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Members of Congress have launched a bicameral, bipartisan effort to sharpen oversight of the Pentagon after a report on an alleged order by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “kill everybody” in the military’s boat strike campaign spurred widespread condemnation over the weekend.
The Republican-led Armed Services Committees in both the House and the Senate have announced that they are launching probes into the Department of Defense after The Washington Post reported on an alleged “double tap” strike on September 2, when the military first embarked on its Caribbean boat strike campaign.
On Friday, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) and ranking member Sen. Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island) said that the “Committee has directed inquiries to the Department” following the report. They said the committee would be “conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts” surrounding the alleged strikes.
Further, in a joint statement Saturday, House committee chair Mike Rogers (R-Alabama) and ranking member Adam Smith (D-Washington) said that they “take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the SOUTHCOM region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question.”
Experts have long said that the entire boat operation is illegal and amounts to war crimes and murder. Still, this marks a heel turn from previous remarks. Many Democrats have been critical of the boat strike operation, but Republicans have largely fallen in line thus far, despite the administration’s withholding of information from Congress regarding the aggression.
The statements followed a report that a Special Operations commander ordered a second strike on a vessel off the coast of Trinidad after the live drone footage showed that two people had survived the initial blast. The order was reportedly given in order to follow through with Hegseth’s spoken command in the operation, which “was to kill everybody,” one source told The Washington Post.
The strike was reportedly carried out by SEAL Team 6, under the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which is responsible for some of the military’s most secretive operations.
The Intercept previously reported the “double tap” nature of the strike, but the latest revelations from the Post exposed JSOC’s supposed role in misrepresenting the strike to both the White House and members of Congress in closed door briefings. In those briefing materials, the military command said the second strike was “intended to sink the boat and remove a navigation hazard to other vessels.”
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Massachusetts), a House Armed Services Committee member who was privy to one of these briefings, said this explanation is “patently absurd,” and the strike “blatantly illegal.”
“Mark my words: It may take some time, but Americans will be prosecuted for this, either as a war crime or outright murder,” he said.
Hegseth has denied wrongdoing. Trump said that he “wouldn’t have wanted” a second strike, but said that “Pete said he did not order the death of those two men.”
Legal experts and lawmakers have raised concerns that American soldiers may be prosecuted for carrying out orders in the boat strike operation that they deem illegal under both domestic and international law. Even if the initial strike were legal, former military lawyer Todd Huntley told the Post that the second strike “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime” since the occupants weren’t able to fight back.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) has vowed to reintroduce his War Powers legislation seeking to bar President Donald Trump from carrying out further strikes in the operation or against Venezuela unless the administration obtains congressional approval. In an interview with CBS on Sunday, the senator said that he believes he will get more support for the resolution, which has already failed to pass the Senate twice.
“We think the escalating pace and some of the recent revelations — so, for example, the recent revelation about the ‘kill everyone’ order apparently dictated by Secretary Hegseth — we do believe that we will get more support for these motions when they are refiled,” he said.
The resolutions would be especially timely as the administration moves even further toward war. The U.S. has amassed a large amount of assets around Venezuela, and Trump declared on Saturday that the airspace above and around the country should be considered “CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”
As the U.S. aggression has mounted, however, so, too, have the legal concerns. In a joint statement following the report, a group of former military lawyers fired by the Trump administration said that the strike represents “war crimes” and could expose anyone involved in the strike to prosecution for murder.
“We call upon Congress to investigate and the American people to oppose any use of the U.S. military that involves the intentional targeting of anyone – enemy combatants, non-combatants, or civilians – rendered hors de combat (‘out of the fight’) as a result of their wounds or the destruction of the ship or aircraft carrying them,” the group said.
“We also advise our fellow citizens that orders like those described above are the kinds of ‘patently illegal orders’ all military members have a duty to disobey. Since orders to kill survivors of an attack at sea are ‘patently illegal,’ anyone who issues or follows such orders can and should be prosecuted for war crimes, murder, or both,” they went on.
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