Caribbean boat strikes trigger war crime controversy, US lawmakers seek audio and video records: Read how Trump and Defence Secretary Hegseth are facing heat

In an ironic turn of events, US President Donald Trump, who has been claiming to have stopped around eight wars and seeking the Nobel Peace Prize, is now facing heat for his administration’s commission of a war crime in the Caribbean. A row has erupted in the US as Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth is likely to face criminal liability for giving a “kill everybody” order, which led to a second airstrike on a boat and the killing of the survivors of the first strike on 2^nd September.

The US airstrikes on a suspected ‘drugs-smuggling’ boat and the Trump administration’s alleged war crime

The strikes carried out by the US forces on the order of Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth on a vessel in international waters off Venezuela’s coast were claimed to be a part of the Trump administration’s campaign against “narcoterrorists”. The US authorities claimed that the attacked boat was suspected of ferrying drugs on behalf of the Tren de Aragua (TDA) gang, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO).

I've taught the Laws of Armed Conflict to U.S. and mult. allied troops. It's comical to have online experts inform me:

The Laws of War do not apply to killing terrorists because Congress didn't declare war
WRONG
You can't make a 2nd strike at a boat you're sinking because there… pic.twitter.com/U7Nsi65oi9

— Jim Hanson (@JimHansonDC) December 2, 2025

However, the Venezuelan foreign minister lodged a complaint days after the strike, alleging that the American authorities are “seeking an incident that would justify a military escalation in the Caribbean”. Foreign Minister Yván Gil cited an incident of US forces occupying a Venezuelan fishing boat for eight hours.

The initial strike on 2^nd September 2025 had severely wrecked the boat, leaving many survivors clinging to its debris in the water. However, only minutes later, a second strike followed and targeted the boat’s wreckage. The second strike killed all the survivors on board. It is estimated that around 8 to 12 people were killed.

Reportedly, drone footage and radio communications captured the moments of the final blow, with survivors visible and wounded.

U.S. officials say Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a verbal order to “kill everybody” aboard a suspected drug-smuggling boat during the first strike of the Trump administration’s new anti-trafficking campaign.

A U.S. missile hit the vessel off Trinidad on Sept. 2. When two… pic.twitter.com/uBWBdGmmSP

— Clash Report (@clashreport) November 28, 2025

Trump pardoned convicted drug facilitator but accuses Biden of going soft on Drug cartels

The Democrat and Republican leaders are indulging in a war of words, with the former accusing the latter of committing ‘war crimes’ in the name of aggressive policy against drug smugglers. Trump administration officials, including Pete Hegseth, are claiming that while the previous Biden administration “coddled terrorists, “we kill them.”

In an X post published on 29^th November, Pete Hegseth dismissed the media report, particularly the Washington Post report, which claimed that Hegseth gave “kill everybody” orders to Admiral Frank M. Bradley, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command.

“…As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be “lethal, kinetic strikes.” The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people. Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization. The Biden administration preferred the kid gloves approach, allowing millions of people — including dangerous cartels and unvetted Afghans — to flood our communities with drugs and violence. The Trump administration has sealed the border and gone on offense against narco-terrorists. Biden coddled terrorists, we kill them…” Hegseth wrote.

President Donald Trump had also expressed confidence in Hegseth, saying that he believed the Defence Secretary “100%”.

Interestingly, while Pete Hegseth accused the Biden administration of coddling terrorists, be it narcoterrorists in the Caribbean and East Pacific or Afghans, and claimed that the Trump administration kills terrorists. The reality is quite different.

It is arguably true that the Biden administration was comparatively soft on drug cartels smuggling narcotics into the US. The Trump administration has also been mollycoddling terrorists and their enablers.

In May 2025, Trump held a meeting with Ahmed Hussain al-Sharaa, the interim president of Syria, who just months back had a $10 million bounty on his head by the US government. Trump heaped praises on the former terrorist, who once admitted to having celebrated the 9/11 Islamic terror attack that killed thousands. Trump called Sharaa a “Young, attractive guy. Tough guy. Strong past. Very strong past. Fighter.”

In Afghanistan, former US President Joe Biden received all the global condemnation and domestic backlash for withdrawing US forces in 2021. However, it was Trump’s 2020 Doha Agreement that laid the ground for the eventual historic visuals of the US literally fleeing Afghanistan and leaving it in the hands of Taliban terrorists.

After elevating a former ISIS terrorist to power in Syria and leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban, Trump has declared ‘friendship’ with the Pakistan Army, the biggest Islamic terrorist group in the region. It is not a secret that Pakistan Army funds, fosters and shields Islamic terrorists and uses them as its proxies to carry out attacks against India.

In fact, the Trump administration is also going soft on convicted drug trafficking facilitators. While US forces acting on Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s orders are regularly striking vessels in the Caribbean over suspicion of drug smuggling, President Trump, on 29^th November, pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who is convicted of facilitating huge drug trafficking, including cocaine smuggling into the US.

Hernández was sentenced to a 45-year jail term in July 2024. He was convicted of colluding with drug traffickers for over a decade to smuggle cocaine into the US.

Trump not only granted clemency to Hernández but also justified it by saying that the people of Honduras “basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country. And they said it was a Biden administration setup. And I looked at the facts and I agreed with them.”

Calling out Trump’s hypocrisy, Democrat leader Chuck Schumer dubbed the American President’s decision to pardon Hernandez as “egregious, dangerous and shameful.”

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Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s admission and justification of the second strike that allegedly amounts to a war crime

The controversy over the September 2 airstrike began after a Washington Post report said that the verbal order was to kill “everybody” on the boat. “In an effort to comply with that order, the commanding officer of the operation directed a second strike targeting two survivors of an initial attack, who were “clinging to the smouldering wreck,” according to the Post.

Admiral Frank M. Bradley, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, had directed a second strike on the boat’s survivors to comply with Pete Hegseth’s verbal order to “kill everybody”.

On Monday, US Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt justified the second strike that killed survivors on the boat. Leavitt defended Admiral Frank M. Bradley, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, saying that he had acted “within his authority and the law” when he ordered a second strike after the first strike left survivors.

“Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was totally destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,” Leavitt said.

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