One retired Judge Advocate General Corps (JAG) officer says officials in President Donald Trump’s Pentagon may have been aware they were breaking international law when carrying out a controversial strike in September.
During a Thursday interview with CNN, Dan Maurer — a 22-year U.S. Army veteran who served as a military attorney — broke down how legal experts within the Department of Defense regularly advise top commanders of sensitive missions before a strike is carried out. He explained that the process is particularly relevant given the recent closed-door testimony of Admiral Frank M. Bradley, who led the Sept. 2, 2025, operation in which two survivors of a boat strike in the Caribbean Sea were killed in a secondary strike.
During his remarks, Bradley refuted the initial Washington Post report about the “double-tap” strike on the two survivors — who were clinging to the wreckage of their vessel after a U.S. missile destroyed it — saying that the allegation that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave orders to “kill everybody” never occurred. He also maintained that he ordered the secondary strike to be necessary because the survivors were radioing for help. Maurer said Bradley was not making a “sound legal argument” to justify the second strike.
“It’s not factually accurate,” he said. “… The bottom line is, a shipwrecked crew member of a vessel … a combatant, a street criminal, whoever it is, is shipwrecked and, communicating back to shore, communicating back to their organization, communicating to someone they know for a rescue, does not make them a combatant. It does not make them targetable. It is simply calling for rescue. They have to actually pose a threat to someone else.”
President Donald Trump has argued that the U.S. is in a state of armed conflict with drug cartels as a means of justifying his boat strikes in the Caribbean, which have killed more than 80 people to date. Maurer went on to say that even if the U.S. was operating under the rules of an official armed conflict, it still wouldn’t justify the Sept. 2 strike.
“The laws of war would still prohibit targeting shipwrecked crew members, again, no matter how evil they are, no matter how bad they are, no matter how high up in the chain of command they are, they are hors de combat, period,” Maurer said, referring to the French phrase for “out of the fight” in Rule 47 of International Humanitarian Law (IHL).
Maurer explained that in a situation where commanders are preparing to carry out a lethal strike, there is typically a military lawyer on hand to advise them of the legality of an action. He added, however, that commanders of missions still have the authority to make the final decision regardless of what advice a military lawyer may give.
“In an operations center that is commanding and controlling a targeting operation … that would involve the commander, various munitions experts, targeteers, planners, logisticians and a JAG, a Judge Advocate General Corps officer,” he said. “And at the high level of [Joint Special Operations Command]; a three-star command, or [U.S. Southern Command]; a four-star command, the lawyer in the room — and there may be more than one — are usually very, very experienced.”
“They have a lot of experience. They have a lot of judgment. They’ve been around the block. They understand the laws of armed conflict. They understand how to interpret evidence,” he continued. “And again, if you’re in a combat situation, in an armed conflict, that lawyer is there to ensure that the target is a valid, legitimate target in accordance with the rules of engagement … [T]he law of war and the rules of engagement are supposed to reflect the laws of war. No rule of engagement — no matter how aggressive the command wants to be, no matter how aggressive the commander in chief wants to be — no rule of engagement can break the laws of armed conflict. It is a red line you cannot cross.”
Watch the segment below:
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