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(The Hill) – Senate Democrats are pressing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Pam Bondi to make public the classified opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). This document details the legal rationale behind the Trump administration’s military actions against suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.
A group of thirteen Senate Democrats, all part of the Senate Armed Services Committee, are urging a swift declassification and release of this opinion. Drafted during the summer, the opinion asserts that U.S. military personnel involved in these operations, conducted on both sides of South America, are shielded from prosecution.
“In a democracy, few decisions carry more weight than the deployment of lethal force,” the senators emphasized in a two-page letter addressed to Hegseth and Bondi on Monday. “We contend that making this document public would enhance transparency regarding our military’s use of deadly force, ensuring both Congress and the American public are fully informed about the legal grounds for these operations.”
Efforts to obtain comments from the Pentagon and DOJ by The Hill are ongoing.
This appeal surfaces amid growing congressional concern over the strikes, initiated in early September, and questions about whether they compel soldiers to engage in potentially unlawful actions.
So far, the U.S. military has conducted 21 strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats, killing at least 83 people whom the administration has billed as “narco-terrorists.”
The strikes have drawn blowback from Democrats and some Republicans, who have questioned the legal rationale of the actions. In response, the administration has provided at least 14 briefings on the strikes, although the sessions have not quelled concerns of some in Congress.
“Significant and noteworthy precedent exists for the public release of OLC opinions related to overseas military action,” Senate Democrats wrote in the letter. “After the United States carried out military strikes in Libya in 2011 and in Syria in 2018, the Department of Justice released the applicable OLC opinion justifying each operation.”
The White House said on Monday that President Trump is “satisfied” with the boat strikes. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that “you can expect to see those strikes to continue.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), one of the letter’s signees, said on Monday that he and other Democrats on the committee reviewed the classified opinion last week and that he felt “disappointed & dissatisfied with the supposed legal justification for attacks.”
Aside from the boat strikes, the administration has amassed a massive military presence in the U.S. Southern Command area, dispatching warships, F-35 fighter jets, Marines, at least one submarine and the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest carrier, as tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela approach boiling point.
Trump has weighed ordering strikes inside Venezuela but has also not ruled out conducting talks with Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro, whom the administration has called an “illegitimate leader.”
The U.S. military has continued to have its presence felt near Caracas with at least one Air Force B-52 bomber, a minimum of three F/A-18 Hornet combat jets and at least two E-2D Advanced Hawkeye aircraft flying off the coast of Venezuela Monday evening, according to open-source data reviewed by The Hill.
“We view the Maduro regime as being illegitimate and the president has been very satisfied with the successful strikes against narco-terrorists and foreign terrorists that are illegally trafficking drugs towards the United States of America,” Leavitt said on Monday.