Republican Senator Rand Paul has slammed Pete Hegseth as either “incompetent” or “lying” after the defense secretary denied that he gave an order to “kill everybody” during the United States’ first Venezuelan boat strike.
Since September, the U.S. has launched more than a dozen attacks against alleged drug-carrying vessels in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, killing more than 80 people.
On September 2, the first of such attacks, Hegseth gave a verbal directive that there be no survivors, the Washington Post reported. After the first missile strike, when two survivors were seen clinging to the wreckage, the Special Operations commander overseeing the attack then ordered a second strike, to comply with Hegseth’s spoken order to “kill everybody,” the newspaper reported.
Hegseth, a military veteran and former Fox News host, vehemently denied the claims and dismissed them as “fake news” that was “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory” on his social media, following the Post’s article.
On Tuesday, the Kentucky senator said Hegseth was either “lying” or “incompetent.”
“Secretary Hegseth said he had no knowledge of this and it did not happen. It was fake news. It didn’t happen,” Paul told reporters. “And then the next day, from the podium of the White House, they’re saying it did happen. So, either he was lying to us on Sunday, or he’s incompetent and didn’t know it had happened.”
Paul, a longtime GOP senator who is no stranger to bucking his party, continued: “Do we think there’s any chance that, on Sunday, the secretary of the Defense did not know there had been a second strike?”
“So as a country, are we just going to let people lie to us, to our face? Are we going to let them kill people who they call enemies anytime in the world? Are we going to let them like when someone is stranded and holding on to the scraps of a boat put a second bomb on them?”
The Republican added: “I think it’s outrageous and should be universally condemned.”
On September 3, the day after the first lethal strike, Hegseth appeared on Fox News and said he had watched the attack live.
“I watched it live. We knew exactly who was in that boat. We knew exactly what they were doing, and we knew exactly who they represented, and that was Tren de Aragua, a narco-terrorist organization designated by the United States, trying to poison our country with illicit drugs,” he said.
This weekend, President Donald Trump strongly backed his defense secretary's account of events, including Hegseth’s claim that he didn’t order the second strike.
"The first strike was very lethal. It was fine. And if there were two people around, but Pete said that didn't happen," the president said. "I have great confidence."
Trump added: "I'm going to find out about it, but Pete said he did not order the death of those two men."
But the president admitted that he would not have wanted a second strike on survivors. "I wouldn't have wanted that, not a second strike,” he told reporters Sunday.
At a cabinet meeting Tuesday, the defense secretary only added to the scandal that has unfolded, by saying he “didn’t stick around” to witness the second strike and didn’t learn about it until hours later.
On Monday, the White House said the admiral, not Hegseth, ordered the second strike on the boat.
“He directed the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat from narco terrorists was eliminated,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, noting he was “well within his authority and the law” when he made the order.
The defense secretary also defended the admiral. Hegseth said that he made “the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat. He sunk the boat, sunk the boat and eliminated the threat. And it was the right call. We have his back.”
On Tuesday, a bipartisan group of senators announced an investigation into the allegations that Hegseth ordered there be no survivors.
For months, members of Congress have questioned the legality of the boat strikes, alleging that the Trump administration’s lethal campaign amounts to extrajudicial killings, with several lawmakers calling the alleged two-strike attack an apparent war crime.
The Constitution grants Congress the sole power to declare war. However, Trump said in October that he didn’t plan on asking Congress for a declaration of war.
"I don't think we're going necessarily to ask for a declaration of war. I think we're just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. OK. We're going to kill them. They're going to be, like, dead,” the president said.
