A top Republican and Democrats in Congress suggested on Sunday that American military officials might have committed a war crime in President Trump’s offensive against boats in the Caribbean after a news report said that during one such attack, a follow-up strike was ordered to kill survivors.
The remarks came in response to a Washington Post report on Friday that said that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had given a verbal order to kill everyone aboard boats suspected of smuggling drugs, and that this led a military commander to carry out a second strike to kill those who had initially survived an attack in early September.
“Obviously if that occurred, that would be very serious, and I agree that that would be an illegal act,” Representative Mike Turner, Republican of Ohio and a former chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said on “Face the Nation” on CBS.
Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, said on CBS that if the report was accurate, the attack “rises to the level of a war crime.” And on CNN, when asked if he believed a second strike to kill survivors constituted a war crime, Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, answered, “It seems to.”
The lawmakers’ comments came after top Republicans and Democrats on the two congressional committees overseeing the Pentagon vowed over the weekend to increase their scrutiny of U.S. boat strikes in the Caribbean after the report. Mr. Turner said the article had only sharpened lawmakers’ already grave questions about the operation.
“There are very serious concerns in Congress about the attacks on the so-called drug boats down in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and the legal justification that’s been provided,” he said. “But this is completely outside of anything that’s been discussed with Congress, and there is an ongoing investigation.”
The investigations by both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees are the sharpest scrutiny to date by Congress of Mr. Trump’s escalating military offensive, undertaken without congressional approval or consultation, which he says is aimed at taking out drug traffickers.
They constitute a notable step by Republican lawmakers who have spent much of the year deferring to Mr. Trump and refraining from exercising oversight of his actions.
Senators Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the committee’s top Democrat, said on Friday night that they had “directed inquiries” to the Defense Department.
“We will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances,” they wrote.
The House Armed Services Committee followed suit on Saturday. In a joint statement, Representatives Mike Rogers, Republican of Alabama and the panel’s chairman, and Adam Smith of Washington, the senior Democrat, said that they were “committed to providing rigorous oversight” of the boat strikes and that they were “taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question.”
The United States has built up a military presence in the Caribbean meant to put pressure on Venezuela. Trump administration officials have said that they are trying to deter drug smuggling, and that the boat strikes, which have killed more than 80 people since early September, are part of a purported formal armed conflict with drug cartels. But members of Congress have been voicing concerns over the legal justification being used to conduct them.
The Washington Post reported this week that in the first boat attack, on Sept. 2, there had been survivors in the water after the first missile strike and the military carried out a second one to kill them because of Mr. Hegseth’s orders. The Intercept also reported in September that the military had carried out a follow-up strike to kill the survivors of an initial strike.
In a statement on Friday, Mr. Hegseth denounced The Post’s report. He defended the military’s actions and said officials had been clear in all the operations that the boat strikes were designed to be “lethal, kinetic strikes.”
In response, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, called for Mr. Hegseth to release “the full, unedited tapes of the strikes so the American people can see for themselves.”
Democrats have repeatedly criticized the boat strikes as illegal, likening them to extrajudicial killings. Mr. Kelly was part of a group of six lawmakers who made a video this month that reminded troops they were obligated to refuse illegal orders, though it did not mention any specific order.
On Sunday, Mr. Kelly, who is being investigated by the Pentagon for his remarks in the video, said he had “serious concerns about anybody in that chain of command stepping over a line that they should never step over.”
Mr. Turner’s comments and the moves by Mr. Wicker and Mr. Rogers suggested that Republicans, too, were increasingly concerned about the scope and legality of the operations.
The committees’ promise for stronger oversight also comes as a small number of hard-right Republicans, including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, have voiced dismay over foreign policy entanglements that they say are at odds with Mr. Trump’s promised “America First” approach.
Still, many Republicans have expressed support for the military operations in Venezuela. On Sunday, Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, a close Trump ally, dismissed The Post’s report and defended the administration.
Mr. Mullin, who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Mr. Trump was “protecting the United States by being very proactive.”
Julian E. Barnes and Charlie Savage contributed reporting.
Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.
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