Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing mounting bipartisan scrutiny on Capitol Hill after the Washington Post reported on Friday that his initial order to “kill everyone” during the Sept. 2 attack on a suspected drug boat off Venezuela that resulted in a second strike and ejected two survivors may have violated U.S. and international law.
President Trump defended Hegseth late Sunday, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that “Pete said he did not order the death of those two men” and “I believe that, 100 percent.” But Trump also made clear that he would oppose targeting survivors of the initial attack — an act that military experts and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have characterized as a potential war crime.
“No, I didn’t want that, not a second strike,” the president said.
Meanwhile, Hegseth took to social media on Sunday evening to share a mock children’s book cover depicting Franklin the Turtle being pulled out of water by a “narco-terrorist” with a rocket launcher.
“For your Christmas wish list…,” the defense secretary joked in his post.
New questions surrounding the second strike — and Hegseth’s role in it — add another layer of controversy to the Trump administration’s deadly, months-long campaign to attack suspected drug boats in the Caribbean, which has so far killed more than 80 people without due process.
Here’s everything you need to know to make sense of the situation.
What happened on September 2?
Citing “two U.S. officials familiar with the matter,” the Intercept first reported on Sept. 10 that “people aboard a boat off the coast of Venezuela destroyed by U.S. forces last Tuesday were said to have survived the initial strike” — but “they were killed shortly afterward in a subsequent attack.”
Friday’s story in the Washington Post — which was “based on interviews and accounts with seven people with knowledge of the Sept. 2 strike and the overall operation” — corroborated the Intercept’s reporting and added new details about how Hegseth may have played a role in the incident.
Before the initial strike, the Post reported, “Hegseth directed the talk, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation.”
“The order was to kill everyone,” one of them said.
When the smoke cleared, however, a live drone feed showed “two survivors clinging to the smoldering wreckage.” In order to “follow Hegseth’s instructions,” the special operations commander overseeing the attack “ordered a second strike,” “two people familiar with the matter”—and “two men were blown into the water.”
The commander in question, Adm. Frank Bradley, told his colleagues that the survivors “were still legitimate targets because they could theoretically call in other smugglers to retrieve them and their cargo,” according to the Post.
Citing “a person watching the live feed,” the post added “if video of the September 2 blast that killed two survivors was released, people would be horrified.”
What did Hegseth say about the incident?
Hegseth condemned the Post’s reporting, but he did not rule out issuing orders to “kill them all.”
“In general, fake news is providing more fabricated, inflammatory and defamatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to defend the homeland,” Hegseth wrote on Friday X — “These highly effective strikes are specifically aimed at ‘lethal, kinetic strikes.’
“Every smuggler we kill is affiliated with a designated terrorist organization,” Hegseth added. “[Former President Joe] Biden killed terrorists, we kill them.
Minutes later, Hegseth posted a single-sentence follow-up: “We just started killing narco-terrorists.”
In his remarks on Sunday, Trump gave the impression that Hegseth refused to order “kill everybody” – and suggested that there was no second strike.
“I don’t know if that happened,” Trump said when asked if a hypothetical second strike would be illegal. “And Pete said he didn’t want them — he didn’t know what people were talking about. So, we’ll see — we’ll see it.”
“The first strike was very deadly, it was all right,” the president continued. “And if there were two men around—but Pete said that wasn’t the case. I have a lot of faith in him.”
Asked to clarify the issue Monday – “Does the administration deny that the second strike happened,” one reporter asked, “or does it happen and the administration denies that Secretary Hegseth ordered it?” – White House press secretary Carolyn Levitt said “the latter” before reading a statement assigning responsibility to Bradley instead of Hegseth.
“President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have made clear that narco-terrorist groups designated by the President are subject to lethal targeting under the laws of war,” Levitt said. “With respect to the strikes in question, on September 2, Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Admiral Bradley acted well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the destruction of the submarine and the elimination of the threat to the United States.”
What did MPs and legal experts say about the incident?
Critics, lawmakers and military experts view the administration’s entire campaign in the Caribbean as a potential violation of international law.
In previous administrations, the Coast Guard would intercept boats and arrest drug traffickers — not kill them.
Trump’s legal argument, which the administration has expressed in a series of recent letters to Congress, is that drug cartels are “non-state armed groups” whose actions constitute an “armed attack against the United States” – forcing the US to fight back in a formal “armed conflict”.
In response, experts have argued that drug cartels are not engaged in “hostilities” against the U.S. — the legal standard for armed conflict — because selling a dangerous product is different from carrying out an armed attack.
It is illegal for the military to deliberately target civilians who are not directly participating in hostilities – even suspected criminals.
“The idea that the United States — and the administration says it’s their justification — is involved in an armed conflict with any drug traffickers, any drug traffickers in Venezuela, is ridiculous,” said Rep. Jim Himes recently told CBS. “It’s not going to stand up in a single court.”
“It doesn’t push the envelope,” Jeffrey Korn, a retired judge advocate general who was formerly the military’s senior counsel for war litigation, added in an interview with The New York Times. “It’s tearing it apart. It’s tearing it apart.”
Targeting people who are no longer able to fight – such as survivors clinging to debris in open water – is considered a more flagrant violation of the laws of armed conflict (they could not survive an attack intended to be “lethal”).
That would “in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” Todd Huntley, a former military attorney who advised special operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign, told the Post.
On Sunday, Rep. Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska, agreed that, if the Post’s reporting was true, it would reveal a “clear violation of the laws of war.”
“When people want to surrender, you don’t kill them,” Bacon told ABC. “They have to pose an imminent threat. It’s hard to believe that two people in a raft, trying to survive, would be an imminent threat.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, both Democrats, also raised the possibility of war crimes.
Meanwhile, top Republicans and Democrats on the Armed Services committees in both the House and Senate have vowed “vigorous oversight” of the matter.
“We take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats accused of carrying drugs in the Southcom region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question,” House Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, Republican of Alabama, and House Committee Chairman Adam Smith, of Washington, said in a statement.
“The committee has directed the department to enquire [of Defense]”, added Sen. Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi and chairman of the Senate committee, and Sen. Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island.
Kelly, himself a member of the Armed Services Committee, told NBC on Sunday that he and his colleagues will hold officials “under oath” as part of their investigation.
“We’re going to investigate,” Kelly said. “We’re going to have public hearings. We’re going to put these people under oath. And we’re going to find out what happened. And then, there needs to be accountability.”
According to the Post, Pentagon officials have not provided Congress with “any specific names of the traffickers or syndicate leaders they targeted … nor have they publicly released additional information beyond surveillance videos of the strikes themselves.”
Video of the Sept. 2 attack did not show the second strike, and the administration has not granted lawmakers’ bipartisan requests to see the unedited footage. But three people with knowledge of the situation told the Post that protocols were changed after the Sept. 2 strike “to emphasize rescue of suspected smugglers if they survive.”
