Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio speak to reporters on Dec. 16, 2025, following a closed-door briefing with all senators about U.S. military action in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. senators left a closed-door meeting Tuesday with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio split over the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug-running vessels near Venezuela, particularly an early September follow-up strike that killed two survivors clinging to boat wreckage.

Hegseth and Rubio delivered the all-member briefings to Senate and House lawmakers on Capitol Hill as the death toll from U.S. military strikes on alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean has surpassed 90, and as U.S. Navy ships are amassed off the coast of Venezuela.

Controversy over the possibility of war crimes during the Sept. 2 follow-on strike that killed shipwrecked survivors drew attention after The Washington Post reported details last month, calling into question Hegseth’s orders.

Hegseth told reporters Tuesday he briefed members on a “highly successful mission to counter designated terrorist organizations, cartels, bringing weapons — weapons, meaning drugs — to the American people and poisoning the American people for far too long. So we’re proud of what we’re doing.”

Dems decry edited video

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters Hegseth again refused to show unedited footage, which Schumer described as “deeply troubling,” of a second strike on Sept. 2 that killed two people who survived the initial strike. 

“The administration came to this briefing empty handed,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said. 

“If they can’t be transparent on this, how can you trust their transparency on all the other issues swirling about in the Caribbean? Every senator is entitled to see it. There is no problem with (revealing) sources and methods” because the senators will view it in the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, a secure area of the Capitol where classified information is generally shared.

Schumer added that an “appropriate version” of the video should be disclosed to the public.

Senate Republicans downplayed loud concerns from Democrats, pointing to former President Barack Obama’s numerous counterterrorism drone strikes in the Middle East.

“We’ve been using the same technique for 24 years, and nothing has changed except the hemisphere,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla.

Public release called for

Hegseth told reporters the unedited video will be shown to members of the Senate and House committees on the Armed Services Wednesday, alongside Admiral Frank Bradley, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, who oversaw the strikes.

Hegseth did not address why the department declined to show the unedited video to all 100 senators. 

He did say, “Of course, we’re not going to release a top-secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public.”

Several Democratic senators have called for the video to be publicly released.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said he was told during the meeting that the video won’t be released because of “classification concerns.”

“It is hard to square the widespread, routine, prompt posting of detailed videos of every strike, with a concern that posting a portion of the video of the first strike would violate a variety of classification concerns,” Coons said.

Coons added “it’s increasingly important that the national security team of the Trump administration increasingly respect and recognize the role and power of Congress.” 

He highlighted a provision in Congress’s annual defense authorization bill that compels Hegseth to release the video or lose 25% of his travel budget. The massive defense bill is expected to pass this week.

Body count from boat strikes rising

U.S. Southern Command posted a video on social media Monday night of the military’s latest strikes on three boats “operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations in international waters” in the eastern Pacific. The strikes killed eight people, according to the post.

President Donald Trump has officially promoted his military actions in the Caribbean as a fight against drug trafficking and overdose deaths in the United States, particularly from illicit fentanyl. 

On Monday Trump issued an order declaring the powerful synthetic opioid as a “Weapon of Mass Destruction.”

The smuggling routes for illicit fentanyl and the chemicals used to make it follow the path from China to Mexico to the U.S., and is highlighted as such in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment.

The administration has designated several drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, including “Cartel de los Soles,” an alleged Venezuelan group that the Department of State described as spearheaded by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Trump has hinted at a land invasion of the South American country.

When asked by States Newsroom on Tuesday whether Hegseth addressed during the meeting what type of drugs were alleged to be in the targeted boats, Mullin and Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said cocaine.

“We’ve always heard it’s mainly cocaine. It doesn’t matter. It’s drugs,” Mullin said.

Sullivan said “it’s the same groups” smuggling the cocaine as the ones smuggling fentanyl.

Cocaine mixed with illicit fentanyl has become “an increasing public safety concern” over the last eight years, according to the National Drug Threat Assessment. 

Overall, all U.S. drug overdose deaths have decreased in recent years, according to the assessment and latest data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, right, looks on as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting of his Cabinet in the Cabinet Room of the White House on Dec. 2, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Tuesday he did not witness a controversial — and potentially illegal — second strike in early September that killed two survivors clinging to a burning alleged drug-running boat off the Venezuelan coast.

The secretary’s exact order in the Sept. 2 strike has been under scrutiny after The Washington Post reported Friday that Hegseth gave a verbal directive to “kill everybody” that in turn led the commanding admiral to order a follow-on strike to kill two alleged drug smugglers who survived an initial attack.

Hegseth’s comments responded to a reporter’s question at the end of President Donald Trump’s livestreamed two-hour Cabinet meeting. 

“I watched that first strike live. As you can imagine, at the Department of War we got a lot of things to do, so … I moved on to my next meeting,” Hegseth told reporters. 

The secretary said he learned a “couple of hours later” that Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley “made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat.”

When pressed by the reporter if he saw any survivors after the initial strike, Hegseth said “I did not personally see survivors … the thing was on fire.”

“This is called the fog of war. This is what you in the press don’t understand,” he replied.

Hegseth said he didn’t know the exact amount of time between the first and second strikes. He declined to answer follow-up questions.

Bipartisan lawmakers on the Senate and House Armed Services committees announced probes over the weekend into the follow-on strike that killed the survivors. Numerous military law experts argue killing survivors of a shipwreck is in clear violation of the Pentagon’s laws of war.

Hegseth authorized strike

Hegseth initially called The Washington Post investigative report “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory,” in a post on social media Friday.

On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during the daily briefing that Hegseth had “authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes.”

“Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,” Leavitt said at the briefing.

On social media Monday night, Hegseth wrote: “Admiral Mitch Bradley is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100% support. I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made — on the September 2 mission and all others since.”

A New York Times article Monday, citing five U.S. officials who spoke separately on the condition of anonymity, reported that Hegseth gave an initial written order for an operation to kill the alleged drug smugglers on the boat and destroy the entire vessel. 

The officials said Hegseth did not address additional steps if the first missile did not accomplish both goals, and that he did not give Bradley additional orders in response to video surveillance of the boat, according to the Times, which wrote that Bradley ordered “several” follow-on shots.

The strike in question was the first of nearly two dozen U.S. attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea, which the administration alleges are smuggling narcotics. The operations, over several months, have killed 83 individuals, according to a CNN timeline.

‘I rely on Pete’

Trump defended Hegseth at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, saying “Pete’s done an amazing job.”

Regarding the attack, Trump downplayed the importance of a follow-on strike.

“I still haven’t gotten a lot of information, because I rely on Pete, but to me, it was an attack. It wasn’t one strike, two strikes, three strikes,” he said.

“Pete didn’t know about a second attack having to do with two people. And I guess Pete would have to speak to it. I can say this, I want those boats taken out, and if we have to, we’ll attack on land also, just like we attack on sea,” Trump said.

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday that he “wouldn’t have wanted that,” referring to the killing of two men clinging to the wreckage. 

“Pete said he did not order the death of those two men,” Trump continued.

Trump posted Sept. 2 on his Truth Social platform a 29-second edited video of the attack.

On Sept. 3, Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” played the video from Trump’s post on repeat while interviewing Hegseth, who told the hosts that 11 alleged “narco-terrorists” were killed in the attack.

“I watched it live. We knew exactly what they were doing and we knew exactly who they represented,” Hegseth said on the network’s talk show, which he hosted on weekends prior to being appointed and confirmed as secretary of Defense.

The Intercept first reported on Sept. 10 that survivors of the initial Sept. 2 strike were killed in follow-up blasts.

Congressional inquiries

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are now inquiring to learn if what happened on Sept. 2 amounts to a war crime. 

U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., issued a statement Tuesday, criticizing Hegseth and calling on Trump to fire him if he violated the laws of war.

“At the Pentagon, the buck stops with the Secretary of Defense, period,” Slotkin said.

The first-term Democrat and former CIA official recently participated in a video, now targeted by a Pentagon investigation, reminding service members that they have a right to refuse “illegal orders.”  

“True leaders own the calls they make and take responsibility for their actions. Secretary Hegseth should release the full video of the strike and lay out publicly what happened, without throwing the uniformed military under the bus,” Slotkin said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune defended the administration Tuesday when asked by reporters about the Sept. 2 event and Hegseth’s other controversies, including discussing real-time bombing of targets in Yemen in March on the publicly available app Signal.

“I think the Trump administration and the peace-through-strength policies that they are employing around the world are making our country safer, and so Secretary Hegseth is a part of that,” the South Dakota Republican said.