US Senate Armed Services Committee leaders press DOD for legal justification of boat strikes

Rebecca Kheel, CQ-Roll Call on Oct 31, 2025

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

WASHINGTON — The top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee are publicly pressuring the Pentagon to provide its legal rationale for the military strikes against alleged drug trafficking boats.

Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and ranking member Jack Reed, D-R.I., on Friday released two letters they previously sent Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth requesting the execute orders, legal rationale and designated terrorist lists underpinning the military campaign in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that has killed at least 61 people.

“To date, these documents have not been submitted,” the news release about the letters said.

Democrats have publicly griped for weeks about the lack of information the Trump administration was providing about the strikes. But Wicker’s inclusion in Friday’s release underscores the frustration is bipartisan.

One of the released letters, from Oct. 6, also notes that at a classified committee briefing earlier in the month, “both majority and minority members requested additional information be provided to the committee with respect to the legal and policy underpinnings and other aspects of these operations to date.”

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the committee’s assertion that the requested documents have not been provided.

Since early September, U.S. forces have conducted 12 strikes on boats that the Trump administration has claimed, without providing evidence, were attempting to smuggle drugs to the United States.

While the administration has said little publicly about its legal justification for the strikes, officials have argued they are targeting designated foreign terrorists — though in most of the strikes they have not specified which group was targeted or offered evidence on the identities of those on the boat. And under U.S. law, designating an organization a terrorist group unlocks sanctions authority, not military authority.

Wicker and Reed are going public with their concerns as the strikes appear to be getting more frequent and speculation grows that President Donald Trump will soon expand the campaign to land targets inside Venezuela.

In their first letter to Hegseth, dated Sept. 23, the chairman and ranking member requested any execute order, or EXORD, related to the boat strikes. An EXORD is a directive to begin a military operation.

The letter highlighted that both the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act and the fiscal 2020 NDAA require the Pentagon to provide the committee with any new or revised EXORD. The fiscal 2020 NDAA also mandates a quarterly report summarizing all EXORDs in effect, but “unfortunately, the department has not complied with this requirement,” the letter added.

In the Oct. 6 follow-up letter, Wicker and Reed again requested EXORDs related to the campaign, as well as any written Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion on the legal rationale for the strikes and a complete list of all designated terrorist organizations and drug trafficking groups being used to guide the campaign.

Some Republican senators were reportedly shown the Office of Legal Counsel opinion justifying the strikes at a classified briefing Wednesday. But Democrats were not invited to that briefing, leaving them demanding the justification Thursday.

Further, Pentagon lawyers who could have answered questions about the legal rationale pulled out of a bipartisan House Armed Services Committee briefing on the strikes at the last minute Thursday, Democratic panel members said.

Wicker and Reed going public with their letters and the Pentagon’s unresponsiveness to them also comes ahead of the Senate’s expected vote soon on a joint resolution that seeks to restrict Trump’s ability to take military action against Venezuela.

While The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the administration has identified targets inside Venezuela and the Miami Herald reported Friday that the administration has decided to proceed with the strikes, Trump on Friday told reporters “no” when asked if he was considering strikes inside Venezuela.