The Trump administration has produced a classified legal opinion that justifies lethal strikes against a secret and expansive list of cartels and suspected drug traffickers, according to a report in CNN on Oct. 7. This opinion, produced by the Office of Legal Counsel, is so secret that it will not even share it with Congress. It reportedly argues that the President is allowed to authorize deadly force against a broad range of cartels because they pose an imminent threat to Americans, sources “familiar with the opinion,” said. The list of cartels goes beyond those the administration has publicly designated as terrorist organizations, they added.
Legal experts consulted by CNN called it significant, because it appears to justify an open-ended war against a secret list of groups, giving the President power to designate drug traffickers as enemy combatants and have them summarily killed without legal review. “If the OLC opinion authorizing strikes on cartels is as broad as it seems, it would mean DOJ has interpreted the president to have such extraordinary powers that he alone can decide to prosecute a war far broader than what Congress authorized after the attacks on 9/11,” said Sarah Harrison, a former associate general counsel at the Defense Department, who now works as a senior analyst at the Crisis Group. “By this logic, any small, medium or big group that is trafficking drugs into the U.S.—the administration could claim it amounts to an attack against the United States and respond with lethal force,” said Harrison, who had the outlines of the legal opinion described to her by CNN.
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment when asked by CNN about the OLC opinion. On Tuesday, Oct. 7, Attorney General Pam Bondi told lawmakers during a hearing that she wouldn’t discuss any opinion the DOJ may or may not have produced, when asked about the legality of the strikes against ships in the Caribbean. “I’m not going to discuss any legal advice that my department may, or may not, have given or issued at the direction of the president on this matter,” she told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
That assertion was given to Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, who told the Attorney General that he is “concerned with what the limiting principle is—whether the government could summarily kill people it just declares are cartel members as well as unlawful combatants inside the United States, or if they were American citizens.” He reminded her that as “the chief lawyer for our federal government, you have a unique responsibility to ensure maintenance of our constitutional standards,” and asked “how did you conclude that these strikes on ships or boats in the open ocean are legal?”
And don’t expect any pushback from military lawyers. “The way forward is just to eat it and put your head down and act in accordance with [Secretary of Defense] Hegseth’s new policies,” said one. “No JAG (judge advocate general) is trying to rock the boat or get noticed.” Hegseth, it will be recalled, fired the top JAG officers of the Army, Navy and Air Force early in his tenure.
