The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee is demanding that the Department of Justice turn over a secret legal memo giving the Trump administration the go-ahead to kill sailors in the Caribbean Sea, addressing growing bipartisan concerns over the White House’s use of lethal military strikes on what it has deemed a new “armed conflict” with South American drug cartels.
“The Constitution does not appoint the president as judge, jury, and executioner. He does not have the power to assassinate civilians on his say-so,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Judiciary Committee’s ranking member, wrote in a letter to the DOJ on Thursday.
CNN on Monday first reported that the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel — which creates binding precedent on the executive branch — authored a classified memorandum that says President Donald Trump is authorized to use deadly force against those on a secret list of cartels considered national enemies.
At a confirmation hearing for the nominated U.S. Army’s general counsel the following day, nominee Charles Young confirmed that the letter was real and said it “derived through an interagency lawyers working group” with the CIA, State Department, White House, DOJ, Department of Defense and the military attorneys who advise the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The Trump White House recently notified Congress that Trump has “determined that the United States is in a non-international armed conflict” with those it has deemed “designated terrorist organizations” — without identifying who those are.
Raskin’s letter demands that the head of the DOJ’s office that wrote the memo, assistant attorney general T. Elliot Gaiser, turn it over by Oct. 16 and schedule a briefing with Democratic committee staffers. He also accused the OLC of shirking its duty to provide legal advice by instead becoming “complicit in helping the president violate the Constitution and federal law.”
Raskin’s letter noted that the four-plus bombings that killed at “least 21 civilians … also likely violated domestic criminal law.”
“The people on the boat were not combatants, Congress has not authorized an armed conflict, and these attacks on civilians do not appear consistent with the laws of armed conflict. If your memo purports to shield government actors from criminal liability, the American people need to know why,” he wrote.
On Wednesday, Republicans in the Senate blocked a measure that would have forced Trump to seek congressional approval before carrying out further strikes.
Brian Finucane, a lawyer who spent nearly a decade at the State Department working on armed conflict legal matters, warned that the Trump White House letter “undermines the ability for lawyers elsewhere in the executive branch from pushing back on actions that are unlawful.”
“It functions as a legal permission slip to engage in illegal or criminal conduct,” he said.