Senator Reaches Damning Conclusions After Classified Briefing With Hegseth, Rubio | EUROtoday

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) stated a labeled assembly with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday proved the Trump administration has no authorized or strategic justification for the lethal strikes on alleged smugglers at sea ― they usually’re losing billions of taxpayer {dollars}. (Watch the clip beneath.)

Murphy, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, claimed the 2 Cabinet officers “scurried out of there before they could actually get asked any tough questions.”

“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 had no national security justification for these strikes,” Murphy stated in a video on X.

He stated Hegseth and Rubio admitted that no fentanyl is popping out of Venezuela ― regardless of President Donald Trump’s deceptive makes an attempt to tie the nation to the drug so he can justify the assaults. Cocaine is flowing out of the South American nation, Murphy stated, but almost all of it’ll Europe.

“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,” Murphy stated. “That is a massive waste of national security resources and of your taxpayer dollars.”

Murphy stated the Trump administration is incorrectly claiming that classifying drug cartels as terrorist organizations provides them license to assault.

“Only Congress, only the American public, can authorize war,” he stated. “And there is just no question that these are acts of war.”

The assembly additionally included a tense confrontation between Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Hegseth over the boat bombings. Kelly accused Hegseth of straying off matter when the secretary jabbed at Kelly for the video he made lately telling service members to defy “illegal orders.”

There have been about 25 administration-ordered launches towards alleged drug boats within the Caribbean and the Pacific, killing at the very least 95 whereas inviting scrutiny over their potential for being unlawful, in response to The New York Times.

One from early September continued to grab consideration due to an additional strike to kill survivors hanging on to a ship after an earlier blast ― thought-about by many to be a struggle crime.

Hegseth, nevertheless, stated Tuesday he is not going to launch the complete video of the assault as a result of it’s “top secret.”