Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's choice to be the next Army secretary is being called out by former Trump officials for puffing up his resume — adding to the pile of problems facing Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell.
Parnell, who already has allegations of spousal abuse clouding his future, is now accused of inflating his role in passing a 2018 VA reform bill, Politico's Daniel Lippman reported. Parnell is a Hegseth loyalist whom the Pentagon chief brought on despite his troubled history that led him to drop a Senate bid in Pennsylvania.
His Pentagon biography states "he played a pivotal role in the passage of the Mission Act," a bill meant to expand veterans' health care options that Trump signed into law in 2018. But five former Trump administration officials, along with a current and a former Capitol Hill staffer involved in passing the bill, told Politico that Parnell had "no direct role in it."
One former official put it bluntly: "simply false."
Hegseth defended Parnell in a statement to Politico, saying he [Parnell] "helped draft the bill's language and met with members of Congress" and veterans nationwide to build support for it. Parnell did not respond to Politico's requests for comment, and a Pentagon spokesperson declined to disclose which lawmakers Parnell had met with.
The resume dispute lands on top of Senate Republicans' resistance to Parnell's potential nomination, with GOP senators citing his history of domestic abuse allegations as a barrier to confirmation. It also follows Trump's own past praise of Parnell, whom the president has previously described as "instrumental in helping pass the law" — the same claim now being disputed by the people who were actually in the room when it happened.