Lawmakers push for release of boat strike "double tap" video - National & International News - TUE 9Dec2025 -

Lawmakers push for release of boat strike “double tap” video as legality of Caribbean campaign questioned.

Lawmakers push for release of boat strike “double tap” video

Congress is currently working on passage of the new $900 billion 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, the annual Pentagon budget bill. Members have included a provision demanding the the Pentagon provide the House and Senate armed services committees with the unedited video of the September 2 “double tap” strike on a Caribbean boat, which many believe may have amounted to a war crime. If the Pentagon does not comply, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel budget will be slashed. It is not certain that the NDAA will pass both chambers of Congress with the provision still intact.

After saying last week he had “no problem” releasing the full video, President Trump backtracked on Monday. After denying he ever said he had no problem releasing the video, Trump instead passed the buck back to Hegseth, who has come under intense scrutiny amid reports he ordered the team carrying out the strike to leave no survivors. “Whatever [Hegseth] decides is OK with me,” Trump said.

Hegseth has claimed that releasing the full video could compromise US military tactics and intelligence, even though he released an edited version of the video on his social media hours after the strike took place in September.

Legality of Caribbean campaign questioned

Officials who have been briefed on the strike and the video have said that 40 minutes after the first strike that destroyed the boat and killed 9 of the 11 people aboard, the Navy carried out a second strike to kill two survivors clinging to wreckage. Killing helpless adversaries is a war crime under the Geneva Convention, to which the US is a signatory.

Trump administration officials have argued that the second strike was legal. Republican Sen. Tom Cotton even went so far as to claim that the survivors were trying to “flip” the boat “so they could stay in the fight”.

Aside from this single incident, there are broader questions about the legality of the overall campaign in the Caribbean. Advocacy groups have sued the Trump administration to compel them to release the memo outlining the legal justification, which is currently classified.

The administration claims the strikes are targeting “narco-terrorists” trafficking drugs to the US. However, they have provided no evidence for this, and US intelligence has contradicted this claim.

The US military buildup in the Caribbean is also part of a broader pressure campaign on Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, whom the Trump administration is seeking to oust. The White House is reportedly already drawing up plans for Venezuela in the event Maduro leaves or is overthrown.

Trump has said Maduro’s “days are numbered” and has not ruled out a US ground invasion in Venezuela to drive Maduro out.

In 2016 interview, Hegseth said members of the military should refuse unlawful orders from the first Trump administration.