C-SPAN examines Trump’s controversial Venezuela boat strikes, where Admiral Frank Bradley ordered follow-up attacks on survivors—two of whom were killed—sparking war crime allegations despite Pentagon claims they remained "hostile." Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faces scrutiny for sharing classified Yemen drone strike details via unregulated Signal, though the Pentagon defends him. Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna backs Trump’s strikes, calling traffickers "narco-terrorists," while questioning Obama-era drone policies and civilian oversight. The episode also covers Trump’s pardon of Congressman Henry Quayar amid bribery charges, his 2026 re-election bid in a GOP-favored district, and Luna’s push for insider trading bans, revealing deep divisions over executive power, military conduct, and congressional accountability. [Automatically generated summary]
From the New York Times this morning, the headline, U.S. military's boat strikes planning takes on new significance.
The details could raise questions about who was responsible for a follow-up strike on September 2nd, the commander who ordered it or the Defense Secretary.
From the New York Times reporting, before the Trump administration began attacking people suspected of smuggling drugs at sea, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved contingency plans for what to do if an initial strike left survivors.
The military would attempt to rescue survivors who appeared to be helpless, shipwrecked, and out of what the administration considered a fight.
But it would try again to kill them if they took what the United States deemed to be hostile action, like communicating with suspected cartel members.
After the smoke cleared from a first strike on September 2nd, there were two survivors, and one of them radioed for help, the U.S. officials said, and Admiral Frank Bradley, who commanded the operation, ordered a follow-up strike and both were killed.
The military's contingency plans have taken on new significance as Admiral Bradley and General Dan Kaine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are set to go to Capitol Hill today to answer questions about the attack amid an uproar over the killing of the survivors.
New York Times reports the men plan to present a vigorous defense of what they will assert was a lawful follow-up strike on the survivors.
That moment is just a small part of Mr. Trump's legally disputed campaign of killing people suspected of smuggling drugs at sea as if they were combatants in war.
But it is now the focus of intense congressional scrutiny.
The details of the contingency planning could raise more questions about who was responsible for the second strike, the commander who ordered it or the defense secretary who approved the overall operation.
Many critics, including some lawmakers, have said the follow-up attack could be a war crime.
Listen to President Trump in the White House yesterday when he was asked about the boat strikes in the Caribbean.
unidentified
Mr. President, if it is found that survivors were actually killed while clinging on to that boat, should Secretary Hegseth, Admiral Bradley, or others be punished?
I think you're going to find that this is war, that these people were killing our people by the millions, actually, if you look over a few years.
I think last year we lost close to 300,000 people were killed.
That's not mentioning all the families.
Have you seen what happens with the families of not only the people killed, but the people that are trying to get their son or their daughter off of this poison that they've been fed?
I think you're going to find that there's a very receptive ear to doing exactly what they're doing, taking out those boats.
And very soon we're going to start doing it on land too, because we know every route, we know every house, we know where they manufacture this crap, we know where they put it all together.
And I think you're going to see it very soon on land also here, please.
unidentified
So to be clear, you support the decision to kill survivors after the attack.
President Trump yesterday at the White House talking about the survivors of that boat strike, the first boat strike on September 2nd.
Back to the New York Times.
Under the plans Mr. Hegseth had approved, Admiral Bradley interpreted the purported communications between the initial survivors and colleagues as meaning that the survivors were still in the fight rather than shipwrecked and helpless people whom it would be a war crime to target.
The Pentagon's law of war manual says that to be considered shipwrecked, persons must be in need of assistance and care, and they must refrain from any hostile act.
A U.S. Naval Commander Handbook says combatants, quote, qualify as shipwrecked persons only if they have ceased all active combat activity.
The Pentagon's defense of its actions rests heavily on the premise that there was a fight in the first place.
In defending the campaign of summary killings at sea as lawful, the administration has relied on Mr. Trump's disputed determination that the United States is in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels and that people suspected of smuggling drugs for them are combatants.
We're going to get to your calls in just a minute on this growing scrutiny of the Defense Secretary over the boat strikes in the Caribbean, as well as a new Inspector General report that has come out today.
And joining us to talk about that is Paul McLeary, who's with Politico National Security Reporter.
Paul McLeary, first, who commissioned this report from the Inspector General?
unidentified
This was by Republican and Democrat lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Senators wanted this report done after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used the signal app to communicate with other members of the government about strikes in Yemen.
So they demanded that the Pentagon Inspector General carry it out this spring, and they finally released the report that will be later today.
Yeah, the main findings here are that the Secretary of Defense has the authority to declassify information at will, basically, right?
But by using an unregulated and messaging app that's not secure, it's encrypted, but it's not secure, he potentially put the lives of U.S. service members at risk.
There's no real penalty here for him or anything like that, but it does find that he put the lives of people at risk because he texted the time, the location, the weapons being used, the platforms being used to attack these Houthi militants in Yemen.
Headlines today also say that he broke Pentagon protocol.
unidentified
How so?
By using Signal, right?
I mean, there are multiple ways that Pentagon and U.S. government officials can communicate securely with one another.
Signal, while I said it's encrypted, and lots of us use it for lots of things, it's not formally approved by the government.
It's not secure, even though it's encrypted.
It can be intercepted, you know, in one way or another, and it depends what device he used.
I mean, it seems that he used his government cell phone, which a lot of folks have installed Signal on, but they also have them on their laptops and things like that.
So he went out, and everyone did, so did Mike Waltz.
You know, everyone who's on that chat went outside normal government protocol to chat on Signal.
The Pentagon Press Secretary Sean Parnell put out a statement saying the Inspector General review is a total exoneration of Secretary Hagseth and proves what we knew all along.
No classified information was shared.
This matter is resolved and the case is closed.
Do you think that's true after talking to members of Congress and others who are concerned about the use of this messaging app?
unidentified
Right.
I mean, we're going to play a kind of language game here, right?
I mean, the message that Hagseth, the information that Hagseth received about the strikes came from General Carrilla, a U.S. Central Command.
Carrillo transmitted that message with all that information over a classified, secure communications network in the Pentagon.
Hagseth then took that information from that classified and secure forum and put it on an unclassified and insecure app signal.
But Hegseth does have the ability to declassify information.
I don't think he formally did it here, but you can argue that since he has that authority, if he decides it's unclassified, it's unclassified.
So that's how Parnell and the Pentagon can say no classified information was shared.
Although, 10 minutes before he sent it, it was classified information sent over classified means.
There's widespread anger on both sides of the aisle, right?
Don Bacon, the Representative Roger Wicker, the chair of the Republican chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, are both pretty unhappy with how this whole thing has played out and the kind of the recklessness with which this information was shared.
So they'll be in this meeting today with Admiral Bradley and General Kane asking questions and really putting it to him, right?
I mean, I think that Secretary Hagseth and the Pentagon have put this on Bradley, which as the commander on the ground, it's his responsibility in the end, but he was given orders to do this by Pete Hegseth and Hegseth has tweeted and said, you know, said other things publicly that he supports Bradley and his decision, kind of almost taking himself out of the decision-making loop here.
Although Hegseth said he watched the first strike, so he was in the loop the whole time and he gave the orders, but he seems to have really distanced himself from the final result.
CNN with the headline this morning, GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski suggests new leadership is needed at the Pentagon.
Who else has expressed concern and possibly called for the resignation of Pete Hegseth?
unidentified
I mean, many Democrats have, but also, as I mentioned, Don Bacon, the Republican representative, and other folks like Tom Tills, Republican Senator and Wicker, have really, they haven't called for Hegseth to resign, but they also haven't backed him.
And just talking to folks on the Hill, staffers and things like that, there's not a lot of support for Pete Hegseth on Capitol Hill among Republicans or Democrats.
I mean, nominating someone else, going through a whole hearing cycle would be quite an ordeal, right?
First, you have to find a candidate, but there's not, and from the beginning, there hasn't been a lot of institutional support for Hagseth.
I mean, the White House expended a lot of political capital to get him through his confirmation hearings after accusations of alcoholism, accusations of abusing women, multiple divorces, things like that.
Hegseth is, and the kind of drama that we saw at the hearing, even before the hearing, has just kept up over the past year.
I mean, it's been one thing after another.
And whatever support he did have, some of it has bled away.
Another headline to share with all of you this morning is about Congressman Henry Quayer, our Democrat Congressman, the president yesterday saying that he would pardon him.
He was charged with bribery, conspiracy, and money laundering.
Here is the Congressman, CNN, caught up with him yesterday on Capitol Hill.
unidentified
First of all, I want to thank President Trump for this action that he took.
On behalf of my wife and my family, I want to say thank you.
I think the facts have been very clear about this, but I would also say I want to thank God for standing during this very difficult time with my family and I.
Now we can get back to work.
Nothing has changed.
We will continue working hard.
In fact, right now I've got another congressman.
Working on some legislation uh, but I just wanted to for now.
The Democrat from Texas, congressman Henry Quayar, joining us this morning to talk about this pardon is Gabby Bierenbaum.
She is a Washington correspondent with the Texas Tribune.
Remind our viewers Gabby, what the congressman was charged with and and and.
Where were those charges?
Uh, before this pardon by the president?
unidentified
Yeah, so congressman Quayar was first charged um by the DOJ in 2024 related to a raid they conducted in 2022.
It was about a dozen counts um, mainly bribery and money laundering.
So the allegation was that he took um bribes of about six hundred thousand dollars from the government of Azerbaijan and from a Mexican bank and that he and his wife set up sort of shell companies to launder that money and then, in exchange, he supported policy positions um that Azerbaijan supported.
That was the allegation made by the DOJ.
Congressman Quayar has maintained that you know this was sort of retaliation for his uh his position on the border, which was against president Biden's right for a while, and clearly president Trump right agreed with that analysis and pardoned him yesterday.
Is the congressman running for re-election in 2026?
unidentified
He is, and that's going to be really critical here.
He's running in a seat that president Trump won in 2024 by about seven points, and congressman Quayar was one of the biggest Democratic overperformers.
Last year he overperformed Kamala Harris by about 13 points.
It's a seat that Republicans have now redrawn to be more favorable to them.
Now Trump would have won it by about 10, assuming the new maps that Texas Republicans drew over the summer hold up in court, and so this is going to be a critical seat.
Republicans have a recruit there um, the Webby Judge, where Laredo is Tono Ti Arena.
So we would expect this to be a really competitive race, and I think that's one of the dynamics, right?
Is that president Trump um, in pardoning congressman Quayar, sort of neutered what had been up to this point, one of Republicans best arguments against him, right?
What was the reaction from Democratic leadership to this pardon?
unidentified
Yes, so minority leader Jeffries said that he felt that the case against Quayar had been thin anyway, and he said he didn't know why Trump had made the decision he did, but that he felt the outcome was correct that, you know, the case against Quayar should not have proceeded.
Is there a chance that Congressman Quayar could switch parties, as some have speculated in news reports?
unidentified
Yeah, that was the initial speculation yesterday right, that there might have been some sort of deal.
I think Congressman Quayar for now put that to bed pretty quickly.
It just so happened, right?
He filed for reelection yesterday as a Democrat and that filing sort of rendered on the Texas Secretary of State website right around the same time that the pardon kicked in shortly after.
So he is, for this cycle, running as a Democrat.
He's filed, he described, he said nothing has changed for him.
He said I'm a conservative Democrat, as he's been.
He is, you know, one of the most moderate members of the Democratic caucus.
He's the last anti-abortion Democrat in the House and so as of now, it appears he's he's still running as a Democrat, but he, you know, he did make You know, make the decision to go on Fox yesterday.
He has thanked the president, talked about how he wants to find areas to work with the president, and that's sort of always been the MO of his career.
Joining us is Congresswoman Ana Paulina Luna, Republican of Florida.
She's a member of the Oversight and Government Committee, as well as the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Congresswoman, thank you so much for your time this morning.
Let's begin with what we have been talking about here in the Washington Journal with our viewers in those boat strikes in Venezuela.
Your thoughts about the administration's position on striking these boats, as well as that strike on September 2nd, two strikes that killed the survivors that were left after the first strike.
So before there's any strike that happens, there's something called a strike package that's put together.
unidentified
And what the strike package involves is an intel report.
Some of that is gathered, whether it be stateside or internationally.
But the point is that there is intelligence that does deem these traffickers as narco-terrorists.
That's an important designation because these are not just innocent civilians or in the previous caller's example of children on boats, children on boats.
These are people that are bringing drugs into this country that are responsible for killing many people.
To put it in context in perspective, a couple of weeks ago, I actually went on a ride along in Pinellas County, which is the community that I represent in Florida.
And even a week prior, the law enforcement in our community found over one pound of fentanyl and one pound of cocaine.
unidentified
That was enough fentanyl to pretty much kill everyone in the county, everyone in the state, multiple times over.
So this whole argument that these people are somehow innocent and deserve due process, when you're willingly making a decision to kill American citizens, when you are coming in and benefiting terrorist organizations, we do not treat you as people that are innocent, but also to remember there was an intelligent assessment and report that came through.
unidentified
So they were deemed as narco-terrorists and thus treated as such.
And so, in the correct assessment that another caller had previously made on T-SPEN, we're not always going to put out the intelligence to the American people because, again, some of that is classified information.
unidentified
But make no mistake, there's absolutely intel assessments going into this.
And I would say that President Trump is definitely on the lower side of things in regards to drone strikes in regards to presidents because Barack Obama, everyone's beloved Democrat president, made over 536 authorized strikes when he was in office.
unidentified
And I don't remember seeing the liberal media or the press going after him for it.
How do you respond to Michael Waldman, who's the president and chief executive of the Brennan Center for Justice?
He argues in the Wall Street Journal this morning this, that any order to quote, kill everybody, however conveyed, would be a black and white violation of the law.
Extradicual killing of drug traffickers or other criminals would be considered murder.
Even if the United States was at war with narco-terrorists, as Mr. Trump claims, military law specifically prohibits conducting, quote, hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors, end quote.
unidentified
Very interesting.
Never heard of him, never read his article.
But again, we're operating under civilian law, not military law.
And the President of the United States is protected under his authorities and given authorities by the people of this country to make decisions to include operating and carrying out drone strikes when there's imminent threat and danger against the American people.
But what he is doing is taking this position and spinning it with a great amount of, I'd say, you know, dishonesty to the American people in an effort to make it political.
For any of these people, I don't care if they're Democrats or not, but are they super critical of President Obama when he did the same thing?
unidentified
The fact is, is that for the most part, to my knowledge, since I've really been alive, which has been for 36 years, there's been many presidents who have used this authority and it hasn't been a big deal.
I do understand, though, that it might be shocking for people to see footage of narco-terrorists being blown out of the water, but I would argue that maybe those people need to go into inner city Chicago or maybe they need to check out Skid Row and see what happens when you have people injecting themselves with drugs or see what happens to the families in this country that have to deal with children that are ODing.
unidentified
So I have no sympathy for those people that are choosing to traffic drugs into this country.
And I definitely don't have any sympathy for the fact that these terrorist networks are responsible for destabilizing and causing mass atrocities in part of these countries in South America, of which I've traveled to.
unidentified
I have seen the mass graves and the footage of mass graves that are responsible and funded largely by these terrorist networks.
So no, I don't have sympathy.
This is called governing, and we are going to do what we need to do to keep the American people safe.
Congresswoman, your reaction to the special election in Tennessee's 7th district earlier this week, the headline in the Washington Post is, Tennessee election reveals House GOP has a base problem.
It notes that in that same district, President Trump and Senator Marsha Blackburn won the district by 22 percentage points.
The Republican here won by 9 to 10 percentage points.
Would you agree or are you concerned that there's a base problem here?
No, I think right now if you're looking at actually what happened previous to the special election, the Republican now member of Congress that will be sworn in had to face a very brutal and bruising primary where there was a lot of sour grapes over the results of that primary.
unidentified
He did come out the winner and so obviously we support the winner and now he's going to be a member of Congress.
But that's not something that's atypical outside of the midterm elections.
You know, remember, when you have a bruising primary and then you're taking in millions and millions of dollars from the Democrat machine, of which I have personally been the victim of at some points during my elections, it can be difficult elections, but I'm not too worried about it.
unidentified
I do think, though, that Congress as a whole, you know, instead of putting the NCAA legislation on the floor, we should maybe talk about insider trading and banning it.
And there's massive bipartisan opposition within the House chamber to enable this to continue happening.
I can tell you the American people, overwhelmingly, 86% of Americans actually support banning of the single trading stock because it is such a problem with insider trading here in Washington, D.C.
unidentified
But again, that's going to be something that we have to flush out.
If we're really talking about the problems that exist in this country, look no further than individual stock trading of members in Congress.
They are personally controlled by the top three, BlackRock, Vanguard, and the pharmaceutical companies.
BlackRock is contributing to the housing crisis in this country, where young single families can't purchase homes because they're being bought up by these corporations.
And then also, in addition to that, when you have over one in three members of Congress that are exposed to whether it's Big Pharma or BlackRock, do you really think that they're going to cap prescription pill prices and codify President Trump's executive order?
And then I also heard actually this morning that Speaker Johnson is having a meeting with some of those holdouts in the Republican Party and also to talking to Democrat members as well that might not necessarily be as on board with this legislation.
But the thing is, is that I'm open to amending the legislation as long as we're stopping and making it very difficult for the insider trading to take place.
unidentified
Even just yesterday, there was a letter where over 90 members of former members of Congress had written a letter to both Hakeem Jeffries and the Speaker of the House.
This included Democrats, Republicans, and Independents saying that insider trading is a problem in Washington, D.C. What's been interesting is you'll see that there is a lot of people from behind the scenes that are trying to tank this process, but no one wants to come out and publicly tell the American people or their voters that they're going to block the legislation to really take down the insider trading happening here in D.C.
So there's a big internal war that we have, and it's not just Republicans, it's Democrats as well.
No, I don't necessarily blame him because there was a House admin hearing where they chose, meaning the individual who's in charge of that committee chose to make this a closed-door hearing, meaning that other members like myself or Representative Magazine or Jayapal or Chiproy or Tim Burchett who have been championing this legislation couldn't gavel on and actually speak to the issues that exist here in Congress on that topic.
unidentified
But I will say that there is no excuse for why this legislation hasn't been moved sooner.
And that is why I chose to act in good faith with the discharge petition.
I said back in September prior to the shutdown that House leadership had until the end of the month.
I did that in a press conference.
It was bipartisan and very widely covered.
And of course then the government shutdown happened.
And so I'm simply fulfilling and following up on what I promised to do.
But what I will say is that there is now open discussions at moving legislation through regular order to bring this to the floor.
Now, to be clear, if the leadership of the House of Representatives, if Democrat leadership tries to water down this legislation, which I think they might try to do, not the Speaker, but other actors within these parties, I do think that you are going to have a massive, massive amount of people, both Democrat and Republicans, signing on to this, because we're frankly sick and tired of it.
unidentified
You have people that are insider trading, it's illegal, and they are bringing bad name on all of the House of Representatives.
We're going into the midterms.
The American people as a whole are disappointed in Congress because they don't feel that we work on behalf of the American people and they're not truly wrong.
Look at what's happening with insider trading.
How could you ever be expected to truly advocate on behalf of your constituents when you're working and you're benefiting personally from the deals that some of these corporations are getting?
And so it's my job to call it out.
I've been made wildly unpopular on the Hill because of it, but wildly popular among the American people.
But to provide some context and perspective, the former Speaker who, you know, we ended up putting our issues past in the past once he was elected Speaker, but he worked against me to get re-elected or to get elected to office.
And then when it came to really pushing support for, you know, new moms being able to vote, he wasn't going to support that either.
unidentified
So all that to say that, you know, Mike Johnson at least picks up the phone call.
Well, MAGA Mike was a term that everyone used to call him when he was in committee.
So, he can be a Spitfire, but I understand that with the numbers and the vote, you know, the different personalities, obviously, such a slim majority, he might not be able to be full MAGA Mike, but he's still in there somewhere.
From the New York Times this morning, the headline, U.S. military's boat strikes planning takes on new significance.
The details could raise questions about who was responsible for a follow-up strike on September 2nd, the commander who ordered it or the defense secretary.
From the New York Times reporting, before the Trump administration began attacking people suspected of smuggling drugs at sea, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved contingency plans for what to do if an initial strike left survivors.
The military would attempt to rescue survivors who appeared to be helpless, shipwrecked, and out of what the administration considered a fight.
But it would try again to kill them if they took what the United States deemed to be hostile action, like communicating with suspected cartel members.
After the smoke cleared from a first strike on September 2nd, there were two survivors, and one of them radioed for help.
The U.S. officials said, and Admiral Frank Bradley, who commanded the operation, ordered a follow-up strike and both were killed.
The military's contingency plans have taken on new significance as Admiral Bradley and General Dan Kaine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are set to go to Capitol Hill today to answer questions about the attack amid an uproar over the killing of the survivors.
New York Times reports the men plan to present a vigorous defense of what they will assert was a lawful follow-up strike on the survivors.
That moment is just a small part of Mr. Trump's legally disputed campaign of killing people suspected of smuggling drugs at sea as if they were combatants in a war.
But it is now the focus of intense congressional scrutiny.
The details of the contingency planning could raise more questions about who was responsible for the second strike, the commander who ordered it or the defense secretary who approved the overall operation.
Many critics, including some lawmakers, have said the follow-up attack could be a war crime.
Listen to President Trump in the White House yesterday when he was asked about the boat strikes in the Caribbean.
unidentified
Mr. President, if it is found that survivors were actually killed while clinging on to that boat, should Secretary Hegseth, Admiral Bradley, or others be punished?
I think you're going to find that this is war, that these people were killing our people by the millions, actually, if you look over a few years.
I think last year we lost close to 300,000 people were killed.
That's not mentioning all the families.
Have you seen what happens with the families of not only the people killed, but the people that are trying to get their son or their daughter off of this poison that they've been fed?
I think you're going to find that there's a very receptive ear to doing exactly what they're doing, taking out those boats.
And very soon we're going to start doing it on land too, because we know every route, we know every house, we know where they manufacture this crap, we know where they put it all together.
And I think you're going to see it very soon on land also.
Yeah, please.
unidentified
So to be clear, you support the decision to kill survivors after the attack?
President Trump yesterday at the White House talking about the survivors of that boat strike, the first boat strike on September 2nd.
Back to the New York Times.
Under the plans Mr. Hag Seth had approved, Admiral Bradley interpreted the purported communications between the initial survivors and colleagues as meaning that the survivors were still in the fight rather than shipwrecked and helpless people whom it would be a war crime to target.
The Pentagon's law of war manual says that to be considered shipwrecked, persons must be in need of assistance and care, and they must refrain from any hostile act.
A U.S. Naval Commander Handbook says combatants, quote, qualify as shipwrecked persons only if they have ceased all active combat activity.
The Pentagon's defense of its actions rests heavily on the premise that there was a fight in the first place.
In defending the campaign of summary killings at sea as lawful, the administration has relied on Mr. Trump's disputed determination that the United States is in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels and that people suspected of smuggling drugs for them are combatants.
We're going to get to your calls in just a minute on this growing scrutiny of the Defense Secretary over the boat strikes in the Caribbean, as well as a new Inspector General report that has come out today.
And joining us to talk about that is Paul McLeary, who's with Politico National Security Reporter.
Paul McLeary, first, who commissioned this report from the Inspector General?
unidentified
This was by Republican and Democrat lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Senators wanted this report done after Defense Secretary Pete Hag Seth used the signal app to communicate with other members of the government about strikes in Yemen.
So they demanded that the Pentagon Inspector General carry it out this spring, and they finally released the report that will be later today.
Yeah, the main findings here are that the Secretary of Defense has the authority to declassify information at will, basically, right?
But by using an unregulated and messaging app that's not secure, it's encrypted, but it's not secure, he potentially put the lives of U.S. service members at risk.
There's no real penalty here for him or anything like that, but it does find that he put the lives of people at risk because he texted the time, the location, the weapons being used, the platforms being used to attack these Houthi militants in Yemen.