The attack on a boat in the Caribbean last Tuesday was carried out by a drone, according to a Republican senator.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., took aim at the Trump administration for glorifying the killing of people without trial, saying that the “lethal strike” was a breach of long-accepted rules of engagement. He also disclosed that it was a drone strike, a fact that the Pentagon and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth have refused to reveal.

Paul first criticized the attack in a back-and-forth with Vice President JD Vance on social media. Vance responded to the suggestion that the strike was a war crime by writing on X, “I don’t give a shit what you call it.” Paul responded on Saturday calling Vance’s comments about killing people without a trial “despicable and thoughtless.”

Paul told The Intercept he didn’t oppose the use of drones in war but objected to summarily killing people without due process.

“During my time in the Senate, I have been the foremost critic of drones being used on civilians, especially Americans,” said Paul, a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. “The recent drone attack on a small speedboat over 2,000 miles from our shore without identification of the occupants or the content of the boat is in no way part of a declared war and defies our longstanding Coast Guard rules of engagement which include: warnings to halt, non-lethal force to capture, and ultimately lethal force in self-defense or in cases of resistance.”

Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., and the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was also alarmed about the attack. “It is unacceptable that, a week after the strike, Members of the Foreign Affairs Committee have yet to be briefed by the administration on this use of force despite the Committee’s clear jurisdiction,” he said in a statement on Tuesday. “We are a nation of laws, not of one man’s whims. Donald Trump does not have the authority to order strikes in international waters.”

President Trump posted a video to social media last week showing a four-engine speedboat cutting through the water with numerous people on board. An explosion then destroys the boat. Trump said the strike killed 11 people whom he characterized as “narcoterrorists.” The administration has offered no evidence to bolster these assertions.

Experts say that whoever was on board, the attack was an extrajudicial killing by the Trump administration — or flat-out murder.

“All people, no matter where they live or what crime they have been accused of, have fundamental human rights, including the rights to life and due process,” said Annie Shiel, the U.S. advocacy director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict. “Using lethal force in this way, outside of any recognizable armed conflict and without due process, is an extrajudicial execution, not an act of war.”

Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who is a specialist in counterterrorism issues and the laws of war, said that given the evidence that has emerged, the government’s statements, and after discussions with other national security lawyers in the week since the strike, he has formed stronger conclusions about the legality of the attack.

“I’m much more inclined to think this was just flat-out murder. And I’ve bent over backwards to be generous to the government in my interpretations,” he told The Intercept. “There are circumstances in which the U.S. can use lethal force but that is in the context of an armed conflict, against a lawful target — an enemy combatant. The Trump administration has not even bothered to make that argument. They have not argued that the United States is in an armed conflict governed by the law of war. They have not argued, much less substantiated, that the target of this attack was a lawful target.”

“Outside of armed conflict, we have a word for the premeditated killing of people. That word is murder.”

Finucane accused the government of using legalistic sleight of hand to confuse the various organized armed groups the U.S. has fought during the war on terror and the criminal entities it’s now targeting in Latin America. He also took a dim view of Trump’s War Powers report to Congress, in which the president justified the attack under his Article II constitutional authority as commander in chief of the U.S. military and claimed to be acting pursuant to the United States’ inherent right of self-defense as a matter of international law.

“The war powers certification doesn’t even identify the supposed designated terrorist organization. It uses a lot of legal terms but does not make any sort of coherent legal argument,” Finucane said. “What is conspicuously absent is any attempt at a legal justification for the premeditated killing of people. And outside of armed conflict, we have a word for the premeditated killing of people. That word is murder.”

[

Related

Pentagon Official: Trump Boat Strike Was a Criminal Attack on Civilians](https://theintercept.com/2025/09/05/pentagon-official-trump-boat-strike-was-a-criminal-attack-on-civilians/)

Last week, a high-ranking Pentagon official who spoke to the Intercept on the condition of anonymity said that the strike in the Caribbean a criminal attack on civilians and said that the Trump administration paved the way for it by firing the top legal authorities of the Army and the Air Force earlier this year. “The U.S. is now directly targeting civilians. Drug traffickers may be criminals but they aren’t combatants,” the War Department official said. “When Trump fired the military’s top lawyers the rest saw the writing on the wall, and instead of being a critical firebreak they are now a rubber stamp complicit in this crime.”

The Pentagon refused to comment on the official’s characterization of the strike. “We have nothing additional to provide,” press secretary Kingsley Wilson wrote in an email after providing nothing.

Asked about Paul’s disclosure that the strike last Tuesday was carried out by a drone, Wilson replied: “Nothing for you on that.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio made clear that the U.S. could have halted the ship and arrested the crew but chose to summarily execute them instead. “Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up — and it’ll happen again,” he boasted.

Finucane called the admission “horrifying” and pointed to the legal ramifications. The assertion that the president opted to blow the vessel up to send a message “ undercuts any sort of claim that the U S was acting in self-defense, either for purposes of international law or self-defense as an affirmative defense to charges of murder by the president,” Finucane said.

Todd Huntley, a former Staff Judge Advocate who served as a legal adviser on Joint Special Operations task forces conducting drone strikes in Afghanistan and elsewhere and now directs the national security law program at Georgetown University Law Center, said that the strike risked opening the door to attacks against Americans — and even U.S. citizens — within the United States.

“With Afghanistan, Iraq, and the war on terror, we framed everything as counterterrorism. And we’ve seen counterterrorism and counter-insurgency tactics flowing back into the United States with militarized policing,” Huntley told The Intercept. “Now, if the president is willing to strike a boat in international waters, is he willing to use force against a vehicle with members of a cartel in it? What if there is a civilian, like a wife or a girlfriend — an American citizen — in the vehicle? It’s a slippery slope.”

Venezuela’s government pushed back on claims that the country is a key player in the global drug trade on Monday. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez offered a detailed rebuttal, citing reports from the United Nations and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, insisting that Venezuela “has absolutely nothing to do with the deaths of [U.S.] citizens from drug overdoses.” Rodríguez added that her country “is not relevant” in global drug production and said that the U.S. government should redirect its recently deployed maritime forces in the Caribbean to the Pacific, where speedboats and container ships have, she said, long carried Colombian cocaine.

Venezuelan officials believe Trump may be renewing long-running efforts, which failed during his first term, to topple President Nicolás Maduro’s government. Maduro and several close allies were indicted in a New York federal court in 2020 on federal charges of narco-terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine. Last month, the U.S. doubled its reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest to $50 million.

[

Related

The Rift in Trump World Over Venezuela](https://theintercept.com/2025/09/09/venezuela-boat-oil-trump-latin-america/)

The Trump administration added the Venezuelan Cartel de los Soles, or Cartel of the Suns, to a list of specially designated global terrorist groups, alleging that it is headed by Maduro and high-ranking officials in his administration. In July, Trump also signed a secret directive ordering the Pentagon to use military force against some Latin American drug cartels hehas labeled terrorist organizations.

Speaking on Fox News, Hegseth did not rule out regime change by the U.S. in Venezuela. “That’s a presidential-level decision and we’re prepared with every asset that the American military has,” he said.

Hegseth and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine made an unannounced trip to Puerto Rico on Monday. Their visit followed reports that the Pentagon had repositioned 10 F-35 fighter jets to the island amid escalating tensions with Maduro. The aircraft will join around 4,500 U.S. personnel, seven U.S. warships and one nuclear-powered attack submarine which are either currently in the Caribbean or are expected to arrive there soon.

Two armed Venezuelan F-16 fighter jets flew over the U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Jason Dunham in the southern Caribbean Sea in a show of force last week. The Pentagon called it a “highly provocative move” that was “designed to interfere with our counter-narco-terror operations” and issued a threat. “The cartel running Venezuela is strongly advised not to pursue any further effort to obstruct, deter or interfere with counternarcotics and counterterrorism operations carried out by the U.S. military,” read the statement released on X last Thursday night.

Maduro’s government recently made a formal complaint about “systematic and illegal harassment” by the U.S. to the United Nations. On Sunday, Maduro ordered the deployment of 25,000 soldiers to reinforce rapid reaction forces, including along the country’s Caribbean coast. This followed the activation of militia and popular forces.

Before the Trump administration ramped up tensions with Venezuela in recent weeks, the Pentagon had already been carrying out numerous training missions, exercises, and conferences — that have mostly been ignored by the press — with military personnel from across Latin America and the Caribbean. U.S. Southern Command has been busy of late, conducting a series of military exercises and training operations. One Marine Corps operation in Puerto Rico includes the amphibious landing of troops on a beachhead in southern Puerto Rico — precisely the forces necessary for the invasion of a coastal nation.

On Monday, Hegseth visited the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima off the coast of Puerto Rico, which he called “a floating island of American power,” according to a video posted by the Pentagon on X. “What you’re doing right now, it’s not training,” he told troops on board. “This is the real-world exercise on behalf of the vital national interests of the United States of America to end the poisoning of the American people.”

The post Rand Paul Reveals Venezuela Boat Attack Was a Drone Strike appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via this RSS feed