Archiv: Pete Hegseth


10.12.2025 - 07:33 [ ABC News ]

Admiral ousted by Hegseth talks privately to lawmakers

(December 9, 2025)

Adm. Alvin Holsey, who was pushed out of his post as the top U.S. military commander overseeing operations in Latin America, spoke privately with several lawmakers on Tuesday, according to three people familiar with the meeting — an indication that Congress is quietly pursuing a bipartisan inquiry into the Sept. 2 boat strike in the Caribbean Sea.
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Also on Tuesday, House and Senate leaders known as the „Gang of Eight“ are hearing separately from President Donald Trump‘s national security team: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

10.12.2025 - 07:19 [ KomoNews.com ]

Hegseth won‘t commit to letting Congress see video of deadly boat strike, Schumer says

WASHINGTON (TND) — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth would not commit to showing all members of Congress the full video of a deadly double strike on an alleged drug boat on September 2.

He shared the news after he attended a closed-door meeting with Hegseth, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as well as fellow top lawmakers known as the „Gang of Eight“ on Tuesday afternoon.

10.12.2025 - 07:16 [ CBS News ]

Sen. Warner says „Gang of Eight“ wasn‘t shown Sept. 2 boat strikes video in Hegseth-Rubio briefing

(8 hours ago)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on Tuesday about the Sept. 2 strikes on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean. CBS News congressional correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns has the details.

07.12.2025 - 21:19 [ Amnesty International ]

Shipwrecked or Not, All These Bombings are Murder

(December 5, 2025)

“Intercepting purported drug boats is a law enforcement operation, subject to policing standards derived from international human rights law, which holds that all people have the rights to life and a fair trial and only allows states to use lethal force when an imminent threat to life exists and less extreme means, like capture, are insufficient.

“A state intentionally killing someone outside those circumstances is committing an extrajudicial execution, a form of murder, no matter what crime the person is alleged to have committed.”

07.12.2025 - 21:18 [ Common Dreams ]

‘All of Them Constitute Murder,’ Amnesty Says of Trump Boat Bombings

Human rights organization Amnesty International is cautioning critics of the Trump administration’s boat-bombing spree against getting bogged down in the precise details of each individual strike if it means losing sight of the bigger picture.

Daphne Eviatar, director for security and human rights for Amnesty International USA, said on Friday that it would be a mistake to merely condemn the Trump administration for launching a double-tap strike aimed at killing shipwrecked survivors of an initial attack, because the entire campaign of bombing vessels based on the suspicion that they are carrying illegal narcotics is unlawful.

05.12.2025 - 03:34 [ CNN ]

Exclusive: Survivors clinging to capsized boat didn’t radio for backup, admiral overseeing double-tap strike tells lawmakers

For a little under an hour — 41 minutes, according to a separate US official — Bradley and the rest of the US military command center discussed what to do as they watched the men struggle to overturn what was left of their boat, the sources said.

Ultimately, Bradley told lawmakers, he ordered a second strike to destroy the remains of the vessel, killing the two survivors, on the grounds that it appeared that part of the vessel remained afloat because it still held cocaine, according to one of the sources. The survivors could hypothetically have floated to safety, been rescued, and carried on with trafficking the drugs, the logic went.

The other source with direct knowledge of the briefing called that rationale “f**king insane.”

05.12.2025 - 03:26 [ CBS News ]

Lawmakers see video of second strike on boat survivors, say admiral testified there was no kill order

GOP Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, spoke with reporters after the briefings. They both said Bradley told them that he had not been ordered to leave no survivors. The initial Post report quoted an anonymous source as saying that, before the first strike, Hegseth verbally ordered that everyone on the boat be taken out. „The order was to kill everybody,“ the Post‘s story quoted the source as saying. Hegseth has denied the Post‘s account.

04.12.2025 - 10:25 [ Associated Press ]

Pete Hegseth faces deepening scrutiny from Congress over boat strikes

Trump, a Republican, has largely stood by his defense secretary, among the most important Cabinet-level positions. But the decisions by Wicker, alongside House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers of Alabama and the top Democrats on the committees, to open investigations provide a rare moment of Congress asserting itself and its authority to conduct oversight of the Trump administration.

03.12.2025 - 18:34 [ Elissa Slotkin, U.S. Senator for Michigan ]

Slotkin Statement on Washington Post Report on Hegseth’s Cartel Strike Orders

(December 2, 2025)

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) released the following statement regarding reports from the Washington Post that on September 2, 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued an order to kill all eleven people on the suspected drug boat in the Caribbean:

“At the Pentagon, the buck stops with the Secretary of Defense. Period.

“True leaders own the calls they make and take responsibility for their actions. Secretary Hegseth should release the full video of the strike and lay out publicly what happened, without throwing the uniformed military under the bus.

“Since Signalgate back in the spring, Secretary Hegseth’s leadership has been a distraction from the critical missions of our military, and I called for him to resign then. The President himself yesterday told the country that he would not have wanted a second strike.

“If this reporting is true, President Trump should fire the Secretary, as he did other underperforming cabinet members in his first Administration.”

03.12.2025 - 18:23 [ Elissa Slotkin, U.S. Senator for Michigan ]

WATCH: Slotkin Highlights 2016 Video, Hegesth says U.S. troops will not follow unlawful orders from the President

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) shared a 2016 video, first reported in CNN, where Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told an audience that the U.S. military “won’t follow unlawful orders from their commander in chief.” Words remarkably similar to Slotkin’s in a video she posted recently where she simply restated the law.

Major Pete Hegseth, in 2016 said:

“If you are doing something that is completely unlawful and ruthless then there is a consequence for that. That’s why the military said it won’t follow unlawful orders from their commander in chief. There’s a standard; there’s an ethos; there’s a belief that we are above so many things are enemies or others would do.”

03.12.2025 - 09:49 [ CNN ]

Trump and Hegseth insist they didn’t know of follow-up strike that killed survivors on suspected drug boat

But Hegseth on Tuesday also denied any direct role in targeting the survivors, saying he’d empowered Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley to make all of the operational decisions — and had left the room well before it became clear that some of the people on the boat had survived.

“I watched that first strike live,” Hegseth said. “I didn’t stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs, so I moved on to my next meeting.”

The defense secretary did not learn about the second strike, he added, until hours later.

02.12.2025 - 20:27 [ Time Magazine ]

What to Know About the Admiral Named by Hegseth as Boat Strike Comes Under Scrutiny

During the Sept. 2 strikes, Bradley was leading the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which oversees elite military teams, handles complex and sensitive military missions, and at times works with the CIA. In October, he assumed command of the JSOC’s parent group, the United States Special Operations Command, which oversees the military’s special operations in more than 80 countries.

02.12.2025 - 19:59 [ Brit Hume, Chief Political Analyst, Fox News Channel / X ]

How to point the finger at someone while pretending to support him.

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02.12.2025 - 19:57 [ Yahoo ]

Hegseth Throws Admiral Under the Bus, Says Navy Leader Ordered Boat Survivors Killed

Fox News Chief Political Analyst Brit Hume quote-tweeted Hegseth and wrote, “How to point the finger at someone while pretending to support him.”

Earlier in the day, Hume said on Fox News that the story could be “a big problem” for the Trump administration.

Over on CNN, Ryan Goodman, former general counsel for the Department of Defense, stated that if Hegseth ordered everyone on the boat killed, the secretary is ultimately responsible for the second strike, regardless of Bradley’s involvement.

02.12.2025 - 19:50 [ Politico.com ]

White House says admiral approved second deadly boat strike

Hegseth “authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes,” Leavitt said. “The president has made it quite clear that if narco-terrorists again are trafficking illegal drugs towards the United States, he has the authority to kill them. That is what this administration is doing.”

02.12.2025 - 19:16 [ Time Magazine ]

Boat Strike Revelations Draw Bipartisan Outrage, Spurring Push for Hearings as Soon as ‘Next Week’

Lawmakers from both parties were raising the term “war crime” on Monday, as pressure mounts on the Trump Administration to release military video evidence and explain the legal basis for its escalating campaign in the Caribbean.

In the Senate, the calls for oversight were coalescing around Senator Roger Wicker, the Mississippi Republican who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and has already directed an inquiry to the Pentagon and pledged “vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.” Several Senate Democrats told TIME on Monday that they have confidence in Wicker leading the investigation into the strike, but urged him to move quickly.

02.12.2025 - 19:09 [ Time Magazine ]

White House Confirms Second Strike on Alleged Drug Boat and Defends Move as Legal

(December 1, 2025)

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday that the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command acted “within his authority and the law” when striking an alleged drug boat a second time on Sept. 2 after the first strike left survivors.

The White House has scrambled in recent days to respond to reporting that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered an elite military unit to kill everyone on board an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean in early September, leading the commander to send a second strike that killed survivors from the first attack.

30.11.2025 - 08:29 [ theHill.com ]

Gallego warns of ‘consequences’ to military for ‘going after sitting members of Congress’

(November 25, 2025)

“Because they know that Donald Trump will be gone and they will not have that protection,” he added. “They’re going to have to do the safest thing possible, which is follow the Constitution of the United States, and you’ll be fine.”

Gallego then looked directly into the camera and gave a message to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. On Monday, Hegseth said the Pentagon would conduct a “thorough review” of allegations against Kelly, who first heard of the investigation in Hegseth’s post on the social platform X.

“You will never, ever, ever even be half the man that Sen. Kelly is,” Gallego told Hegseth. “You, sir, are a coward. And the fact that you are following this order from the president shows how big of a coward you are. And I can’t wait till you no longer are the secretary of Defense.”

30.11.2025 - 08:13 [ theHill.com ]

House committee seeks ‘full accounting’ of boat strike after WaPo ‘kill everybody’ report

The leaders of the House Armed Services Committee said late Saturday they are seeking “full accounting” of an early September U.S. military attack against an alleged drug-trafficking boat in the Caribbean after a report alleged that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered U.S. troops to “kill everybody” aboard the vessel.

“This committee is committed to providing rigorous oversight of the Department of Defense’s (DOD) military operations in the Caribbean,” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the chair of the House committee, and Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the panel, said in a joint statement.

29.11.2025 - 17:46 [ theHill.com ]

Senators vow oversight after report Hegseth told troops to ‘kill everybody’ in boat strike

Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) issued a statement Saturday vowing to conduct “vigorous oversight” on Caribbean strikes after a report surfaced that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the U.S. military to “kill everybody” aboard an alleged drug vessel.

29.11.2025 - 17:38 [ Washington Post ]

Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all

(November 28, 2025)

As two men clung to a stricken, burning ship targeted by SEAL Team 6, the Joint Special Operations commander followed the defense secretary’s order to leave no survivors.

29.11.2025 - 17:27 [ Tim Kaine, United States Senator from Virginia ]

Dear Attorney General Bondi and Secretary Hegseth:

(November 24, 2025)

Dear Attorney General Bondi and Secretary Hegseth:

We are writing to request expeditious declassification and public release of the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel’s written opinion, dated September 5, 2025, concerning the domestic and international legal basis for recent military strikes of certain vessels near South America and the Caribbean, with appropriate redactions necessary to protect military personnel and sensitive intelligence matters.

Significant and noteworthy precedent exists for the public release of OLC opinions related to overseas military action. After the United States carried out military strikes in Libya in 2011 and in Syria in 2018, the Department of Justice released the applicable OLC opinion justifying each operation.

Few decisions are more consequential for a democracy than the use of lethal force. We therefore believe that the declassification and public release of this important document would enhance transparency in the use of deadly force by our Nation’s military and is necessary to ensure Congress and the American people are fully informed of the legal justification supporting these strikes.

Sincerely,

Richard Blumenthal
United States Senator

Jack Reed
United States Senator

Jeanne Shaheen
United States Senator

Kirsten Gillibrand
United States Senator

Mazie K. Hirono
United States Senator

Tim Kaine
United States Senator

Angus S. King, Jr.
United States Senator

Elizabeth Warren
United States Senator

Gary C. Peters
United States Senator

Tammy Duckworth
United States Senator

Jacky Rosen
United States Senator

Mark Kelly
United States Senator

Elissa Slotkin
United States Senator

26.11.2025 - 19:58 [ Donald J. Trump / Truth Social ]

Over the past week, my team has made tremendous progress with respect to ending the War between Russia and Ukraine (A War that would have NEVER started if I were President!). Last month 25,000 soldiers died.

The original 28-Point Peace Plan, which was drafted by the United States, has been fine-tuned, with additional input from both sides, and there are only a few remaining points of disagreement. In the hopes of finalizing this Peace Plan, I have directed my Special Envoy Steve Witkoff to meet with President Putin in Moscow and, at the same time, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll will be meeting with the Ukrainians. I will be briefed on all progress made, along with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. I look forward to hopefully meeting with President Zelenskyy and President Putin soon, but ONLY when the deal to end this War is FINAL or, in its final stages. Thank you for your attention to this very important matter, and let’s all hope that PEACE can be accomplished AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!

26.11.2025 - 18:46 [ theHill.com ]

Senate Democrats ask Hegseth, Bondi to declassify DOJ memo on drug boat strikes

(November 24, 2025)

Senate Democrats are asking Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Pam Bondi to declassify and publicly release the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Legal Counsel’s classified, written opinion outlining the legal basis for the Trump administration’s strikes against alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.

Thirteen Senate Democrats, all members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, are demanding an “expeditious declassification and public release” of the classified opinion, which was drafted over the summer and argued that U.S. troops who participate in boat strikes, which have taken place on both sides of South America, cannot be prosecuted.

26.11.2025 - 17:57 [ Elissa Slotkin, U.S. Senator for Michigan ]

Slotkin Demands Declassification and Public Release of Information on the Trump Administration’s Lethal Airstrikes

Nov 24, 2025 | Press Release

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) joined members of the Senate Armed Services Committee in writing to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth requesting the declassification and public release of the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) written opinion on the Trump Administration’s lethal airstrikes in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.

“Few decisions are more consequential for a democracy than the use of lethal force. We therefore believe that the declassification and public release of this important document would enhance transparency in the use of deadly force by our Nation’s military and is necessary to ensure Congress and the American people are fully informed of the legal justification supporting these strikes,” the Senators wrote.

26.11.2025 - 17:31 [ CNC3.co.tt ]

US Secretary of War visits region today; Maduro officials hold closed door talks

(November 25, 2025)

War Secretary Pete Hegseth will travel to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, today to meet the country’s top leaders, including President Luis Abinader, Minister of Defence Lt Gen Carlos Antonio Fernández Onofre and other officials, the Associated Press reported yesterday.

The announcement came the same day that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar met yesterday.

26.11.2025 - 13:44 [ NPR.org ]

Sen. Mark Kelly: Trump and Hegseth don‘t ‚understand the Constitution‘

On Monday, the Pentagon announced an investigation into Kelly, a retired U.S. Navy fighter pilot, for possible violations of military law for appearing in the video. The video was published as legal questions swirl around the Trump administration‘s deployment of National Guard troops to U.S. cities.

While the White House has since walked back the president‘s remarks calling the Senators‘ video „seditious behavior, punishable by DEATH,“ Kelly told All Things Considered he thinks President Trump is „declaring that loyalty to the Constitution is punishable by death.“

26.11.2025 - 12:54 [ Fox News ]

FBI scheduling interviews with 6 lawmakers who encouraged military members to refuse ‚illegal orders‘

On Monday, the Department of War announced that it has opened a formal review into allegations of misconduct against Kelly over the video.

The Pentagon said it may even call Kelly, a retired Navy captain, back to active duty to face court-martial proceedings or other administrative actions under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Four of the other Democrats are former military, but not retired and therefore are not subject to the UCMJ, according to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. Slotkin is a former CIA officer.

24.11.2025 - 20:02 [ CNN ]

Pentagon threatens to recall Sen. Mark Kelly to military service for court martial over illegal orders video

The investigation comes as President Donald Trump has been pushing relentlessly for consequences for Kelly and five other Democratic lawmakers over a video they made reminding servicemembers of their duty to disobey illegal orders, calling their actions “seditious” and “treason.”

Because Kelly was a senior officer who retired from the Navy, he is required to remain available for recall to the military by law. The other five lawmakers, Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Rep. Jason Crow, Rep. Maggie Goodlander, Rep. Chris Deluzio and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, are not eligible for recall to a military service.

07.11.2025 - 23:30 [ CNC3.co.tt ]

US strikes another boat in Caribbean Sea, killing 3

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday announced another deadly U.S. strike on a boat he said was trafficking narcotics in the Caribbean Sea.

The attack Thursday killed three people aboard the vessel, Hegseth said, bringing the death toll from the Trump administration’s campaign in South American waters up to at least 69 people in at least 17 strikes

28.10.2025 - 20:50 [ UtimasNoticias.com.ve ]

US kills 14 in new attack on Pacific vessels

Fourteen people were killed and one survived, as a result of another attack by the U.S. War Department against three vessels sailing in the waters of the Eastern Pacific.

The information was confirmed by the Secretary of the US Department of War, Pete Hegseth, who detailed in his X account that “three lethal kinetic attacks were carried out against four vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations (…) A total of 14 narcoterrorists died during the three attacks.”