Defendants in the bribery case involving retired Admiral Robert Burke have requested subpoenas for five Navy admirals

Executives of a company accused of participating in a bribery scheme along with a retired four-star Navy admiral want to speak to other admirals as part of their defense, according to court documents.

In a motion filed Tuesday, lawyers for Charlie Kim and Meghan Messenger, co-CEOs of Next Jump, said they wanted to subpoena five former or current Navy admirals and a senior Navy officer.

This move, if approved by the judge, would add more Navy leaders to the litigation over the corruption allegations currently swirling around Robert Burke, a retired four-star admiral who rose to the second-highest uniformed rank in the Navy and served as commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe and U.S. Naval Forces Africa from 2020 to 2022.

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When the allegations first became public in late May, federal prosecutors alleged that Burke brokered lucrative Navy contracts to Next Jump while serving as a four-star admiral in 2021 and that the company later hired him in 2022 for a starting salary of $500,000 a year.

“The defendants intend to use evidence from the subpoenas to demonstrate that Next Jump had a serious $100 million agreement with the U.S. Navy prior to the alleged bribery scheme,” the motion for the subpoenas states.

“These and other facts revealed by the defendants' subpoenas undermine the government's version of events and demonstrate that there was no bribery scheme,” the court document continues.

The court records do not reveal the names of the admirals the defense wants to subpoena.

In their defense, the executives previously included emails from Burke as well as correspondence with Vice Admiral John Nowell, then-Chief of Naval Personnel, Rear Admiral Kyle Cozad, then-commander of the Naval Education Training Command, and Rear Admiral Brett Mietus, Burke's captain and aide at the time.

Nowell and Cozad have since retired from the Navy.

There is no evidence in the court records to date that any of these admirals were guilty of any misconduct.

Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney in charge of prosecuting the case, argued in a statement released at the time of Burke's arrest that Burke had “abused his public office and four-star status for his private gain” and indicated that he believed the admiral and Next Jump executives had acted in concert.

“The law makes no exceptions for admirals or CEOs. Those who pay and accept bribes must be held accountable,” Graves said.

Since then, however, lawyers for Kim and Messenger have hit back, arguing in court filings that not only were they not involved in any bribery scheme, but they were also pursuing in good faith a lucrative $100 million contract that was offered to them by Burke but later turned out to be a lie.

The two executives had asked the court in mid-July to separate their case from Burke's. The lawyers told the court that they “intend to present evidence at trial that in an effort to establish contracts between [Next Jump] and the Navy, Burke may have deliberately and repeatedly [Kim and Messenger] to believe that he could legitimately participate in employment discussions.”

Next Jump is a company that specializes largely in leadership training for senior leaders, and its relationship with the Navy dates back to 2018, when it received its first services contract for approximately $2 million.

Later that year, a second $10 million contract followed, according to court documents, “to train a portion of the Navy’s workforce.”

Those orders came just as the Navy was still grappling with the aftermath of two fatal collisions at sea in the Pacific. Those collisions left nearly 20 sailors dead and exposed a toxic culture among commanders who had ignored years of warnings about exhausted sailors, inadequate training and dilapidated ships.

Emails cited in Next Jump's filing show that a major $100 million proposal was put forward in the fall of 2019 that would allow the company to “train people faster than anyone else,” giving the Navy a “new competitive advantage” and effectively “upgrading” it.

In November of this year, Burke informed the two that newly confirmed Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday had signed off on the plan, according to an email cited in the motion.

Next Jump executives say that in the process of negotiating the major contract, they met with Burke and a woman he identified as a senior official in the Office of the Under Secretary of the Navy and began discussions about employing him at their company after his retirement.

The woman was actually Burke’s girlfriend.

Tim Parlatore, the attorney representing Burke, confirmed to Military.com last month that the admiral was in a “close relationship” with the woman when he was in the early stages of the divorce, but that he and his wife have since reconciled.

Attorneys for Kim and Messenger argued in their motion that the presence of Burke's partner undermined the allegation that they had plotted to bribe the admiral.

In response to the request to separate the cases, Parlatore argued that “Kim is an entrepreneur prone to exaggeration and, in many cases, outright false statements” and that the two executives “are trying to falsely blame Admiral Burke for telling them everything was permissible.”

According to court documents, final arguments on the subpoena requests must be presented to the judge presiding over the case by next Friday.

According to the Justice Department, Burke faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison if convicted, while Kim and Messenger each face a maximum sentence of 20 years.

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