Pete Hegseth’s Main Defense for Boat Strike Survivors Just Fell Apart |
The Defense Department’s decision to kill the two survivors of a boat bombing in the Caribbean Sea—which may very well be a war crime—was all part of Secretary Pete Hegseth’s contingency plan, The New York Times reported.
The Hegseth-approved plan involved rescuing any helpless survivors and killing them if they tried to contact a “cartel” member. The Defense Department is alleging that the men killed on September 2 did the latter, initiating the second half of the contingency plan.
The White House has insisted the violence is justified, as the administration accuses the boats of trafficking narcotics to the U.S. from Venezuela and Colombia. Of course, the government has yet to provide evidence that the men they murdered contacted a cartel, or that they were trafficking drugs at all. But this plan once again begs the question: Who was actually responsible here?
Hegseth has made a point to shift the blame for the actual decision to strike the boat a second time—the potential war crime—onto Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley.
“I didn’t stick around [after the first strike],” Hegseth told reporters at Donald Trump’s Tuesday Cabinet meeting. “Couple of hours later, I learned that … Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to sink the boat and eliminate the threat.… It was the right call, we have his back.”
Hegseth is trying so hard to distance himself from the attack that he’s claiming he wasn’t even in the room when it happened. Regardless, his version of events made no mention of the report that he approved the contingency plan that Bradley followed.
This saga has drawn the ire of both the left and right.
“This is an act of a war crime. Ordering survivors—who the law requires be rescued—instead to be murdered,” Newsmax host and current Hegseth co-worker Judge Andrew Napolitano said on Tuesday. “There’s absolutely no legal basis for it. Everybody along the line who did it, from the secretary of defense to the admiral to the people who actually pulled the trigger, should be prosecuted for a war crime for killing these two people.”
Bradley is expected to meet with House and Senate Armed Services Committee members on Thursday to clear up exactly what happened.
It seems that Pete Hegseth’s brilliant response to the watchdog report finding that the defense secretary had directly endangered U.S. troops is just to lie and say he didn’t.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell didn’t even try Wednesday to spin the results of the inspector general’s report on a major scandal earlier this year, when Hegseth sent highly sensitive information in a nonsecure Signal group chat.
“This Inspector General review is a TOTAL exoneration of Secretary Hegseth @PeteHegseth and proves what we knew all along—no classified information was shared. This matter is resolved and the case is closed,” Parnell said in a statement, per Trump acolyte Laura Loomer.
Sources had previously told CNN that Hegseth sent messages detailing materials marked classified at the time. One message from Hegseth—“This is DEFINITELY when the first bombs will drop”—seemed obviously classified. But the war chief has maintained that he had the power to unilaterally declassify information discussed, though no documentation of that actually happening seems to exist.
A classified version of the inspector general’s Signalgate report was sent to Congress on Tuesday night, finding that Hegseth should not have used the app at all. Four sources familiar with the report told CNN that Hegseth had risked compromising sensitive military information and could have potentially endangered troops and mission objectives.
A declassified version of the report is expected to be released to the public Thursday.
Donald Trump is still backing Pete Hegseth, despite growing scrutiny over reports that the defense secretary issued orders to mercilessly kill survivors of a September 2 airstrike on a small boat in the Caribbean.
“If it is found that survivors were actually killed while clinging on to that boat, should Secretary Hegseth, Admiral [Frank M.] Bradley, or others be punished?” asked a reporter at the White House Wednesday.
“I think you’re going to find that this is war, that these people were killing our people by the millions, actually, if you look over a few years. I think last year we lost close to 300,000 people were killed. That’s not mentioning all the families—have you seen what happens with the families?” Trump said.
The White House has insisted the violence is justified, broadly accusing the boats of trafficking narcotics to the U.S. from Venezuela and Colombia while vaguely and inaccurately referring to the death toll caused by fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times stronger than heroin.
Fentanyl overdoses in the U.S. were on the rise for a decade before falling slightly in 2023, when more than 72,000 people died from the synthetic opioid, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have been more than skeptical of the White House’s theory—particularly since several of the boats were thousands of miles away in international waters, and since the attacks were conducted without prior investigations or interdiction. Pentagon officials reportedly haven’t been concerned with identifying the people on the boats before attacking.
“I think you’re going to find that there’s a very receptive ear to doing exactly what they’re doing taking out those boats,” Trump said. “And very soon we’re going to start doing it on land, too. Because we know every route, we know every house, we know where they manufacture this crap, we’re going to put it all together.”
“So to be clear, you support the decision to kill survivors after—” the reporter pressed, before Trump interjected that he “supports the decision to knock out the boats.”
“Whoever is piloting those boats, they’re guilty of trying to kill people in our country,” Trump added, referring to the alleged drug mules, who would be the lowest and least significant participants on the drug trade totem pole.
Meanwhile, Trump pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández on Monday, freeing a man who was sentenced to 45 years in prison for playing a central role in what the Biden administration deemed to be “one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.”
Hernández’s case was........