Napolitano Says Hegseth Should Face War Crimes Review After September Strikes

Conservative legal voice breaks with party line…

Appearing on Newsmax’s National Report this week, senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano said Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth should be prosecuted for a war crime, specifically violating military law that requires rescuing shipwrecked enemy combatants who are no longer able to fight. He centered his criticism on an alleged order, explicit or heavily implied, to wipe out a suspected drug-smuggling boat even if its crew had already been rendered out of action during a September counter-narcotics strike.

As Mediaite reports:

Anchor Shaun Kraisman introduced Napolitano on the Trump-friendly network and added, “Again, the White House is very clear that they were acting within the scope of the law. The orders were given to take out these boats, and this continues on to their effort to stop drug trafficking here in the States. It does get a little murky of what happened in terms of the orders, who carried what, who said what. Talk to us about that.”

Napolitano replied, “Well, I wish the White House would reveal to us the laws on which the president is relying. He says he has an opinion from the Justice Department, but neither the Justice Department nor the White House will offer it for public scrutiny.”

“And it gives me no pleasure to say what I’m about to say because I worked with Pete Hegseth for seven or eight years at Fox News. This is an act of a war crime, ordering survivors who the law requires be rescued instead to be murdered. There’s absolutely no legal basis for it,” Napolitano continued, adding:

“Everybody along the line who did it, from the Secretary of Defense to the admiral to the people who actually pulled the trigger should be prosecuted for a war crime for killing these two people.”

Kraisman pressed further, asking who would even have the authority to pursue such charges. Napolitano replied that the responsibility would first fall to the military, noting that everyone involved — aside from the defense secretary — is on active duty and therefore subject to the military justice system. He said the situation has reached a point where even some Republicans are frustrated, suggesting the issue has moved beyond partisan politics and into a broader crisis over the use of force and congressional oversight.

Hegseth is not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and would instead face trial in a U.S. federal court if a future administration chose to bring charges, as there is no statute of limitations for offenses under the laws of war.

Napolitano grew especially heated as he recounted the shifting explanations from officials. He pointed out that Hegseth initially denied issuing the order, only for the White House to later assert that a double-tap strike occurred — and then claim the action was taken in self-defense. Napolitano rejected that justification outright, saying it defies logic to describe the killing of two people struggling to survive in the water beside a burning vessel as an act of self-protection.

Reports say the operation’s second tap killed two shipwrecked alleged traffickers in the water, and two more strikes were then carried out to finish off the burning boat.

Under international humanitarian law, combatants may be targeted only while they are directly participating in hostilities or presenting an immediate, concrete threat. Once a fighter is shipwrecked, wounded, captured, or otherwise incapacitated, they are considered hors de combat — unable to fight and legally protected from intentional attack.

U.S. military doctrine follows the same rule. The Department of Defense Law of War Manual states: “Persons Rendered Unconscious or Otherwise Incapacitated by Wounds, Sickness, or Shipwreck. Persons who have been rendered unconscious or otherwise incapacitated by wounds, sickness, or shipwreck, such that they are no longer capable of fighting, are hors de combat.”

This guidance is binding for U.S. forces and mirrors the protections laid out in the Geneva Conventions.

Experts say that intentionally firing on survivors in the water would violate these long-standing prohibitions and could constitute a war crime under both international and U.S. law.

The administration initially declined to confirm the specifics of the strike, but later, Hegseth said he was not in the room when the follow-up attacks were authorized. He insisted that the commanding officer, Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley, is “an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100% support.”

While Adm. Bradley told Congress on Thursday that he never received any order to “give no quarter” or “kill them all,” he testified that the vessel was headed toward Suriname, not directly to the United States. He said the plan was for the boat to rendezvous with a larger ship there, a detail that may undercut earlier public statements from Hegseth and others who had claimed the vessel was en route to the U.S. with narcotics.

Bradley also said the survivors killed in the second strike did not have radios or any communications equipment, contradicting earlier assertions that they could have called for backup.

Despite sharp criticism from Democrats and some Republicans, the administration maintains that the follow-up strike was “within authority and law,” saying it was intended to destroy the vessel and eliminate any remaining contraband threat — not to deliberately target wounded survivors.

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