White House Says Admiral, Not Hegseth, Ordered Second Strike on Alleged Drug Boat

The White House confirmed Monday that a second strike took place against an alleged drug boat in September, killing several survivors clinging to the wreckage of the first explosion — but said it was an admiral who ordered the second attack, not Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“And he was well within his authority to do so,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during a press briefing.

The Washington Post first reported last week that Hegseth authorized a highly unusual strike to kill all occupants of an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, sparking a firestorm of criticism that culminated over the weekend as several lawmakers openly speculated that such an attack could violate the rules governing U.S. Navy engagement and international law.

But Leavitt attempted to distance Hegseth from the second strike, telling reporters Monday that Admiral Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, the head of Special Operations Command, was responsible for the final order. She said that Hegseth “authorized Adm. Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes.”

Hegseth has reportedly provided more flexibility to commanders across the world to order attacks as they please, especially targeting militant groups in the Middle East.

“The president has made it quite clear that if narco-terrorists again are trafficking illegal drugs towards the United States, he has the authority to kill them,” Leavitt said. “That is what this administration is doing.”

The attack in question was among the first carried out by the U.S. against alleged drug boats in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, killing 11 people. Since Sept. 2, at least 83 people have been killed in more than two dozen strikes, according to CNN.

The admission that a second strike occurred is a change-of-tune for the White House, which had consistently denied the Post’s report, calling it “fake news.”

“We told The Washington Post that this entire narrative was false yesterday,” spokesperson for the Department of Defense, Sean Parnell, posted to X on Friday. “These people just fabricate anonymously sourced stories out of whole cloth. Fake News is the enemy of the people.”

President Donald Trump, speaking aboard Air Force One on Sunday, said he was unaware of a second strike and attempted to distance himself from the incident.

“I don’t know that [a second strike] happened, and Pete [Hegseth] said he did not even know what people were talking about,” Trump said. “We’ll look into it, but no, I wouldn’t have wanted a second strike. The first strike was very lethal. It was fine.”

Over the weekend, lawmakers from both parties raised concerns about the second strike potentially amounting to a “war crime” and vowed to investigate the matter.

“If that reporting is true, it’s a clear violation of the DOD’s own laws of war, as well as international laws about the way you treat people who are in that circumstance. And so this rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true,” Rep. Tim Kaine, a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, also a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, told ABC News on Sunday that “it’s very possible there was a war crime committed.”

“Of course, for it to be a war crime, you have to accept the Trump administration’s whole construct here… which is we’re in armed conflict, at war with this particular, with the drug gangs. Of course, they’ve never presented the public with the information they’ve got here,” Van Hollen said. “If that theory is wrong, then it’s plain murder.”

Rep. Mike Turner confirmed to CBS that Congress had not been notified of a second strike, saying, “Obviously if that occurred, that would be very serious, and I agree that that would be an illegal act.”

Speaking from Capitol Hill after Leavitt’s press briefing Monday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the White House lied about who ordered the strikes, adding, “But that’s no surprise, because they lie for a living, and the American people know it.”

“It is my understanding that Pete Hegseth, so-called Secretary of Defense, was absolutely involved,” Jeffries said. “The facts are incapable of being disputed, and so the question in front of us… [is] whether war crimes were committed and either U.S. law or international law or both were violated.”

On Friday, Rep. Roger Wicker, chair of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, released a statement acknowledging the reports of a second strike and announced they would take “vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”

Another Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Don Bacon, said he did not believe the White House “would be foolish enough” to order survivors killed “because that’s a clear violation of the law of war.”

“So I’m very suspicious that he would’ve done something like that, because it would go against common sense,” Bacon continued.