Lawmakers From Both Sides Pressed Pentagon on Legal Basis for Cartel Boat Strikes
Defense Department general counsel faced questions from Republicans and Democrats in a closed-door briefing
Oct. 2, 2025 The Wall Street Journal
Senators on both sides of the aisle pressed the Pentagon’s top lawyer in a closed-door meeting to provide a better legal explanation for striking alleged Latin American drug boats in the Caribbean, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
In a classified Senate Armed Services Committee briefing Wednesday, the Pentagon general counsel, Earl Matthews, detailed the legal basis for the military’s attacks ordered by President Trump.
Matthews repeatedly deferred to Trump’s designation of the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations as granting the Defense Department unilateral authority to use military force against them, some of the people said. Matthews refused to provide a written justification for the strikes, which legal experts say is necessary for transparency and accountability.
Just a day after the closed-door briefing, Trump declared in a confidential notice to Congress that the U.S. is in a “non-international armed conflict” with the cartels. In the document, which was sent Thursday to Congress and viewed by The Wall Street Journal, the administration dubbed the cartels as “designated terrorist organizations” and said it “determined that their actions constitute an armed attack against the United States.”
The New York Times earlier reported the confidential notice.
Some of the Republican and Democratic lawmakers who attended Wednesday’s Armed Services Committee briefing expressed concern about the administration’s rationale and urged officials to devise a stronger legal case, some of the people familiar with the discussion said.
Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat who attended the briefing, didn’t discuss the details of the briefing but said there is bipartisan “confusion and concern” with the Pentagon’s legal explanation for the strikes.
“I was there, I’m not satisfied,” Kaine said, noting that he and Sen. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) recently introduced a War Powers Act resolution to “reassert congressional control over military action of this kind in the Caribbean.”
Sen. Jack Reed (D., R.I.), the top Democrat on the committee, criticized the Trump administration for offering “no credible legal justification, evidence or intelligence” for the strikes.
“Every American should be alarmed that their president has decided he can wage secret wars against anyone he calls an enemy,” Reed said.
The questions raised in Wednesday’s meeting illustrate a potential split between lawmakers and the White House on one of the more controversial uses of force this year. While there is broad agreement on combating drug smuggling and drug use in the U.S., there is growing concern on Capitol Hill that the administration has gone beyond its legal authority, especially as it has yet to present public evidence that the targets were drug traffickers.
The chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, said Wednesday in a statement that the operations “are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in complete compliance with the law of armed conflict.”
Parnell added that the briefing was classified to protect national security. “Unauthorized disclosure of the information provided in today’s brief would reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to national security and Department of War operations, assets, or individuals,” he said.
A majority spokesman for the committee also noted the confidential nature of the briefing.
“It is incredibly alarming to suggest that the substance of that briefing is being discussed given the security clearance required to attend,” said the spokesman, Dave Vasquez. “The Senate Armed Services Committee majority treats this leak to the press as a potentially serious breach of security.”
Not all Republican members of Congress back the attacks. Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) has strongly criticized the campaign, but none of the Republicans on the Armed Services Committee have publicly spoken out against the strikes.
“President Trump has every right under Article II of the Constitution to wage war against those who are waging war on the United States. These types of actions have been done many times by presidents of both parties,” said Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in a statement to the Journal.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa), who attended the Wednesday briefing, declined to discuss what took place, but said she approved of the administration’s military campaign against the cartels.
“I fully support President Trump in getting rid of the scourge of drugs at home by taking the fight to the narcoterrorists,” said Ernst. “If these traffickers continue to smuggle drugs, they will be met by a swift and fierce reaction.”
Some military lawyers and other Pentagon officials have also raised concern internally about the legal implications of the campaign against drug cartels in Latin America. Pentagon officials told congressional staffers in a closed-door briefing after the first strike, on a vessel from Venezuela, that the military struck the boat several times from the air even though it had turned around and started heading toward shore.
Todd Huntley, a retired Navy judge advocate and director of the national security law program at the Georgetown law school, said using the foreign-terrorist order, or FTO, designation as justification for the strikes isn’t a sound legal argument.
“Declaring an organization as an FTO does not bring with it any additional authority to use force against those organizations,” Huntley said, adding that the designation is primarily used to prosecute actors that provide “material support” to such groups.
On Monday, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said he is ready to declare a state of emergency over what he characterized as American aggression after the U.S. military attacks on vessels from Venezuela.
The Trump administration has said that all of those killed—at least 17 people—were narcoterrorists.
Matthews’s legal explanation to senators in the briefing is different from the White House’s public justification for the campaign. The administration last month sent a letter to Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) and Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa explaining its view that the president acted within his constitutional authority as commander in chief to conduct the initial strike.
The White House has also said the U.S. is exercising its right to self-defense under international law. “It is not possible at this time to know the full scope and duration of military operations that will be necessary,” Trump wrote in the letter.
Write to Lara Seligman at lara.seligman@wsj.com, Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com and Siobhan Hughes at Siobhan.hughes@wsj.com
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