In the summer of 2022, Donald Trump badly needed criminal-defense lawyers. Tim Parlatore, who was already working for the former president on an unrelated civil matter, joined the team defending Trump after an FBI search found classified government documents stored at his Florida estate. Parlatore had represented prominent Trump allies in their interactions with the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attacks; that was helpful, because Trump also faced charges stemming from the riot. Parlatore was a star lawyer in Trump world, so it’s more than a little surprising that, in the fall of that year, he hired a close associate of one of the most notorious villains in the extended MAGA universe: Jeffrey Epstein.
Before he joined the Parlatore Law Group, Darren Indyke was Epstein’s personal attorney for nearly a quarter century and reportedly among his closest associates and advisers. Parlatore’s decision to hire Indyke appears to have escaped public notice. But Indyke, by his own account, has been working for the firm since October 2022.
Indyke is also a co-executor of Epstein’s estate, which has made settlement payments to more than 100 alleged victims of the deceased multimillionaire’s sex trafficking. Two women have sued Indyke, along with Epstein’s former accountant, claiming that they helped administer a network of dozens of bank accounts, corporate entities, and money transfers that enabled Epstein’s crimes. In court filings, Indyke has categorically denied any involvement in or knowledge of Epstein’s alleged crimes.
I called Parlatore earlier this week after I noticed Indyke’s photo and bio on the law firm’s website. “He has skills doing a bunch of stuff that I don’t know how to do, as far as corporate work,” Parlatore told me during a brief conversation. He added that Indyke’s “experience on the legal side of the Epstein business was valuable.” For instance, Indyke knows how to structure financial arrangements and purchase aircraft, Parlatore said. “I hired him because of that.”
[Read: Inside the White House’s Epstein strategy]
Those kinds of financial skills are what the two women who sued Indyke allege were at the heart of Epstein’s criminal enterprise. In his bio, Indyke touts his experience “as general counsel to family offices, serial entrepreneurs, investors, and other ultra-high-net-worth clientele.” He doesn’t mention Epstein. Among his other capabilities: “Complex business and commercial transactions,” as well as “aviation, marine, and other exotic asset purchases, sales, and operation.”
Indyke “came to me because he was looking for a job,” Parlatore told me. He said he was aware of the allegations in the ongoing civil lawsuit, which was filed in 2024, after Indyke had joined the firm. But he said that Indyke had assured him that “the FBI looked into it, and they didn’t find anything.”
Indyke has not been charged with a crime. He did not respond to an email or a text message I sent, or a voicemail I left at the number listed for him at the firm.
When he hired Indyke, Parlatore told me, “the Epstein stuff, as far as I was concerned, was irrelevant to me.”
The Epstein stuff is highly relevant, however, and of the utmost political salience to Trump’s base. For many Trump voters, the Epstein story captures how rich and powerful people can use their influence and connections to cover up one another’s dark deeds. It’s the kind of corrupt back-scratching that Trump has long pledged to stamp out. For weeks now, Trump has been at pains to distance himself from Epstein, once a close friend. Parlatore’s work with Indyke seems unlikely to help that effort, particularly because Parlatore is now working closely with a key member of Trump’s Cabinet, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
To describe Parlatore simply as what he is—Hegseth’s personal lawyer and a Pentagon adviser—would overlook the symbiotic relationship that allowed both of them to rise inside Trump’s circle.
Parlatore began representing U.S. troops accused of grave misconduct when Hegseth was catching Trump’s attention as a Fox News host, during the president’s first term. Hegseth made defending troops a personal on-air cause, arguing the military court system unfairly prosecuted “warriors” who had made tough decisions in the heat of battle.
Parlatore represented Navy Chief Eddie Gallagher, who was charged with premeditated murder following the death of a 17-year-old suspected Islamic State fighter in Iraq in 2017. Two years later, a court acquitted Gallagher on all charges except for taking a photograph with the corpse, and the Navy demoted him. Trump then pardoned Gallagher and reinstated his rank.
Parlatore had also become Hegseth’s personal attorney. In 2024, after Trump nominated Hegseth as defense secretary, Parlatore threatened legal action against a woman who had filed a police report seven years earlier saying that Hegseth assaulted her in a hotel. Parlatore told CNN that Hegseth’s accuser was free to speak publicly, because a confidentiality agreement covering her and the nominee was no longer in effect. But he said he would consider suing her for civil extortion and defamation if she made what Parlatore described as false claims that might jeopardize Hegseth’s chances of Senate confirmation.
Parlatore aggressively criticized reporters who questioned Hegseth’s qualifications to run the Defense Department, and he helped his client prepare for a contentious nomination hearing. Hegseth squeaked through, after Vice President J. D. Vance cast the tie-breaking vote to confirm him.
Parlatore has been by Hegseth’s side since he entered the Pentagon in January. A former naval surface-warfare officer, Parlatore rejoined the service as a reserve commander in the JAG Corps. Hegseth swore him back into uniform.
[Read: When Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon tenure started going sideways]
Even as Hegseth has fired or dismissed a number of advisers, Parlatore has survived, and many officials in the Pentagon see him as the key intermediary to reach Hegseth. When journalists call the Pentagon with questions, they’re often directed to Parlatore.
Parlatore has also backed up Hegseth’s policy agenda, supporting the removal of hundreds of books flagged for DEI-related content from the library of the U.S. Naval Academy, from which Parlatore graduated.
Before Trump’s reelection, Parlatore was a central member of the legal team representing the former president in the classified-documents case and even testified before the grand jury investigating the matter. He oversaw searches for additional classified documents at Trump properties.
Parlatore left Trump’s legal team in May 2023, shortly before the former president was charged in the documents case, amid disputes with another attorney who Parlatore thought was hindering Trump’s defense.
According to Indyke’s LinkedIn profile, he is “of counsel” at the Parlatore Law Group, which usually describes a lawyer who is not a partner, but also not a junior employee. Some lawyers who are of counsel work on special projects or with particular clients.
Parlatore told me that Indyke’s work on the Epstein estate has kept him so busy that he didn’t have time for much else. Indyke also represents a few individual clients, Parlatore said, without naming them.
Meanwhile, Parlatore has been dabbling in conspiracy theories about the death of his colleague’s former boss. On the Shawn Ryan Show podcast in May of last year, the host asked Parlatore why cases like Epstein’s “are just being whisked away into nothing.”
The obvious reason Epstein’s federal prosecution for sex trafficking did not move forward in 2019 was that he hanged himself in his Manhattan jail cell. But Parlatore sensed darker forces at play.
“There’s always pressure being brought when certain cases could reveal embarrassing things about people in power,” he said. He speculated that Epstein had never stood trial “because he was permitted to kill himself.” By whom, he didn’t say.
Earlier this week, Parlatore posted a monologue on social media dismissing the idea that Epstein kept a “client list,” the white whale of the saga that would supposedly identify powerful men for whom Epstein procured young women and girls. Parlatore suggested that Epstein didn’t create such a list, but that the Justice Department lawyers who prosecuted him may have done so.
Government lawyers, he argued, “only really pursued the theory that Epstein trafficked girls for himself. They didn’t bother looking for who else was involved.”
Left unsaid was that some of Epstein’s victims have gone looking for others involved in enabling Epstein’s misconduct, and they claim that one trail leads to Indyke.
Last year, Epstein’s estate, which Indyke administers with Epstein’s former accountant, received a nearly $112 million tax refund from the IRS. “With most large claims against the estate having been settled, that newfound cash isn’t likely to make its way to victims of the disgraced financier,” The New York Times reported in January. But some of the assets could go to Indyke, as well as other beneficiaries that Epstein named before he died.
I asked Parlatore if he was aware that his associate stood to reap a financial windfall. That was news to him, he said, then added that if Indyke does come into a large amount of money, perhaps he’ll quit the law firm.
Nancy A. Youssef contributed reporting.