How Trump's accomplices will eventually face court martial

Trump has ordered more deadly bombings of small boats, killing everyone onboard, this time in the Eastern Pacific ocean. After another strike was carried out on Friday, killing six more people, Pete Hegseth announced the bombing of 4 additional ships on Tuesday, killing 14 more people and bringing the number of civilian fatalities to 57.

Not long after the bombings began off the coast of Venezuela, unidentified bodies with burn marks and missing limbs started washing ashore on the coast of nearby Trinidad. Without releasing photos or any credible evidence to back it up, Trump claimed that the victims’ vessels were “stacked up with bags of white powder that’s mostly fentanyl and other drugs, too.” Trump says they were “smuggling a deadly weapon poisoning Americans,” on behalf of various “terrorist organizations.”

Trump is calling the victims ‘terrorists’ so that he can treat them as enemy combatants in a war that does not exist, just as he is doing at home.

Domestically, we know Trump calls groups who oppose him politically “domestic terrorists.” We know he fabricated a domestic terrorist organization he calls ‘Antifa’ to sell his plan for violence. We also know his administration is lying about peaceful protestors threatening ICE agents in order to justify ICE brutality, and that ICE refuses to wear body cams.

Details in South America are sketchy in part because Hegseth tightly controls what the media can say about military operations. The only media outlets now covering the Defense Department are pro-Trump right wing propaganda machines, but Trump’s firehose of lies about domestic ‘terrorists’ cast doubt on his similar claims about ‘terrorists’ on the high seas.

Is Trump confusing South America with China and Mexico?

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro has credibly accused Trump of murder. In response, instead of offering legal justification, Trump said he was cutting off foreign aid to Colombia.

Bragging about the killings, Trump falsely claimed that every exploded shipping vessel “saves 25,000 American lives.” In the factual world, about 100,000 Americans die each year from drug overdoses, mostly by fentanyl, which does not come from Venezuela, Colombia or any South American country.

The fentanyl killing Americans comes from labs in Mexico and China. Given his difficulty with geography, Trump may not know the difference. At any rate, South America produces marijuana and cocaine, not fentanyl. Most of the killing fentanyl is smuggled into the country by US citizens, over land.

Legal arguments don’t hold water

Legal experts on the use of armed force say Trump’s campaign is illegal because the military is not permitted to target civilians who are not directly participating in hostilities.

Key legal instruments prohibiting extrajudicial killings and murder include the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the Statute of the International Criminal Court, and customary international humanitarian law. The Trump administration has not publicly offered a legal theory that comports with any of these laws.

Designating drug cartels as “terrorist organizations” is also factually suspect. Drug cartels exist for profit; all purveyors of illicit drugs are in the business to make money. In contrast, “terrorists” by definition are motivated by ideological goals often involving politics or religion—not profit. Even if they were terrorists, international law would only allow the executive branch to respond through legal methods like freezing assets, trials and imprisonment.

Hegseth and others involved will eventually face court martial

Trump and Hegseth’s legal arguments have been universally rejected by military legal experts including former lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, who have condemned the attacks as unlawful under both domestic and international law. Undeterred, Hegseth has stated enthusiastically that the military will continue these executions.

In February, Hegseth fired the JAGs whose job was to assess the legality of military actions. He may have deliberately done so to engage in illegal conduct and later claim a ‘mistake of law’ defense, but that maneuver won’t save him. In US Servicemembers’ Exposure to Criminal Liability for Lethal Strikes on Narcoterrorists, Just Security lays it out:

An extrajudicial killing, premeditated and without justification or excuse and without the legal authority tied to an armed conflict, is properly called “murder.” And murder is still a crime for those in uniform who executed the strike even if their targets are dangerous criminals, and even if servicemembers were commanded to do so by their superiors, including the President of the United States.

Under this analysis, “every officer in the chain of command who … directed downward the initial order from the President or Secretary of Defense” would likely fall within the meaning of traditional accomplice liability, and could be charged for murder under Article 118.

Even ifa partisan Supreme Court gave Trump criminal immunity for murder (an unsettled question), that immunity does not extend to Hegseth, or to other service members piloting the drones or firing the missiles. These orders are obviously illegal, and trigger service members’ obligation to disobey them.

Those who choose to follow them should expect to follow Hegseth to court martial when this period of insanity ends.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.