Hegseth Committed War Crime In Boat Strikes, Former Fox News Co

By Chris Spiker From Daily Voice

A former Fox News legal analyst said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth committed a war crime after two survivors were killed in a second airstrike on a suspected drug-trafficking boat.

Andrew Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court Judge from 1987 to 1995, made the comments on the right-wing TV network Newsmax on Tuesday, Dec. 2. Napolitano was a senior judicial analyst at Fox News for more than two decades, including while Hegseth co-hosted "Fox & Friends Weekend."

Hegseth faces widespread criticism for the airstrikes in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean, where more than 80 people have been killed and at least 22 boats destroyed. The Washington Post reported that Hegseth told the military to "kill everyone" aboard a Venezuelan boat off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago on Tuesday, Sept. 2.

After a first strike, Adm. Frank Bradley reportedly authorized a second one that killed two men floating on the boat's wreckage. The elite counterterror group known as SEAL Team Six, which carried out the attack, then struck the boat two more times to sink the debris, according to the Post.

Eleven people were killed in the strikes, which the Trump administration has defended. The White House said the operation was legal and claimed that the victims were drug traffickers.

Napolitano, now a Newsmax legal analyst, criticized his former co-worker and the Justice Department for not being transparent about the "double tap" strike.

"I wish the White House would reveal to us the laws on which the president is relying," Napolitano said. "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. 

"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 [to] be rescued, instead to be murdered. There's absolutely no legal basis for it."

Newsmax legal analyst Andrew Napolitano speaking at a February 2015 conference in Washington, DC.

Wikimedia Commons - Gage Skidmore

Napolitano said that "everyone along the line" in the two men's killing, from Hegseth and Bradley to "the people who actually pulled the trigger," should be prosecuted for war crimes.

"I don't know where this is going to go," he said. "Republicans in the Congress seem to be as exasperated by it as the Democrats are. I think it's getting beyond politics now. The killing is out of hand."

The Newark, NJ, native also rejected White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt's statement that the strikes were in "self-defense."

"They got two people in the ocean clinging to a boat to stay alive, and they're going to be killed for self-defense?" Napolitano asked rhetorically. "That doesn't make any sense."

During a Cabinet meeting, Hegseth said he didn't see any survivors after the first strike due to "the fog of war."

"The thing was on fire," he told reporters. "It was exploded in fire and smoke. You can’t see it. This is called the fog of war. This is what you in the press don't understand."

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks to soldiers at Yokota Air Base, Japan, on October 29, 2025.

Wikimedia Commons - Secretary of Defense

Critics have also blasted Hegseth's description of those killed in the series of attacks as "narcoterrorists." Hegseth even shared a meme of "Franklin the Turtle" firing a grenade launcher at boats, causing the children's book's publisher to denounce the image.

Napolitano also said "narcoterrorist" is a political term, not a legal definition of an enemy combatant.

"They're 1,500 miles from the United States in a speedboat with a 50-mile distance," he said. "It's inconceivable that it could reach the United States."

Trump signed an executive order in September to change the Department of Defense's name to "Department of War," but the rebranding requires congressional approval.