The highest Democrat on the Home Armed Companies Committee mentioned Sunday that surveillance video of U.S. navy strikes focusing on an alleged drug trafficking vessel within the Caribbean Sea on Sept. 2 would contradict how Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth and different Republicans have described it.
“After they [the survivors] had been lastly taken out, they weren’t making an attempt to flip the boat over. The boat was clearly incapacitated. A tiny portion of it remained, capsized, the bow of the boat. That they had no communications machine. Actually, they had been unarmed,” Rep. Adam Smith, one of many Democratic lawmakers who noticed the video, mentioned. “Any declare that the medicine had in some way survived that assault is difficult, exhausting to actually sq. with what we noticed.”
Smith referred to as the video “deeply disturbing” and mentioned “it didn’t seem that these two survivors had been in any place to proceed the battle.”
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., seems on ABC’s “This Week,” December 7, 2025.
ABC Information
That’s counter to how Hegseth and Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee who additionally considered the video, have described the circumstances previous the second strike.
Cotton instructed reporters he had little doubt concerning the legality of the strike and mentioned he “noticed two survivors making an attempt to flip a ship loaded with medicine certain for the US again over so they may keep within the battle.”
On Saturday, Hegseth recounted what he had been instructed concerning the subsequent strike.
“I used to be instructed, ‘hey, there needed to be a reattack, as a result of there have been a pair of us who may nonetheless be within the battle. Entry to radios. There was a hyperlink up level of one other potential boat, medicine had been nonetheless there. They had been actively interacting with them,’” the secretary mentioned on the Reagan Nationwide Protection Discussion board.
Requested by “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos about Hegseth’s feedback, Smith mentioned, “That is ridiculous. There aren’t any radios.”
“They must launch the video,” Smith mentioned. “In the event that they launch the video, then the whole lot that the Republicans are saying will clearly be portrayed to be utterly false. And folks will get a have a look at it, and they’re going to see. The boat was adrift. It was going the place the present was going to take it, and these two had been making an attempt to determine methods to survive.”
President Donald Trump has mentioned the administration would have “no downside” releasing the video of the strike in query, however Hegseth was noncommittal when requested Saturday.
“No matter we had been to determine to launch, we might need to be very accountable about it so we’re reviewing that proper now.,” Hegseth mentioned on the Reagan Nationwide Protection Discussion board. “I am far more focused on defending that than the rest. So, we’re viewing the method, and we’ll see.”
Smith argued the strike video lawmakers had been proven is “no totally different” than the strike movies the administration has already publicly launched.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., seems on ABC’s “This Week,” December 7, 2025.
ABC Information
“It appears fairly clear they do not wish to launch this video as a result of they do not need individuals to see it, as a result of it is very, very troublesome to justify,” he mentioned.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Republican member of the Armed Companies Committee who has not seen the video, defended the administration in a separate interview on “This Week.”
“The very fact is, these cartels now, as a result of the southern border is closed, they’ve gone to the excessive seas. So President Trump is appearing along with his core Article II powers. No critical authorized skilled would doubt that the president has authority to blow narco-terrorists out of the water,” Schmitt mentioned.
The Missouri senator continued, “President Trump has been delegated the authority by Congress to designate terrorist organizations. He is completed that. He despatched a letter to Congress saying he was going to provoke these strikes. We have had common briefings about it.”
Schmitt argued the criticism from Democrats quantities to “politics and making an attempt to take out Secretary Hegseth.”
On Saturday, Hegseth mentioned designating cartels as terrorist organizations makes them a “goal” similar to al-Qaida. However the legality of your entire operation focusing on these vessels has been a central debate, and authorized specialists have questioned the administration’s justification.
“When you say anybody who has medicine that they are aspiring to illegally transit to the U.S. is a authentic goal for lethal power, the quantity of energy that provides the president and the U.S. navy is unprecedented, and one thing that must be regarding to all the American individuals,” Smith, the highest Armed Companies Democrat, mentioned on “This Week.”
Schmitt, nevertheless, insisted the strikes are authorized.
“They’re utterly approved. I reviewed the 40-plus web page memo by the Workplace of Authorized Counsel. There’s [Judge Advocates General] officers in these rooms, George, each time there is a strike,” Schmitt mentioned.
The opinion by the Justice Division’s Workplace of Authorized Counsel has not been made public. Democrats have referred to as for it to be launched.
Trump’s pardon of Honduran ex-president
Schmitt was additionally requested about Trump’s resolution to pardon Juan Orlando Hernandez, the previous president of Honduras, who was serving a 45-year sentence in the US on a number of counts of drug and weapons trafficking in 2024.
“Do you assist this pardon of the previous Honduran president?” Stephanopoulos requested Schmitt.
“I am not acquainted with the info or circumstances, however I believe what’s telling right here is to attempt to suggest that in some way President Trump is gentle on, on drug smuggling is simply ridiculous,” Schmitt mentioned. “It’s very ridiculous. He is the – he is offered border safety like we have by no means seen earlier than.”
Honduras’ President Juan Orlando Hernandez speaks in the course of the opening ceremony of the UN Local weather Change Convention COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, Monday Nov. 1, 2021.
Andy Buchanan/Pool through AP, Information
However pressed by Stephanopoulos on whether or not he supported the pardon, Schmitt mentioned that the dialogue about Hernandez was a distraction from the administration’s navy marketing campaign in opposition to alleged drug trafficking within the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.
“What we’re speaking about listed below are the narco-terrorists poisoning People,” Schmitt mentioned. “This try to attempt to deal with a pardon is traditional since you’ve misplaced the talk now on the narco-terrorist query.”
However Smith mentioned that he believed the pardon was a part of the administration’s bid to exert extra management on South American politics.
“It is extra about what Trump launched with their nationwide safety technique a pair days in the past, three days in the past now, the place he needs to claim dominance over the Western hemisphere,” Smith mentioned.
“The Honduras factor appears to need to do with the presidential election that is happening down there and the social gathering that helps Trump or the social gathering that does not assist Trump,” he added. “So, it appears to be rather more about that than any authentic need to cease what, by the way in which, is a large downside; medicine within the U.S. are an enormous downside.”
