Pete Hegseth has deployed his signature blend of belligerence and blame-shifting in an effort to shut down questions about his involvement in a potential war crime. Yet scrutiny of the defense secretary has only continued to intensify, with even some Republicans on Capitol Hill raising questions and promising to investigate the military’s reported second strike on a Venezuelan boat in September. “If that occurred, that would be very serious,” Mike Turner, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said on CBS News’s Face the Nation Sunday. “That would be an illegal act.”
Last week, the Intercept and The Washington Post reported that earlier this fall, Seal Team 6 conducted a “double-tap” strike on what was described as a drug boat after two men survived the initial attack. The follow-up, the Post reported, was ordered to comply with a spoken directive from Hegseth to “kill everybody” on board.
Hegseth has broadly defended the military campaign in the Caribbean and these likely illegal tactics, which align with the vision of a “warrior ethos” unbound by “stupid rules of engagement” that he outlined in a meeting with generals in September. But Hegseth has also tried to dance around questions about the second strike, describing the reports as “fake news” and claiming the directive was actually issued by the commander in charge of the operation, Admiral Frank Bradley. (Bradley has declined to comment on the matter.) “I watched that first strike live,” Hegseth told reporters Tuesdaybut “moved on to my next meeting” before the second. President Donald Trump has similarly tried to distance himself from the strike: “I didn’t know about the second strike. I didn’t know anything about the people,” he said Tuesday. “I wasn’t involved, and I knew they took out a boat, but I would say this, they had a strike.”
But Hegseth’s response has failed to quiet critics, including those within his own party. On Tuesday, Senator Rand Paul spoke with skepticism about a social media post in which the defense secretary described reports of a second strike as “fabricated.” “Either he was lying to us,” said Paul, “or he’s incompetent and didn’t know it had happened.” Senator Roger Wicker, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has promised “vigorous oversight” in response to the reports, despite White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt saying that Hegseth already spoke with lawmakers “who may have expressed some concerns” over the weekend. “If it is substantiated, whoever made that order needs to get the hell out of Washington,” GOP senator Thom Tillis told CNN Tuesday. “I’ve seen enough,” Republican representative Don Bacon added, “that I don’t think [Hegseth is] the right leader.”
Trump has stood by Hegseth so far, as he did during the defense secretary’s Signalgate scandal earlier this year. “Everybody at this table has done a fantastic job,” the (rather drowsy) president said during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, amid questions about the standing of Hegseth, FBI director Kash Patel, and other administration officials. But Hegseth and other embattled Trump officials increasingly seem to be a liability to the president himself, as he faces declining approval ratings and some fractures within his normally unified party. Indeed, while many in MAGA-world deferred to Trump and Hegseth—“I don’t think there needs to be additional oversight,” Senator Tommy Tuberville told Politico—some key allies of the president have expressed concern about the second strike. “I’m not comfortable with the two blow,” West Virginia senator Jim Justice told MS Now on Tuesday.