A Newsmax legal analyst delivered a sharp and stunning rebuke of the Trump administration this week, telling viewers of the right-wing network that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and anyone else involved in a controversial, deadly boat strike ought to be “prosecuted for a war crime.”
Hegseth has faced intense scrutiny and criticism following a report that he ordered an unlawful no-survivors strike on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean. Legal experts and ex-military lawyers have said such an order would constitute a war crime if the reports are accurate.
Newsmax’s judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano delivered a sobering assessment to viewers on the show National Report.
“It gives me no pleasure to say what I’m about to say because I worked with Pete Hegseth for seven or eight years at Fox News. This is an act of a war crime,” he said. “Ordering survivors — who the law requires be rescued — instead to be murdered; there’s absolutely no legal basis for it.”
Napolitano continued, “Everyone 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.”
The remarks caught observers off guard, with Democratic commentator Kaivan Shroff writing on X, “Woah.”
“Newsmax’s legal analyst just said Pete Hegseth and everyone involved in the illegal boat strike should be ‘prosecuted for a war crime.’ They’ve even lost Newsmax on this one,” he said.
Ryan Goodman, a chaired law professor at New York University, simply added, “Wow.”2
Goodman shared another remarkable quote from Napolitano, who said Republicans in Congress “seem to be as exasperated by it as the Democrats do.”
“I think it’s getting beyond politics now. The killing is out of hand. And this last one, in which Pete Hegseth first denied that he gave the order, and then the White House said he did give the order … and then the White House said it was in self-defense. Self-defense! You got two people in the ocean clinging to a burning boat to stay alive, and they’re gonna be killed for self-defense? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Woah. Newsmax’s legal analyst just said Pete Hegseth and everyone involved in the illegal boat strike should be “prosecuted for a war crime.” They’ve even lost Newsmax on this one. pic.twitter.com/ymzpvWoI67 — Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) December 2, 2025
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