Hegseth: Video of September 2 boat strike will not be released – Boston News, Weather, Sports

President Donald Trump’s top Cabinet officials overseeing national security are back on Capitol Hill on Tuesday as questions mount over the swift escalation of U.S. military force and deadly boat strikes in international waters near Venezuela.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others briefed members of the House and the Senate amid congressional investigations into a military strike in September that killed two survivors of an initial attack on a boat allegedly carrying cocaine in the Caribbean. Lawmakers have been examining the Sept. 2 attack as they sift through the rationale for a broader U.S. military buildup in the region that increasingly appears pointed at Venezuela.

Here’s the latest:

Sen. Adam Schiff will try to force Senate vote to release the boat strike video

The Democratic senator from California said he’ll be making a request on the floor of the Senate to unanimously release the boat strike video to the full Congress, and the American people.

“The public should see this,” Schiff said after the closed-door briefing.

He said he found the administration’s “legal explanations and the strategy explanations incoherent.”

Hegseth says he won’t publicly release video of boat strike that killed survivors

He says members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committee would have an opportunity this week to review the video, but did not say whether all members of Congress would be allowed to see it, even as a defense policy bill demands that it be released to Congress.

“Of course we’re not going to release a top secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public,” Hegseth told reporters as he exited a closed-door briefing with senators.

Hegseth says full video of Sept. 2 strike against alleged drug boat to be released to lawmakers

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the Pentagon will release to select lawmakers the full, unedited video of a Sept. 2 second military strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug boat in the Caribbean that’s been criticized because of a second-hit on the boat that killed two survivors of the original attack.

After briefing senators with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the latest developments in the Trump administration’s operations against narco-traffickers on Tuesday, Hegseth said the video would made available Wednesday to the Senate and House Armed Services Committees along with commentary from the Navy admiral who greenlit the strike. However, he said the video remains classified and would not be released to the general public or lawmakers without a role in Pentagon oversight.

“We’re proud of what we’re doing, able to lay it out very directly,” he said.

Rubio said similar operations — there have now been 22 since the first on Sept. 2 — had been “highly successful” and would continue.

Schumer says Hegseth came ‘empty handed’ to boat strike briefing

The Senate Democratic leader said Hegseth rebuffed his demand to make the unedited video of the Sept. 2 boat strike available to all senators, with an appropriate version available to the broader public.

“If they can’t be transparent on this, how can you trust their transparency on all the other issues swirling about in the Caribbean?” Sen. Chuck Schumer asked. “The administration came to this briefing empty handed.”

Schumer said he’s seen the video of the follow-on boat strike that killed survivors.

“I saw it,” Schumer said. “It was deeply troubling.”

Trump administration designates another Latin American drug cartel a ‘foreign terrorist organization’

The designation imposes sanctions on the group and its members and opens the door to potential military or other action against it.

The State Department said Tuesday that the Colombia-based Clan del Golfo had been listed as both a foreign terrorist organization and a specially designated global terrorist group, calling it “a violent and powerful criminal organization with thousands of members.”

“The group’s primary source of income is cocaine trafficking, which it uses to fund its violent activities. Clan del Golfo is responsible for terrorist attacks against public officials, law enforcement and military personnel, and civilians in Colombia,” the department said.

Since taking office in January, the administration has made similar designations for at least 13 groups in Latin America, including the similarly named Cartel del Golfo, and launched military strikes against more than 20 alleged narcotics transporting vessels.

Trump is silent so far on Wiles’ Vanity Fair interviews

As of 10:45 a.m. in Washington, Trump had not weighed in on the explosive Vanity Fair piece featuring White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, even as West Wing figures defended her.

Wiles herself called the two-part magazine profile, which featured months of her candid interviews, a “hit piece.” She did not deny anything specific, including quotations attributed to her.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt followed with a defense, as did Russell Vought, the chief White House budget office who’s shaping Trump’s remake of the federal government.

Vought on social media called Wiles “an exceptional chief of staff” and said Trump’s West Wing through two presidencies has “never worked this well or been more oriented towards accomplishing what he wants to.”

In Vanity Fair, Wiles described Vought as a “right-wing absolute zealot,” while praising him and several other hardline Trump lieutenants.

White House chief of staff criticizes Bondi’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case

Susie Wiles sharply criticized Attorney General Pam Bondi’s handling of the Epstein case and the public’s expectations in the interview with Vanity Fair magazine that was released Tuesday.

Wiles specifically mentioned earlier in the year when Bondi distributed binders to a group of political commentators that included no new information about Epstein. Wiles also raised the issue of Bondi suggesting that a list of Epstein’s clients was on her desk and awaiting her review.

“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,” Wiles said of Bondi. “First she gave them binders full of nothingness. And then she said that the witness list, or the client list, was on her desk. There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn’t on her desk.”

After Vanity Fair published the interview, Wiles criticized it as a “disingenuously framed hit piece” on her, Trump, the White House staff and Cabinet. She did not deny any of the comments that were attributed to her.

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