WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Monday justified the U.S. military’s decision to fire a second missile in a heavily scrutinized attack on a boat in the Caribbean Sea by claiming that two suspected drug smugglers were trying to right the vessel after it had capsized in the initial strike.
Trump also backtracked on whether he was open to releasing the video footage of the second strike. Last week, Trump told reporters he saw “no problem” in releasing the footage, but on Monday he said he would leave the decision to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The Republican administration is facing calls from Democratic lawmakers to release footage of the Sept. 2 operation in the Caribbean Sea, which killed nine people aboard the boat in an initial strike and then two more who managed to survive.
“They were trying to return the boat back to where it could float, and we didn’t want to see that because that boat was loaded up with drugs,” Trump said on Monday.
When asked by a reporter about his comments last week suggesting he was open to releasing footage of the second strike, Trump denied that was his position and bitterly attacked the reporter as “obnoxious” and “terrible.”
“Whatever Pete Hegseth wants to do is OK with me,” Trump said.
Trump, however, last Wednesday in an exchange with reporters about the strike footage said: “Whatever they have we’d certainly release.”
The Sept. 2 operation was the first in what has become a monthslong series of American strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that the administration says are targeting drug smugglers working on behalf of cartels, including some controlled by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. At least 87 people have been killed in 22 known strikes.
Trump has broadly justified the campaign as necessary for his administration to stem the flow of fentanyl and other illegal drugs into the United States. He claims the U.S. is in armed conflict with narco-terrorists.
Hegseth said in a Fox News interview Saturday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California that officials were reviewing the video, but he did not commit to releasing it. “Whatever we were to decide to release, we’d have to be very responsible” about it,” Hegseth said.
The Pentagon on Monday did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the status of Hegseth’s review or confirm Trump’s assertion that the suspects appeared to be trying to turn over the vessel before the second strike was fired.
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are demanding that the Pentagon hand over “unedited video of strikes” against drug cartels to Congress, threatening to withhold a quarter of Hegseth’s travel budget if it doesn’t. The provision is included in the $900 billion defense bill the House is expected to vote on later this week.
Over the weekend, Sen. Tom Cotton, the Republican who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he would not oppose public release of the footage.
But Cotton, among the top lawmakers on national security committees who were briefed by the Navy admiral commanding those strikes, is splitting with Democrats over whether military personnel acted lawfully in carrying out the second strike to kill the two survivors.
“It’s not gruesome. I didn’t find it distressing or disturbing,” he said, explaining why he does not have a problem with releasing all the footage. “It looks like any number of dozens of strikes we’ve seen on jeeps and pickup trucks in the Middle East over the years.”
Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the video “was profoundly shaking.” And Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said it “did not appear that these two survivors were in any position to continue the fight.” Both Himes and Smith, who spoke separately on Sunday talk shows, have viewed the video.
The classified sessions on Capitol Hill came after a report that Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley had ordered the follow-on attack to comply with Hegseth’s demands.
Bradley told lawmakers there was no “kill them all” order from Hegseth, but a video of the entire series of attacks left some lawmakers with serious questions. Legal experts have said killing survivors of a strike at sea could be a violation of the laws of military warfare.
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AP writers Konstantin Toropin, Ben Finley and Bill Barrow contributed reporting.
