Dec. 17 (UPI) — There are no legal or national security justifications for the Trump administration’s attacks on ships in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean Sea, Sen. Chris Murphy said following a bipartisan classified briefing on the strikes.
At least 95 people have been killed in 25 military strikes on ships the Trump administration accuses of being used by drug cartels and gangs designated as terrorist organizations since Sept. 2.
The strikes have drawn mounting domestic and international condemnation and questions over their legality by both Democratic and Republican lawmakers.
The administration defends the strikes as legal under both U.S. and international law, arguing the United States is at war with the drug cartels who are flooding the country with deadly substances.
State Secretary Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held a classified briefing on the strikes with members of Congress on Tuesday, with many Democrats, including Murphy, D-Conn., calling foul.
“While I obviously can’t tell you any classified information I learned, I can tell you this: that the administration had no legal justification for these strikes, and no national justification for these strikes,” Murphy said in a video posted to his X account.
On the national security front, the administration admitted to the lawmakers that there is no fentanyl coming to the United States from Venezuela and the cocaine that is coming from Venezuela is mostly going to Europe, he said.
“And so we are spending billions of your taxpayer dollars to wage a war in the Caribbean to stop cocaine from going from Venezuela to Europe,” he said. “That is a massive waste of national security resources and of your taxpayer dollars.”
On the legal front, the administration is justifying the strikes by stating they are targeting gangs and cartels that the Trump administration has designated as terrorist organizations.
Since February, President Donald Trump has designated 10 cartels and gangs as terrorist organizations, with Clan de Golfo blacklisted on Tuesday.
Murphy said that while the president has the power to designate groups as terrorist organizations, it does not give him the ability to carry out military strikes targeting them.
“A designated ‘terrorist organization’ allows the president to impose sanctions on those organizations and individuals,” he said. “Only Congress, only the American public, can authorize war. And there’s just no question that these are acts of war.”