The executives who run a company accused of being part of a bribery scheme along with a retired four-star Navy admiral are interested in speaking to more admirals as they build their defense, court documents show.
In a request filed Tuesday, lawyers for Charlie Kim and Meghan Messenger, co-CEOs of Next Jump, said that they wanted to subpoena five former or current Navy admirals, as well as a senior Navy official.
The move, if signed off by the judge, would pull more Navy leaders into the legal case centered on the bribery allegations now swirling around Robert Burke, a retired four-star admiral who rose to the second-highest uniformed position in the Navy and then went on to serve as commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe and U.S. Naval Forces Africa from 2020 to 2022.
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When news of the allegations was first made public in late May, federal prosecutors alleged that Burke directed lucrative Navy contracts to Next Jump in 2021 while serving as a four-star admiral, and the company later hired him in 2022 for a starting salary of $500,000 per year.
“Defendants intend to show, through subpoena-derived evidence, that Next Jump had a bona fide, $100 million engagement with the United States Navy that pre-dated any alleged bribery scheme,” the motion for the subpoenas argued.
“These facts and others derived from defendants’…
