Democrats have stepped up their demands to expand the inquiries underway in Congress into a U.S. military attack that killed two alleged drug smugglers who survived an initial strike on their boat.
The push comes after a select group of lawmakers Thursday reviewed a video of the Sept. 2 operation in the Caribbean Sea and were briefed on Capitol Hill by Adm. Frank M. Bradley, the commander who oversaw it. Democrats said they want a public hearing and access to documents related to the incident.
Republicans — who control the Senate and the House — joined Democrats in seeking answers from the Defense Department after The Washington Post reported last week that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had given a verbal order before the strike to kill all of the boat’s crew members. But as of Friday evening, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Rep. Mike D. Rogers (R-Alabama), his counterpart in the House, have yet to signal how they will proceed.
Republicans have neither ruled out nor committed to launching a fuller investigation. Spokespeople for Wicker and Rogers did not respond to requests for comment, and neither made any public statements after meeting with Bradley on Thursday.
The silence has unnerved some Democrats who say Congress has a duty to perform rigorous oversight of the situation.
“To be very blunt, I’ve seen no clear sign yet that Republicans really are seeking an aggressive investigation,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I’ve seen no indication that they are going to use the tools that are available and necessary to pursue all of the facts.”
Blumenthal, who did not meet with Bradley during the admiral’s briefings for committee chairmen and ranking minority-party members Thursday, is one of many Democrats pressing for more accountability. No Democrats voted earlier this year to confirm Hegseth’s nomination, and they have repeatedly denounced his stewardship of the Pentagon over the past 10 months.
“There needs to be a full, prompt, penetrating Armed Services Committee investigation beginning with subpoenas, because one of my fears is that those records and documents will be somehow lost or even destroyed and we need to secure them right away,” Blumenthal said, adding that he specifically wants to see the written and verbal orders that Hegseth gave before the operation.
Other Democrats — including Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (New York) and Sen. Mark Kelly (Arizona) — have said they have confidence that Wicker and Sen. Jack Reed (Rhode Island), the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, will investigate.
Sept. 2 marked the start of a campaign that to date includes at least 22 strikes on boats in the waters off Latin America — and has killed at least 87 people. The Trump administration has said the strikes are necessary to stem the flow of illegal drugs into the United States, but they have infuriated Democrats, who have accused the administration of ignoring the laws of war.
The administration’s decision to move the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier and other ships to the Caribbean have stoked fears that the administration is preparing to strike Venezuela. President Donald Trump has accused Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, of leading a cartel sending drugs to the U.S.
Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia), Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) and Adam Schiff (D-California) and Schumer filed a bipartisan war powers resolution Wednesday to force another vote on blocking Trump from attacking Venezuela without congressional authorization. A similar effort failed in November, when all but two Senate Republicans voted down the measure.
“We’ve got to have a public hearing on this,” Kaine, a member of the Armed Services Committee, said Friday. “This is highly unusual that we’re more than 90 days into this, more than 80 people have been killed … and yet neither the Armed Services Committee nor the Foreign Relations Committee has had a single public hearing.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) has defended Trump’s military campaign broadly but also said he would like to see the Senate Armed Services Committee seek out the facts of the Sept. 2 attack. “Figure out procedurally what’s the correct, lawful way to do things and determine whether or not everything was followed,” Thune told reporters this week.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a member of the Armed Services Committee, said after his meeting with Bradley that he did not see a need for further investigation.
“I can’t say exactly what’s going to happen on the committee in the future, but I think what happened today with General Caine, Admiral Bradley coming up, showing us the videos, kind of talking through everything that led up to September 2nd is a very thorough review of what happened,” Cotton told reporters Thursday, referring to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine, who also attended the sessions.
Still, Cotton said he didn’t object to the Pentagon releasing the full video of the strike, as some Democrats have demanded. Trump indicated Wednesday that he supported releasing “whatever they have.”
The Pentagon is in touch with the White House about whether to release the video, according to a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement that the administration had been “extremely transparent with the Hill” and would remain forthcoming about Trump’s “efforts to take on the cartels and stop the illegal smuggling of drugs into our homeland, just as he promised on the campaign trail.”
The Senate Armed Services Committee has taken at least one step that could shed more light on the administration’s activities. The committee has asked Adm. Alvin Holsey, for now the U.S. military’s top officer overseeing operations in Central and South America, to testify before the committee next week, according to Blumenthal and another person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
Holsey is leaving his assignment well ahead of schedule. The move was announced by Hegseth in October as military operations in the region began to intensify and attract greater scrutiny on Capitol Hill, fueling speculation that the admiral was at odds with the secretary over the administration’s approach to combating drug trafficking.
A spokesperson for Holsey declined to comment.
A spokesperson for Rep. Adam Smith (Washington), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said that panel also requested briefings with U.S. Southern Command, though not with Holsey specifically.
Rogers, the House Armed Services Committee chair, said earlier this week that the committee would not hold public hearings on the matter in the near future.
Rep. Don Bacon (Nebraska), a member of the Armed Service Committee and a rare Republican who has openly criticized Hegseth, said he supported releasing the video of the Sept. 2 operation and called on Holsey to meet with the committee.
“I believe his testimony could be critical,” Bacon wrote in a text message to The Post.
Lawmakers who attended the briefings with Bradley on Thursday asked for more information about the strikes, including public release of the full video, the written “execute order” related to the strike and any communications Bradley had as the operation unfolded, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the classified sessions.
Reed and Wicker requested copies of the execute orders related to the strikes in September, without success. Reed, too, has pressed for a more fulsome accounting of what transpired.
The materials are seen as essential pieces of evidence in determining how and why the military leaders involved in the operation judged the two people who survived the first strike were still legitimate targets. Bradley supported sharing the materials when asked by lawmakers Thursday but noted that he alone was not authorized to release them, two of the people said.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire), a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, called for a briefing for all lawmakers and declassification of the administration’s rationale for the strikes. She said in a statement that it is essential for lawmakers to hear directly from the relevant military commanders, “not just Secretary Hegseth and his appointees’ spin on these operations.”
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois), another member of the Armed Service Committee, said she had requested copies of the after-action reports and intelligence debriefs from the pilots and drone operators who carried out the missions.
“I’d like to see all of that,” Duckworth said on CNN. “Now, whether or not my Republican colleagues are going to stand up and force that to happen is a whole different question.”
Alex Horton and Natalie Allison contributed to this report.
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