Pete Hegseth: “I worked so hard with President Trump on pardons of a number…”

“These are things we've always known, yet we've gotten too smart smarty pants for our own good. And that the lawyers started decide what's good or not good. And that's why I worked so hard with President Trump on pardons of a number of these guys who I thought were unfairly impugned. for things they did on the battlefield. It's pretty easy to second guess from an air conditioned office in Washington. It's a whole nother thing to be the guy in the middle of the night in a foreign country.” (53:10–53:17)

This is an excerpt from a raw transcript. The assertions have not been audited or verified. Tap the video to view the source footage and understand the context.