth should resign and deserves to be impeached. But since neither is likely to happen, he instead believes a flood of bad press will ultimately make the president show Hegseth the door.
Crow, a lawyer and former Army Ranger who fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan, told host Joanna Coles that Hegseth is “worse than incompetent.”
“I think he is a vengeful individual who not just lacks the qualification, but has a meanness to him and a corruption of his heart and soul... that allows him to do things to people and organizations that most normal people would not do,” Crow continued.
On Thursday, Hegseth asserted that the “biggest adversary” to the Iran war is the “reckless naysayers and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans.”
“I think he is an extreme danger, which is why my focus has been getting him fired, basically,” Crow said.
“This man’s not going to resign. He’s just not. I know some people have called for him to be impeached; I would love to have him impeached, and of course, I would pursue that. But we don’t have the votes for that, either. Republicans are simply not going to do that right now, so long as they hold the majority,” he acknowledged. “So what can we do? We can make it so untenable for him and highlight the level of corruption and the incompetence.”
One of the areas in which Crow, who serves on the House Intelligence and Armed Services committees, questioned Hegseth this week was the role of Timothy Parlatore, Hegseth’s former personal attorney. Crow claims that Parlatore poses a conflict of interest because he’s a lawyer who is also a Pentagon adviser.
During the at-times contentious hearing, Crow repeatedly asked whether Parlatore had international clients while advising the Pentagon and Hegseth. Hegseth did not answer.
“The significance of this is you have a man in Tim Parlatore—who used to be Pete Hegseth’s private attorney—who has basically been given a key role in the Department of Defense, and the ability to maintain a private law practice at the same time,” Crow said.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told the Daily Beast: “Nobody knows who Jason Croak is.”
When reached for comment, Parlatore referred the Daily Beast to a five-page letter he sent to Crow on Thursday night, disputing what he said were “multiple inaccurate claims” by the congressman. Parlatore posted the letter to X at 7:25 p.m. EST Thursday; Crow’s podcast appearance occurred at around 11:40 a.m. that morning, so did not include mention of the letter.
“Representative Crow taped this podcast the morning after the hearing—not to seek answers, but to escalate from questions to outright accusations of corruption and threats to national security,” Parlatore told the Daily Beast in a statement.
“Every claim he makes here was addressed in my public letter of April 30, which cited the specific federal statutes and public records that disprove them,” he continued. “He has not responded to that letter. He has not accepted my offer to meet. By his own admission, his goal is to ‘make it so untenable’ for the Secretary that he is forced out—a political campaign to deprive the president of the Cabinet of his choosing because the ordinary constitutional processes won’t deliver the result Representative Crow wants. This is irresponsible.“
“The information that disproved his claims was publicly available before he ever opened his mouth. He either knew his statements were false or made them with reckless disregard for whether they were true,” Parlatore wrote. “That is actual malice. The Speech or Debate Clause may protect what he says in a hearing room. It does not protect what he says on a podcast. Representative Crow should do the responsible thing and retract these false claims.”
In response to Parlatore’s statement to the Daily Beast, a spokesperson for the office of Congressman Crow replied: “Secretary Hegseth testified, under oath, that he didn’t know whether one of his top Pentagon advisers also worked for foreign nations or foreign persons. The conflicts of interest of Mr. Parlatore have been previously publicly reported and well-documented. The American people are fed up with the rampant corruption under the Trump Administration that’s making their lives worse off.”
If fired, Hegseth would be the third Cabinet member to leave the administration involuntarily. Trump fired former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in March, and last month did the same with then-Attorney General Pam Bondi.
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