The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee blasted President Donald Trump and his administration for carrying out "absolutely illegal" military action in the Caribbean Sea and resisting congressional oversight.
Alvin Holsey, the admiral who had been overseeing the bombings of boats as head of U.S. Southern Command, announced his sudden retirement after the military conducted a sixth strike near Venezuela, and Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) told The New Republic his departure after just under a year was concerning.
"Prior to Trump becoming president, no combatant commander that I’ve ever dealt with has resigned in the middle of their term," Smith said. "So it sounds an awful lot like — and we have heard rumors to this effect — that he has been forced out, and this is a question that I’ve raised with senior leaders at the Pentagon on a number of occasions in recent days."
"Look, ever since Trump became president, one of the big questions in my world of the Department of Defense is: What do you do if you’re given an illegal order?" Smith added. "And the military, you know, has steadfastly said, we serve the Constitution, we will not carry out illegal orders."
That question has been put to the test, Smith said, with orders by Trump and his Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
"The orders to blow up those six boats, in my view and in the views of most legal scholars, are absolutely illegal," the congressman said. "It is an extrajudicial killing. There is no possible Article II justification for that, and there has been no congressional authorization for the use of force."
"So I don’t think it takes an enormous leap of logic to think that maybe Admiral Holsey wasn’t comfortable with that — they had a discussion, and then he was forced out," he added. "We’ll see if something else comes out in the next couple of days, but I think that has to be the presumption until we see some evidence otherwise."
Administration officials have briefed lawmakers on the bombings, which have killed 27 people, but Smith said the administration has not shared enough information with Congress.
"We don’t know much, and I have not yet been directly briefed by anyone at the Department of Defense," he said. "There was a briefing to one of our subcommittees a couple of weeks ago early on, but it was very light on details, and, look, I’ve been through this stuff many times before — stuff we did in Afghanistan and Iraq and Somalia and elsewhere – and when we have a target in this case, the committees are regularly briefed on the specific, very specific details — who was targeted and why, you know, and what was the accumulation of intel and evidence that led to the strike, and they’ve always given us the answer: This was the person, this was who did it, this is why we did it."
"None of that has been given on these Venezuelan strikes," the congressman added. "But Press Secretary [Katherine] Leavitt today saying, 'We’ve been very transparent on this' — that’s just a complete lie. They haven’t been transparent at all."
