Trump 'ultimately responsible' for war crimes: retired colonel

President Donald Trump attends an event to announce a deal with Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to reduce the prices of GLP-1 weight loss drugs in the Oval Office at the White House on Nov. 6. 2025. (REUTERS Jonathan Ernst)

Retired Colonel Cedric Leighton told CNN anchor Kate Bolduan that Trump is the man in charge of a potential war crime attack in the Caribbean — no matter how hard his administration may try to hurl a U.S. commander under the bus.

The Washington Post reported last week that on September 2, U.S. forces fired on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea, then fired on it again in an obvious “double tap” when it was determined that some of the occupants had survived the initial strike. This reportedly came as the result of a directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to "kill them all."

These strikes, claimed with little evidence to be drug traffickers, are now drawing criticism from Republican lawmakers with Sen. Rand Paul, (R-Ky.) wondering to Semafor if Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was "incompetent" or "lying." Anonymous officials described the move of blaming Adm. Frank M. Bradley for the second strike as throwing service members “under the bus” and “protect Pete’ bulls——.”

“The way this is characterized was kind of interesting because when Secretary Hegseth made his announcement via tweet, basically saying that he backs up all the decisions that admiral Bradley made, the real underlying current here seems to be the fact that the decisions were admiral Bradley’s and Hegseth himself is not really taking responsibility for these actions,” said Leighton.

“But the fact of the matter is, these actions were carried out at the behest not only of secretary Hegseth, but also of President Trump. So, they are ultimately responsible for how the military carries out these missions,” Leighton added. “They have to not only ensure that these orders are carried out, if they want them carried out, but they also have to make sure that those orders are lawful. And if you don't make sure those orders are lawful and people engage in these kinds of attacks and the so-called double-tap attack, that would be a significant breach of the laws of war, but it is also potentially a war crime.”

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