WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is ramping up lethal strikes on alleged narcoterrorist drug boats as part of a broader pressure campaign against Venezuela, but the administration has not provided the public and Congress with its legal rationale for the attacks.
This week, those Senate Democrats escalated their demands that the Trump administration publicly disclose their legal justification for conducting the attacks as U.S. military assets gather in the waters off Venezuela, possibly for strikes on that country’s soil.
“Few decisions are more consequential for a democracy than the use of lethal force," the 13 senators, all members of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, wrote in a Nov. 24 letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The 21 strikes have killed at least 83 people in recent months. Specifically, they are demanding that the Trump administration release a classified Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel written opinion from Sept. 5 on the lethal airstrikes in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean.
The Office of Legal Counsel, also known as OLC, opinion − reportedly drafted over the summer and first reported by The Washington Post on Nov. 12 − argues that U.S. military personnel engaged in lethal action in Latin America, including the boat strikes, cannot be prosecuted for it.
