War Crime, Murder, or Both? House Dems Demand DOJ Probe Into Hegseth Order to Kill Shipwrecked Sailors

Making clear that the Trump administration's "entire Caribbean operation," which has killed more than 100 people in boats that the US military has bombed, "appears to be unlawful," two Democrats on a powerful House committee on Monday called on the Department of Justice to investigate one particular attack that's garnered accusations of a war crime—or murder.

House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi four weeks after it was reported that in the military's first strike on a boat on September 2, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered service members to "kill everybody"—prompting a second "double-tap" strike to kill two survivors of the initial blast.

A retired general, United Nations experts, and former top military legal advisers are among those who have warned that Hegseth and the service members directly involved in the strike—as well as the other attacks on more than two dozen boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific—may be liable for war crimes or murder.

Raskin and Lieu raised that concern directly to Bondi, writing: "Deliberately targeting incapacitated individuals constitutes a clear violation of the Department of Defense’s Law of War Manual, which expressly forbids attacks on persons rendered helpless by shipwreck. Such conduct would trigger criminal liability under the War Crimes Act if the administration claims it is engaged in armed conflict, or under the federal murder statute if no such conflict exists."

The administration has insisted it is attacking the boats as part of an effort to stop drug trafficking out of Venezuela, and has claimed the US is in an armed conflict with drug cartels there, though international and domestic intelligence agencies have not identified the country as a significant source any drugs that flow into the US. As President Donald Trump has ordered the boat strikes, the administration has also been escalating tensions with Venezuela by seizing oil tankers, claiming to close its airspace, and demanding that President Nicolás Maduro leave power.

Critics from both sides of the aisle in Congress have questioned the claim that the bombed boats were a threat to the US, and Raskin and Lieu noted that the vessel attacked on September 2 in particular appeared to pose no threat, as it was apparently headed to Suriname, "not the United States, at the time it was destroyed."

"Deliberately targeting incapacitated individuals constitutes a clear violation of the Department of Defense’s Law of War Manual, which expressly forbids attacks on persons rendered helpless by shipwreck."

"Congress has never authorized military force against Venezuela; a boat moving towards Suriname does not pose a clear and present danger to the United States; and the classified legal memoranda the Trump administration has offered us to justify the attacks are entirely unpersuasive," wrote the lawmakers.

Raskin and Lieu emphasized that Hegseth's explanations of the September 2 strike in particular have been "shifting and contradictory."

"Secretary Hegseth has variously claimed that he missed the details of the September 2 strike because of the 'fog of war,' and that he actually left the room before any explicit order was given to kill the survivors," they wrote. "Later reporting suggests that he gave a general order to kill all passengers aboard ahead of the strike but delegated the specific order to kill survivors to a subordinate."

The facts that are known about the strike, as well as Hegseth's muddled claims, warrant a DOJ investigation, the Democrats suggested.

"Giving a general order to kill any survivors constitutes a war crime," they wrote. "Similarly, carrying out such an order also constitutes a war crime, and the Manual for Courts-Martial explicitly provides that 'acting pursuant to orders' is no defense 'if the accused knew the orders to be unlawful.' Outside of war, the killing of unarmed, helpless men clinging to wreckage in open water is simply murder. The federal criminal code makes it a felony to commit murder within the 'special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States,' which is defined to include the 'high seas.' It is also a federal crime to conspire to commit murder."

Raskin and Lieu also emphasized that two memos from the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) "do not—and cannot—provide any legal protection for the secretary’s conduct."

A 2010 OLC memo said the federal murder statute does not apply "when the target of a military strike is an enemy combatant in a congressionally authorized armed conflict," they noted. "In stark contrast, in the case of the Venezuelan boats, Congress has not authorized military force of any kind."

A new classified memo also suggested that “personnel taking part in military strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in Latin America would not be exposed to future prosecution," and claimed that "the president’s inherent constitutional authority in an undeclared 'armed conflict' will shield the entire chain of command from criminal liability."

The Democrats wrote, "Experts in criminal law, constitutional law, and the law of armed conflict find this sweeping, unsubstantiated claim implausible, at best."

They also noted that even the author of the George W. Bush administration's infamous "Torture Memo," conservative legal scholar John Woo, has said Hegseth's order on September 2 was clearly against the law.

"Attorney General Bondi, even those who condoned and defended torture in the name of America are saying that the Trump administration has violated both federal law and the law of war," wrote Raskin and Lieu. "We urge you to do your duty as this country’s chief law enforcement officer to investigate the secretary’s apparent and serious violations of federal criminal law."