In a classified briefing for lawmakers scrutinizing the Trump administration’s killing of suspected drug smugglers around Latin America, top Republicans in the room appeared frustrated.
The Pentagon, facing questions about its legal basis for attacking civilian vessels, sent no lawyers to the meeting — a move multiple lawmakers in the room considered inexplicable. The Defense Department officials who did attend, those people said, were unable to explain the mission’s strategy and scope — even as President Donald Trump openly mused about expanding the campaign to include land targets inside Venezuela.
Rep. Mike D. Rogers (Alabama), the House Armed Services Committee’s GOP chairman, condemned the secrecy, saying Congress had gotten more information from the Pentagon during the Biden administration, according to two people in the room. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private encounter.
A spokesperson for Rogers said it would be “inappropriate to share details from classified discussions” and that they wouldn’t “be responding to claims about what was said.”
Since then, the exasperation among Republican lawmakers has leaped into full view. Key lawmakers have questioned their confidence in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and GOP-led committees have embarked on the most aggressive oversight campaign so far in the former Fox News host’s tumultuous 10 months leading the Pentagon.
In the last week, the House and Senate Armed Services committees have opened separate inquiries to determine whether Hegseth or other top Defense Department officials may be culpable for orders they issued in an operation that killed 11 people, including two who survived the initial U.S. missile strike on their boat and perished in a follow-up attack as they clung to the wreckage. Lawmakers and law-of-war experts have questioned whether a war crime was committed.
These oversight efforts stand out at a time when Republicans in Congress have mostly avoided openly criticizing the Pentagon, even as some of Hegseth’s most audacious moves — including a purge of senior military officers and unprecedented investigation into a sitting lawmaker, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) — have privately troubled some GOP lawmakers who supported his nomination over the unanimous opposition of Democrats.
While some Republicans forcefully indicated this week that they continue to have confidence in Hegseth’s leadership, several members of Congress and aides interviewed for this report said the GOP’s support for the secretary and other top Pentagon officials has atrophied. Hegseth’s ability to lead the department, some people argued, could be weakened even if Congress ends up clearing him of wrongdoing in the boat strike inquires.
A spokesperson for Hegseth did not respond to a request for comment. In recent days he has sought to distance himself from the controversy, pointing instead to the senior military officer who oversaw the operation on Sept. 2, Adm. Frank M. Bradley, while also defending the second strike.
“Admiral Bradley,” Hegseth said while seated beside Trump at the White House on Tuesday, “made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat.”
The Washington Post reported Friday that Hegseth gave a spoken order to kill the entire crew of the vessel before the first missile strike, the first of nearly 20 such strikes carried out by the administration to date. When two survivors were detected, Bradley directed another strike to comply with Hegseth’s order that no one be left alive, people with direct knowledge of the matter told The Post.
It remains unclear how the Defense Department may have prepared for the possibility there would be survivors in the boat attacks. Specifics of Hegseth’s written orders authorizing the use of deadly force have not been disclosed either. In the strikes occurring since then, the U.S. military has rescued survivors or worked with other countries to do so.
Spokespeople for U.S. Special Operations Command, where Bradley is the top commander, have not commented publicly on the matter.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters this week that the allegations stemming from the incident are “very serious,” saying lawmakers’ scrutiny of the matter will be “vigorous.” He has sought video and audio recordings along with other materials documenting this and other strikes. To date, lawmakers have said, the Pentagon has not complied with the request.
Bradley, the four-star head of U.S. Special Operations Command, is scheduled to appear Thursday on Capitol Hill, where he will meet privately with top Republicans and Democrats from the House and Senate Armed Services committees and each chamber’s Intelligence Committee. Lawmakers intend to ask the admiral who ordered the second strike on the damaged vessel and about the extent of Hegseth’s involvement in the operation, people familiar with the matter said.
Those meetings could be the first step toward a more formal investigation, lawmakers and congressional aides said. Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also is expected to attend, two people said.
On Tuesday at the White House, Hegseth said that he wanted to “own the responsibility” as the administration opened its military campaign in September but that he had stopped watching a live video feed of the Sept. 2 operation and moved on to another meeting by the time that Bradley decided to strike again.
“I said, ‘I’m going to be the one to make the call after getting all the information and make sure it’s the right strike,’” Hegseth told reporters in the Cabinet room, saying “a couple of hours” had passed before he was made aware of the second attack.
“I did not personally see survivors” after the initial strike, he said, citing “fire, smoke” and what he called “the fog of war.”
Lawmakers, including many Republicans, have said they are alarmed by the episode.
“You don’t have to have served in the military to understand that that was a violation of ethical, moral and legal code,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) told reporters this week.
Some in Congress have also questioned whether the attack breached even the Trump administration’s controversial defense of the campaign. The administration’s binding legal argument relating to the ongoing strikes focuses not on the people suspected of ferrying drugs but the tools and vessels selling them to allegedly fund campaigns of violence in the U.S. and allied nations, one lawmaker familiar with the document said.
The boat strike inquiries are the latest sign of frustration from the House and Senate, where lawmakers say that, under Hegseth, the Pentagon has cut them out of crucial decisions and withheld information it is required by law to disclose to Congress.
Republican leaders were upset when the Defense Department, acting without lawmakers’ consent, withdrew a brigade of troops from Romania where they had been shielding against a Russian incursion into NATO territory. Key GOP figures also recently berated Trump’s nominees to key Pentagon policy posts, saying they’d been unresponsive to Congress while serving in acting roles.
“The administration is beginning to get a lot of pushback on a ton of different issues,” Rep. Adam Smith (Washington), the House Armed Services Committee’s top Democrat, told reporters Tuesday. “More importantly … the Republicans in the House and the Senate — they’re feeling that heat too.”
Twice this week, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) has declined to say whether he still has confidence in Hegseth, saying “others can make those evaluations.”
Tillis is among the Republicans who have shown a willingness to do so, urging “accountability” for whoever was responsible in the deaths of the boat strike survivors and suggesting he had confidence in America’s uniformed military leaders.
“If the facts play out the way they’re currently reported,” Tillis said, “then somebody needs to get the hell out of Washington.”
Theodoric Meyer and Marianna Sotomayor contributed to this report.
The post Republicans begin to tighten the screws on Hegseth’s Pentagon appeared first on Washington Post.
