Advocacy groups sue Trump administration seeking release of legal memo justifying boat strikes

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NBC News

A coalition of advocacy groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the Trump administration seeking the immediate release of the memo that provides the legal justification for U.S. military strikes on alleged drug boats.

The complaint, filed in federal court in Manhattan, argues that the deadly strikes, which have killed at least 87 people since early September, are illegal and that Americans deserve to see the justification for them.

The filing requests that the court order the Justice, State and Defense Departments to immediately search for all records regarding the legal reasoning behind the U.S. military campaign against the alleged drug boats and to release them to the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, and other plaintiffs, including the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

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Powerful Republican Turns on Pentagon Pete’s ‘Kill’ Orders

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Daily Beast

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s alleged order to “kill” everyone aboard a suspected Venezuelan drug boat is slated to face intense oversight by the Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee.

SASC chair Sen. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, and SASC member Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, released a joint statement Friday promising “vigorous oversight” into the facts regarding a Sept. 2 drug boat strike in which the U.S. killed everyone aboard a suspected narcotics vessel, then killed the two survivors of its first attack with another missile.

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