Americans could soon hold letters from President Donald Trump empowering them to attack violent gangs and drug cartels in pirate ships and by the border if Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) can persuade Congress to grant letters of marque and reprisal, he explained to Alex Marlow on Monday.
The Constitution authorizes Congress in Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal,” as Lee set forth his plan on The Alex Marlow Show, sandwiched between Congress’s power to declare war and its power to make rules for capturing America’s enemies.
Congress can grant such letters, which would be signed by the president, who presumably would also include whatever regulations and conditions are necessary to effectively supervise these activities in what would otherwise become the Wild Wild West.
As Marlow opened the discussion with Lee, he noted letters of marque would be “a really creative tool” that could “weaken the drug cartels.” How many drug lords expect to contend with a civilian fleet of de facto “pirate ships” flying both American flags and Trump-Vance 2024 MAGA flags chasing them in the Gulf of America?
Imagine that, while bands of American cowboys with shotguns, AR-15s, and pistols are patrolling the U.S.-Mexican border, with bands of former Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, Force Recon Marines, and Air Force Combat Controllers who are bored with their civilian jobs moving unseen in search of foreign hostile actors.
These letters are “a tool that allows Congress to designate a particular enemy or a problem zone to authorize what are called privateers – essentially pirates operating with the permission of the United States government,” Lee explained.
The senator added that such a letter granted by Congress allows those otherwise-private fighters “to go out and attack and undermine those entities to retrieve spoils from those entities outside the United States, and to the extent they can make it back into the United States they can keep a cut of the value of the loot they recover.”
If this sounds like it could be a Sylvester Stallone movie or the next installment of the John Wick series, then you are envisioning this in the right way. Think Pirates of the Caribbean, but with Jack Sparrow holding a piece of paper signed by President Trump empowering him to attack the other ship and seize its chests of gold and jewels.
Private armies were the norm through the ancient and medieval times and were also widespread through colonial times and the early Republic in the United States. And in modern times, America’s use of intelligence agencies and law enforcement actors is constant and used to great effect. A constitutional expert like Lee – frequently mentioned as a leading contender to be appointed to the Supreme Court if a vacancy arises during the Trump 47 presidency – understands that history and how it applies to modern realities.
Americans are paying the price from Mexican drug cartels and South American gangs, who have flooded across the border in the midst of millions of illegal aliens, carrying enough fentanyl and other illegal drugs to kill every man, woman, and child in the United States.
In an era of asymmetric threats by non-state actors, Congress’s giving tens of millions of military and law enforcement veterans and tens of millions more who are proficient in weapons the right to participate in protecting their communities and their nation might merit consideration, given that the Constitution explicitly provides that option to elected leaders.
Welcome aboard Mike Lee’s pirate ship. Adventure awaits.
“The Alex Marlow Show,” hosted by Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow, is a weekday podcast produced by Breitbart News and Salem Podcast Network. You can subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Rumble, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
Breitbart News senior legal contributor Ken Klukowski is a lawyer who served in the White House and Justice Department. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @kenklukowski.
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