The president’s refusal comes as Democrats and other critics argue that the strike, which killed at least 83 people, was an unwarranted and illegal “extrajudicial killing.”
President Trump says airstrike killed six “narco-terrorists”
President Trump says U.S. forces have killed six “narco-terrorists” in a boat attack off the coast of Venezuela.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is stepping up deadly attacks on suspected narco-terrorists’ drug smuggling vessels as part of a broader pressure campaign against Venezuela, but the administration has not provided the public or Congress with a legal basis for the attacks.
Senate Democrats this week escalated their demands for the Trump administration to publicly state the legal justification for carrying out attacks on Venezuelan soil as U.S. military assets converge in waters off the coast of the country.
“Few decisions are more important to a democracy than the use of deadly force,” the 13 senators, all members of the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees, wrote in a Nov. 24 letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
At least 83 people have been killed in 21 strikes in recent months. Specifically, it requires the Trump administration to release, starting September 5, a confidential opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of the General Counsel regarding deadly airstrikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean.
The Office of General Counsel opinion, also known as OLC, reportedly drafted over the summer and first reported by The Washington Post on November 12, argues that U.S. military personnel who engage in deadly acts in Latin America, including boat attacks, cannot be prosecuted.
What is not clear, however, is why the administration believes this to be the case and what legal justifications it uses to make that determination.
“Declassification and release of this important document will increase transparency into the use of deadly force by our military and is necessary to fully inform Congress and the American people of the legal justification for supporting these attacks,” the senators wrote. They pointed out that such memos have been made public before.
Some former military officials, law enforcement officials and legal analysts say the attack was illegal and amounted to extrajudicial killings. This was also the assessment of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, who said the attack was a “violation of international human rights law”.
The debate has become increasingly muddled as President Trump has said the military or the CIA could attack inside Venezuela, and observers who have seen a buildup of U.S. forces near Venezuela suspect an effort to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is on the horizon.
Six Democratic members of Congress, including Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, went so far as to air a video urging former military and intelligence colleagues to refuse to obey illegal orders, an alleged reference to the attack on Venezuela. In response, President Trump accused Democrats of making inflammatory claims that “deserve the death penalty.”
Why is the Trump administration conducting airstrikes?
Legal experts and Democratic lawmakers say there is no U.S. law that explicitly authorizes the U.S. Navy to attack or sink ships at sea outside of situations of war or legitimate self-defense authorized by Congress.
Although the airstrikes began in September, the Trump administration began discussing them shortly after Trump returned to the White House in January.
Emile Beauvais, who was acting deputy attorney general at the time, told Justice Department prosecutors at a February legal conference that drug ships leaving Venezuela should be attacked and sunk rather than interdicted, as has been the strategy for decades, a former Trump Justice Department counternarcotics official told USA TODAY. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential Justice Department matters.
President Trump then appointed Bove, a former personal attorney, as a federal judge.
Trump campaigned on prioritizing combating transnational drug cartels, particularly those smuggling deadly fentanyl into the United States, where the powerful synthetic opioid has killed more than 250,000 Americans since 2021.
However, Venezuela is neither a fentanyl producer nor a major trafficker. Fentanyl primarily enters the United States through Mexico.
Cocaine is smuggled through Venezuela, according to former Justice Department officials, Senate Democrats and other counternarcotics experts interviewed by USA TODAY.
Lisa Gilbert, co-chair of Not Above the Law, a coalition of more than 150 legal and national security experts who say they are committed to protecting American democracy and the rule of law, said the suspected smugglers “may be aggressive and may have committed crimes such as transporting cocaine, but none of them fit the traditional definition of assault or invasion that would justify the use of deadly force.”
“And the administration is actually defending its legal bases, so the legal arguments are certainly going to intensify as President Trump moves forward with military action inside and outside of Venezuela,” added Gilbert, who is also co-director of Public Citizen, a nonprofit organization that holds governments accountable.
What are the White House, Justice Department, and Pentagon saying?
The White House, Justice Department, and Pentagon did not respond to USA TODAY’s requests for comment. The three spokesmen were vague in public comments about what laws the regime was using to justify the attack and the possibility of further military action against Venezuela.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement to The Washington Post on November 12 that “current operations in the Caribbean are legal under both U.S. and international law” and that all actions are “fully compliant with the laws of armed conflict.”
“This attack is consistent with the laws of armed conflict and was a lawful order,” the Justice Department told Reuters.
Mr. Trump himself has frequently claimed, as part of his rationale for ordering airstrikes, that Mr. Maduro is involved in smuggling as head of a drug lord of military officials known as the Cartel de los Soles. He also criticized the Venezuelan criminal organization Torren de Aragua.
In February, the Trump administration blacklisted Torren de Aragua, Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, and other drug organizations as “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” organizations. In August, administration officials said the designation would allow the military to go after drug cartels in Latin America and directed the Pentagon to prepare its options.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on August 8, “We have to start treating them not just as drug trafficking organizations, but as armed terrorist organizations.”
The Trump administration went further on November 24, designating a Venezuelan criminal organization known as the Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization. This allows the United States to expand the scope of the so-called “War on Terrorism” law, passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on human traffickers, to seize U.S. bank accounts associated with organizations, sanction U.S. citizens who provide material support, and authorize the federal government to “take steps to prevent members of these organizations from entering the United States.”
But critics say these laws do not specifically authorize the killing of terrorist suspects, particularly those believed to be drug traffickers.
In March, President Trump invoked the rarely used Alien Enemies Act to justify the deportation of alleged members of Torren de Aragua.
“Now is the time for war, because Biden has emptied our prisons by allowing millions of people, many of them criminals, many of them at the highest level, to be incarcerated,” Trump said. “It’s an invasion. They invaded our country.”
Legal questions and concerns – remain
Critics have also questioned whether the Trump administration is invoking another powerful post-9/11 counterterrorism tool known as Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to justify drug boat attacks.
The AUMF was created to allow the Pentagon to carry out targeted killings of terrorist suspects, but it has one key provision: It requires prior approval by Congress, Democratic lawmakers said.
Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) was one of a number of Senate Democrats who appeared in the full Senate on November 6 to block the boat attack and further military action without Congressional authorization.
Mr. Reed, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said the suspected drug smugglers were “criminals, not ideological combatants waging war against the United States.” “If the White House truly believes these are terrorist organizations, and the Secretary of Defense truly believes that Torren de Aragua is comparable to al-Qaeda, then the administration should come to Congress and ask for an AUMF. The fact that they are not doing that is clear.”
Reid characterized this as a bipartisan issue, saying he and Sen. Roger Wicker (Mississippi), the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, had sent multiple requests to Hegseth to provide “basic information to which Congress is legally entitled, such as execution of orders, legal justification, and information supporting the individual attacks.”
Reed said the Pentagon took more than two months to provide only some of the requested information and refused to answer “simple questions about the very limited information that has been provided thus far.”
Senate Republicans are supporting President Trump and blocking, along party lines, a bill launched by Democrats on October 8 that would have barred the administration from using force against boats in the Caribbean without Congressional authorization.
“This is an attack on the United States by people designated as terrorists,” said Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “The president not only has the right, but the obligation, to do something about this issue.”
President Trump said his administration would brief lawmakers on the attack after Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky began raising concerns that the attack amounted to an illegal “extrajudicial killing.”
But on October 23, President Trump said there was no reason to ask them for Congressional approval.
Instead of asking Congress to “declare war,” President Trump said, “I think we’re just going to kill the people who are bringing drugs into our country. … They’re going to be like, dead.”
President Trump added, “Land is next.”
