Even the top military lawyer for the command overseeing President Donald Trump’s strikes on alleged “drug boats” thought they were illegal—but the Pentagon ignored him.
Senior government officials reportedly dismissed legal concerns raised by the senior judge advocate general at the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, who warned against the Trump administration’s plan to bomb foreign vessels the government claims are transporting drugs. He warned that the strikes could be considered extrajudicial killings, according to two senior U.S. officials, two senior congressional aides, and two former senior U.S. officials who spoke with NBC News.
Among those senior officials were members of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the six sources said.
Three people familiar with the matter identified the senior judge advocate general as Marine Col. Paul Meagher, who is the top lawyer overseeing command for military operations in the Caribbean.
In a statement to NBC News, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell denied that anyone had “raised concerns to any attorneys in the chain of command regarding the legality of the strikes conducted thus far.”
Historically, the U.S. would use intelligence to stop vessels that could be involved in drug trafficking, and then board and search them. But starting in September, Trump has opted to just blow them up, killing dozens of crew members, violating international law, and costing the U.S. valuable intelligence allies.
The Trump administration has claimed that its military strikes on these foreign vessels have targeted “unlawful combatants” engaged in an “armed conflict.” But a closer look at some of the men killed in these strikes revealed that they were not so-called “narco-terrorists” or members of criminal gangs or cartels. And, crucially, they were smuggling cocaine, not synthetic opioids responsible for killing tens of thousands of Americans every year.
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