The Trump administration repeatedly overlooked and pushed past lawyers who questioned the legality of its deadly strikes on alleged “drug” boats, according to a new report.
On Saturday, The Washington Post released an investigation that sheds new light on the process behind the controversial attacks that have left more than 80 people dead and angered Americans across the political spectrum, including some of President Donald Trump’s base.
According to government officials who were familiar with the situation, the administration initially planned for the CIA to conduct the strikes—but when CIA lawyers pushed back, they pivoted to using the U.S. military. The Trump administration’s justification for the lethal attacks is that the U.S. is engaged in an armed conflict with “designated terrorist organizations.”
But many national security experts, both inside and outside of the administration, told the Post that this justification “does not stand up to facts.”
What’s more, many of the lawyers who raised concerns or attempted to institute guardrails had either left the government, or had been reassigned or removed from their positions. The National Security Council’s full-time legal staff was completely gutted by this summer, including former Pentagon general counsel Paul Ney, who had raised concerns about the legality of the strikes, according to former officials.
Meanwhile, over at the CIA, some people are worried about blowback from these covert operations, like with the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s.
“The question is, is it legal just to kill the guy if he’s not threatening to kill you and you’re outside an armed conflict? There are people who are simply uncomfortable with the president just declaring we’re at war with drug traffickers,” one former senior official told the Post.
The new report confirms what other top military lawyers have been saying: that Trump’s strikes against alleged drug boats could be considered extrajudicial killings.
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