Democrats Shut Out of Briefing on Trump 'Murder Spree' in International Waters
"Decisions about the use of American military force are not campaign strategy sessions, and they are not the private property of one political party," said Democratic Sen. Mark Warner.
The Trump administration on Wednesday cut Senate Democrats out of a classified briefing on the US military's string of deadly strikes on boats that the president and his underlings claim—without any publicly disclosed evidence—were smuggling drugs across international waters.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the Trump administration held a "partisan military briefing" with Republican senators on Wednesday and continues to withhold "legally requested information" from Democratic lawmakers.
"Shutting Democrats out of a briefing on US military strikes and withholding the legal justification for those strikes from half the Senate is indefensible and dangerous," Warner said in a statement. "Decisions about the use of American military force are not campaign strategy sessions, and they are not the private property of one political party."
"For any administration to treat them that way erodes our national security and flies in the face of Congress' constitutional obligation to oversee matters of war and peace," he added.
At Wednesday's briefing, Trump administration officials reportedly showed Republican senators a classified memo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), purportedly detailing the administration's legal case for the strikes in waters off Central and South America.
Warner said disclosing the memo only to members of the president's party "is a slap in the face to Congress' war powers responsibilities" that "sets a reckless and deeply troubling precedent."
"The administration must immediately provide to Democrats the same briefing and the OLC opinion justifying these strikes, as Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio personally promised me that he would in a face-to-face meeting on Capitol Hill just last week," said Warner. "Americans deserve a government that fulfills its constitutional duties and treats decisions about the use of military force with the seriousness they demand."
The existence of the OLC memo has been known for weeks, but the administration has ignored calls for its release and the president has publicly expressed contempt for Congress' role in authorizing military action.
"I don't think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war," Trump, who has said that "we are waging war against" drug cartels, told reporters earlier this month. "I think we are going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We are going to kill them, you know? They are going to be, like, dead."
"The administration has not even named its victims, nor provided evidence of their alleged crimes."
So far, the Trump administration has killed more than 60 people with at least 14 strikes on boats in international waters, and the president has said land strikes are "going to be next."
Administration officials have repeatedly cited unspecified "intelligence" to justify the strikes, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did on Wednesday after the US military bombed a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing at least four people.
Daphne Eviatar, Amnesty International USA's director for human rights and security, said in a statement Wednesday that "in the last two months, the US military's Southern Command has gone on a murder spree by following the Trump administration's illegal orders."
"The administration has not even named its victims, nor provided evidence of their alleged crimes," Eviatar said. "But even if they did, intentionally killing people accused of committing crimes who pose no imminent threat to life is murder, full stop."
