Bipartisan members of Congress accuse Pete Hegseth of potential war crime

Members of Congress from both parties in the US have warned that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth may have committed a war crime, following reports that he ordered a follow-up strike to kill survivors of a boat attack in September.

Last week, The Washington Post reported that Hegseth issued a highly unusual order to kill all survivors of an attack on a boat allegedly carrying drugs in international waters, one of several such operations during the final months of the Trump administration.

Senators Chris Van Hollen (Democrat) and Tim Kaine (Democrat), members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on Sunday that if these reports are true, such orders would rise to the level of a war crime.

Speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation, Kaine said, “If this report is true, it would constitute a clear violation of the Department of Defense’s own laws of war and international laws regarding how to treat individuals in this situation. Therefore, if this report is true, it rises to the level of a war crime.”

Democratic Senator Mark Kelly also told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday morning that if true, the order was “clearly against the law.”

Another Democratic Senator, Ed Markey, posted on his X account, “Pete Hegseth is a war criminal and should be fired immediately.”

The Pentagon stated that Hegseth described the Post’s article as “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory,” and said, “Our current operations in the Caribbean are legal under both US and international law.”

Hegseth, however, did not deny giving the orders detailed in the article.

Republicans, who were skeptical about the accuracy of The Washington Post’s report, also expressed concern that Hegseth’s orders could be illegal if they were carried out as described in the report.

The bipartisan leaders of the Armed Services Committees in both chambers have pledged to investigate the matter. Senators Roger Wicker (Republican) and Jack Reed (Democrat) promised on Friday that there would be “rigorous oversight to determine the facts of this situation.”

Republican Representative Mike Turner said, “If something like this happened, it is a very serious situation, and I agree that it would be an illegal act.”

Another Republican Representative, Don Bacon, argued on ABC’s This Week that if it happened as written in the article, it would be a “violation of the law of war.”

Bacon, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said, “I don’t think he is foolish enough to make a decision like ‘kill everyone, kill the survivors,’ because that is a clear violation of the law of war. Therefore, I am very doubtful that he could have done such a thing, as it would go against common sense.”