Top Military Democrat Says Video of Sept. 2 Attack Would Show Republicans’ Description ‘Completely False’

The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee said Sunday that surveillance video of U.S. military strikes on a suspected drug smuggling ship in the Caribbean Sea on Sept. 2 would contradict how Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other Republicans have described it.

“When they [the survivors] They were finally pulled out, they weren’t trying to turn the ship over. The ship was clearly disabled. A small portion was left, overturned, on the bow of the ship. They did not have any communication devices. “Certainly, they were unarmed,” said Rep. Adam Smith, one of the Democratic lawmakers who viewed the video. “Any claim that the drugs had somehow survived that attack is difficult, very difficult to really square with what we saw.”

Smith called the video “deeply disturbing” and said “it did not appear that these two survivors were in any condition to continue the fight.”

That flies in the face of how Hegseth and Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee who also viewed the video, described the circumstances leading up to the second attack.

Cotton told reporters he had no doubts about the legality of the attack and said he “saw two survivors trying to capsize a ship loaded with drugs bound for the United States so they could continue the fight.”

On Saturday, Hegseth recounted what he had been told about the subsequent strike.

“They told me, ‘Hey, there had to be a new attack, because there were a couple of people who could still be in the fight. Access to radios. There was a link point for another potential ship, the drugs were still there. They were actively interacting with them,'” the secretary said at the Reagan National Defense Forum.

When asked by “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos about Hegseth’s comments, Smith said, “That’s ridiculous. There are no radios.”

“They should release the video,” Smith said. “If they release the video, then everything the Republicans say will clearly be presented as completely false. And people will see it and see it. The boat was adrift. It was heading where the current would take it, and these two were trying to figure out how to survive.”

President Donald Trump has said the administration would “have no problem” releasing the video of the attack in question, but Hegseth was noncommittal when asked Saturday.

“Anything we decided to release, we would have to be very responsible about it, so we’re reviewing it right now,” Hegseth said at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “I’m much more interested in protecting that than anything else. So we’re looking at the process and we’ll see.”

Smith argued that the walkout video shown to lawmakers is “no different” from the walkout videos the administration has already released publicly.

“It seems pretty clear that they don’t want to post this video because they don’t want people to see it, because it’s very, very difficult to justify,” he said.

Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Republican member of the Armed Services Committee who has not seen the video, defended the administration in a separate interview on “This Week.”

“The fact is that now these cartels, because the southern border is closed, have gone to the high seas. So President Trump is acting with his core Article II powers. No serious legal expert would doubt that the president has the authority to blow narcoterrorists out of the water,” Schmitt said.

The Missouri senator continued: “Congress has delegated to President Trump the authority to designate terrorist organizations. He has done that. He sent a letter to Congress saying he was going to initiate these attacks. We have had regular briefings about it.”

Schmitt argued that Democrats’ criticism amounts to “politics and trying to remove Secretary Hegseth.”

On Saturday, Hegseth said that designating cartels as terrorist organizations makes them a “target” just like Al Qaeda. But the legality of the entire operation targeting these vessels has been a central debate, and legal experts have questioned the administration’s justification.

“If anyone with drugs they intend to transport illegally into the United States is said to be a legitimate target for deadly force, the amount of power being given to the president and the U.S. military is unprecedented, and it’s something that should concern all American people,” Smith, the top Democrat on the Armed Forces, said on “This Week.”

Schmitt, however, insisted that strikes are legal.

“They are fully authorized. I reviewed the 40+ page memo from the Office of Legal Counsel. There are [Judge Advocates General] “There are officers in these rooms, George, every time there is a strike,” Schmitt said.

The opinion of the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel has not been made public. Democrats have called for its publication.

Trump’s pardon of the former Honduran president

Schmitt He was also asked about Trump’s decision to pardon in 2024 Juan Orlando Hernández, former president of Honduras, who was serving a 45-year sentence in the United States for multiple charges of drug and weapons trafficking.

“Do you support this pardon for the former Honduran president?” —Stephanopoulos asked Schmitt.

“I’m not familiar with the facts or the circumstances, but I think what’s telling here is trying to imply that somehow President Trump is soft on drug smuggling, it’s just ridiculous,” Schmitt said. “It’s totally ridiculous. He’s the one who has provided border security like we’ve never seen before.”

But pressed by Stephanopoulos on whether he supported the pardon, Schmitt said the discussion about Hernández was a distraction from the government’s military campaign against alleged drug trafficking in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.

“What we’re talking about here is narcoterrorists poisoning Americans,” Schmitt said. “This attempt to try to focus on a pardon is classic because now the debate on the narco-terrorist issue has been lost.”

But Smith said he believed the pardon was part of the administration’s attempt to exert additional control over South American politics.

“It’s more about what Trump launched with his national security strategy a couple of days ago, three days ago now, where he wants to assert his dominance over the Western Hemisphere,” Smith said.

“The thing in Honduras seems to have to do with the presidential election that is taking place there and the party that supports Trump or the party that does not support Trump,” he added. “So it seems like it’s much more about that than any legitimate desire to stop what, by the way, is a huge problem: drugs in America are a huge problem.”