The boat-strike lies are piling up. We're at 25, and counting.

The Trump administration's story about the boat strikes keeps shifting dramatically, exposing the seriousness of the coverup underway.

I woke up this morning prepared to write about something else. But I can’t. Not with the “boat strikes” story continuing to show how blatantly the Trump administration keeps lying to the public and the world about matters of life and death.

I’ve seen a number of commentators point out the litany of lies, evasions, and complete contradictions peddled by the White House and the Pentagon regarding these attacks against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. But no one has put it all together. So that’s what I’ve spent the past three hours doing.

If you don’t have time, just read the sentences in BOLD because this is basically how this story has played out over the past three months. And this story itself is one of the starkest demonstrations of how obvious the regime’s illegal conduct is — and how obvious their attempts to coverup it up are becoming.

1. A very dangerous boat is headed to America, they said.

On Sept. 2, President Trump announced that U.S. forces had “literally shot out a boat” from Venezuela, claiming the vessel was carrying drugs, bound for the United States, and crewed by 11 members of the Tren de Aragua gang. Early reports noted that officials provided no evidence the boat was actually headed for U.S. shores or posed any threat to Americans.

2. Okay, it isn’t headed to America. But the boat poses an imminent threat to the United States.

Within hours, Secretary of State Marco Rubio undercut Trump’s claim, telling reporters the drugs on board were “probably headed to Trinidad or some other country in the Caribbean,” not the United States. Despite that, Rubio and other officials insisted the vessel was an “immediate threat to the United States,” though no intelligence was ever produced to back an “imminent” threat.

3. What ‘imminent threat,’ you ask? Not your business.

News emerged that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel had issued a classified memo over the summer blessing the boat strikes. By keeping this OLC opinion secret, the administration shielded its exact targeting criteria (like any claim of “imminence”) from Congress and the public. Officers involved in the mission were reportedly instructed not to discuss the intelligence basis for the strike, and congressional staffers said the legal memo was essentially unavailable for review – leaving lawmakers in the dark on how the attack was justified.

4. But trust us, the people on board the vessels were “terrorists.”

From day one, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth branded the 11 crewmen as “narco-terrorists,” alleging they belonged to Tren de Aragua. In reality, neither the White House nor Pentagon presented evidence that these men met any legal definition of terrorists, which would require violent acts intended to coerce civilians. As one international law scholar observed, calling suspected traffickers “narco-terrorists” “does not transform them into lawful military targets.” Also, foreign officials claimed none of those killed were actually members of Tren de Aragua.

5. Alright, they were low-level drug dealers. But we’re also at war with them. So they’re battlefield “combatants,” too.

The administration began describing drug traffickers as combatants in an “armed conflict,” a legal fiction that experts resoundingly rejected. Congress has never authorized a war against cartels, and even Republican members of the Armed Services Committees said the White House provided zero intelligence that routine cocaine shipments constitute “hostilities” akin to war. In short, designating cartels as terrorist organizations did not magically make blowing up boats lawful, any more than calling something a “war” makes it one.

6. We watched it all unfold in real-time.

Hegseth told Fox & Friends on Sept. 3: “I watched it live. We knew exactly who was in that boat.” TIME reports this was false. Intelligence was fragmentary, and the internal legal memos — as described by lawmakers who later reviewed them — reportedly only authorized targeting boats, not individuals. Experts pointed out the obvious, that if Hegseth truly knew “exactly who they were,” the Pentagon would not have needed the later “sinking the vessel” justification.

7. The president himself ordered the strike.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking in Mexico City on Sept. 3, gave a triumphant account of the mission: “On the president’s orders, we blew it up — and it’ll happen again.” That directly portrayed the lethal strike as coming from Trump’s own directives. This public assertion (that Trump personally ordered the attack) stands in stark contrast to the president’s later claim that he “didn’t know anything” about a follow-up strike, and suggests Trump was initially eager to take credit for authorizing deadly force.

8. A second strike against survivors? Fake news! The reporting is a total fabrication.

When The Washington Post revealed on Nov. 28 that a second strike had occurred and that Hegseth had given a “kill them all” order, resulting in the deaths of survivors of the first strike when instead they should have been rescued because they were out of the fight. Hegseth blasted the story as “fake news” and “fabricated,” calling the allegations inflammatory propaganda. Notably, he did not refute any specific facts in the Post’s report; instead he doubled down on tough talk about killing “narco-terrorists,” while dismissing the investigative reporting wholesale as false.

9. It never happened.

Echoing that stance, Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell tweeted that: “This entire narrative [is] false,” flatly denying the reporting about the “follow-on” attack that took place. That blanket denial collapsed within days. By Dec. 1, the White House press secretary officially confirmed that yes, a second strike had occurred on Sept. 2, directly contradicting their own Pentagon spokesman and proving his emphatic previous statement misleading.

10. Okay, it might have happened, but we didn’t know it happened.

Caught off guard by the revelation, Trump claimed he personally was unaware: “I didn’t know there was a second strike.” He told reporters on Dec. 3 that Hegseth had assured him no explicit “kill order” was given, and said “he did not say that, and I believe him, 100 percent.” Multiple officials (speaking to TIME, the Post, and CNN) have directly contradicted this, recounting that Hegseth did issue a spoken directive to leave no survivors. Nonetheless, Trump maintained he “didn’t know anything about” the follow-up missile, distancing himself from a now-controversial action.

11. Fine. Maybe it shouldn’t have happened.

In the same breath, Trump went further, saying he “wouldn’t have wanted” a second strike at all. This was a stunning admission, given that for months the administration had celebrated how “lethal” and “kinetic” these drug-boat strikes were. Trump’s disavowal of the very escalation his team had touted appears aimed at insulating himself from what investigators now suggest may have been a war crime, i.e. the deliberate killing of shipwrecked survivors.

12. When we said we watched it ‘live,’ we meant that we left the meeting early and didn’t see illegal stuff.

By early December, Hegseth abruptly revised his story. He told reporters that yes, “I watched that first strike live,” but after that “I moved on to my next meeting” and didn’t stick around while the situation with survivors unfolded. Observers noted this conveniently places Hegseth out of the room during the moment the illegal second strike was ordered, a possible attempt to exonerate himself by saying he wasn’t there when things went wrong.

13. Forget the part about the president ordering it. Someone else ordered it, not the president or Hegseth.

Facing potential culpability, Hegseth and the White House pivoted to emphasize that Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley — the JSOC commander overseeing the mission — made the critical decisions, distancing themselves from the idea that Trump and Hegseth ordered the follow-on strikes. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that “Admiral Bradley… worked well within his authority” in directing the attack. Hegseth himself posted that he stood by Bradley and “the combat decisions he has made” on Sept. 2. This marked a 180-degree turn from earlier months, when Hegseth portrayed himself as the architect of the operation. Senator Rand Paul blasted the move, saying “they’re trying to pin the blame on somebody else.”

14. Look, if mistakes happened, it’s because of the ‘fog of war.’

Sitting next to Trump in a Cabinet meeting a day later, Hegseth sought to explain away the troubling follow-up strike by describing confusion in the moment. The initial blast caused “fire, smoke, you can’t see anything… This is called the fog of war,” he said, suggesting the operators might not have realized survivors were present. But Pentagon insiders refuted that narrative. According to The Washington Post, officials had a clear drone video feed for over an hour after the first strike, during which the two survivors became plainly visible clinging to debris. In other words, there was no “heat of battle” decision to launch a second strikes, but a carefully calculated one.

15. Actually, there were no mistakes. The second strike was perfect.

Despite Trump saying he wouldn’t have wanted a second strike and despite Hegseth’s haphazard “fog of war” excuse, the administration quickly reverted to defending it, as if the second strike had been correct all along and that they’d never distanced themselves. The White House insisted the follow-up strike was lawful and appropriate, with a spokesperson claiming the strikes was done to finish the job and eliminate the threat. These statements directly contradicted Trump’s professed reluctance, signaling that officials were closing ranks to justify the outcome as correct.

16. The survivors were ‘continuing their mission,’ so we had to kill them.

Then reports emerged with Pentagon sources claiming the two surviving crewmen (that Hegseth tried to imply they didn’t see) had actually been seen and were blown to bits because they were still “legitimate targets” who were trying to recover the drugs or escape. According the news outlets, DOD officials shifted to explaining that there were other boats nearby that could have picked the men up and that the men were believed to be attempting to recover the drugs from the boat to continue onward, a claim that was later called into question by the video itself.

17. They were still in the fight and trying to radio for backup.

Additionally, Pentagon talking points appeared to float the notion that the survivors might have been in contact with other cartel members in the area. They were said to be in search of — or with access to — communications equipment. This implied that U.S. forces struck to keep the men from radioing to the nearby boats or to other cartel members. But lawmakers who later viewed the actual footage debunked that, as discussed further below.

18. Actually, it was ‘self defense.’

When other legal justifications faltered, White House officials pivoted to claim the second strike was carried out in self-defense, suggesting that Americans or U.S. forces were somehow under direct and immediate threat from the drug boat and its wounded smugglers. Once again, no evidence was provided that any American personnel were in danger at any point. Indeed, the administration’s own description of the men as “narco-terrorists poisoning Americans” underscored that this was a preemptive drug interdiction, not a defensive firefight. What’s more, the administration admitted the U.S. struck from a distance with missiles, not in close quarters where U.S. forces were at risk.

19. Nevermind. We weren’t targeting the men at all. We were just trying to sink the boat.

Then the White House offered another explanation: the reason for the second strike was merely “to sink the vessel,” and NOT to kill the remaining men. Administration officials claimed the follow-up missile was launched to scuttle the damaged speedboat and remove a navigation hazard from the sea. This convenient narrative happens to align with the leaked Justice Department memo, which reportedly only authorizes destroying drug boats, not deliberately killing people. However, it doesn’t square with the reality witnessed on video. Pentagon and congressional observers saw that for over an hour the survivors were clearly alive on that wreckage before the “hazard” was eliminated.

20. Just kidding. We were targeting the men.

In a whiplash-inducing reversal, Trump again toughened his tone, making his team’s evasion about sinking the boat look like an obvious lie. He defended the outcome, saying “I support the decision to… knock out whoever is piloting those boats. Most of them are gone. But whoever’s piloting those boats, they’re guilty.” This statement — effectively endorsing the extrajudicial killing of boat operators — directly contradicts his own prior remark that “I wouldn’t have wanted” a second strike. It also flies in the face of the OLC’s legal cover story (that only vessels are targeted).

21. By ‘continuing the mission’ and ‘trying to radio for backup,’ what we really meant is the men were clinging to the boat for dear life.

Members of Congress who saw the drone footage have described a scene completely at odds with the Pentagon’s early justifications. Far from engaging in hostilities, the survivors were “clearly incapacitated,” with no weapons and no means of communication — “two individuals in clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel,” as one lawmaker recounted. TIME reports the men were simply holding onto smoldering wreckage in a desperate attempt to stay alive, not continuing any “mission.”

22. Look, we’re in a war, okay? Drug couriers are ‘terrorists’ at war with the U.S.

Amidst the fallout, White House allies have gone back to suggesting the details don’t matter because this is an “armed conflict” — a declared war against the traffickers. This position has been widely rejected by legal scholars and national security law experts. Under international law, an armed conflict exists only against organized armed groups engaged in sustained attacks, which simply doesn’t describe cocaine smugglers on speedboats. Congress has authorized no war on cartels, and trafficking drugs on the high seas is plainly a law-enforcement matter, not a battlefield scenario.

23. All of these boaters are lawful military targets because we say they are.

Hegseth asserted on Sept. 4 that the Pentagon had “the absolute and complete authority” to blow drug vessels out of the water, equating narcotics smuggling with a combat operation. He even described the importation of drugs as an “assault on the American people,” implying the smugglers could be treated like enemy combatants. But this description is categorically false, calling into question ALL of the strikes, not just the one on September 2. Drug trafficking is a serious crime, but it is not an act of war, and cartel members are not lawful military targets by default. Simply put, being a gang member or drug courier does not confer combatant status. Hegseth’s claim of sweeping authority to kill smugglers has no basis in U.S. law or the laws of war.

24. But — sorry — again to be clear, we’re not targeting the boaters… just the boats… but if we kill the boaters, that’s okay too.

The administration has since shared the Justice Department memo with more Members of Congress in response to their concerns, which only showed how their rhetoric is still at odds. On one hand, officials parroted the memo’s careful wording that they are only targeting vessels, as if the strikes are meant to sink empty boats. On the other hand, they celebrated having killed dozens of “narco-terrorists.” This double-talk is a transparent attempt to fit the facts to the legal memo after the fact. The White House oscillates between claiming people weren’t the aim (to avoid admitting an unlawful intent) and bragging that those people were rightly blown up.

25. Just trust us. This is lawful.

Despite the administration’s insistence, more and more independent national security lawyers who have examined the strikes have concluded the opposite. Experts — including conservative voices — say the Sept. 2 attack (and the broader boat-bombing campaign) violates U.S. law and customary international law, and could even expose U.S. personnel to future legal action. One former Pentagon lawyer described the legal rationale as so broad “it would not constrain any use of force anywhere in the world.” Even Republican Senator Rand Paul, after watching the explanations mutate, remarked that the stories “don’t add up.” He slammed Hegseth’s shifting narrative and suggested the Defense Secretary was either “lying to us… or he’s incompetent” in handling the incident.

* * *

I’ll let you reach your own conclusions, friends. But under any president — of any political party — these series of shifting narratives were scream coverup, law-breaking, and corruption. While I can’t tell you for sure who is guilty of what, I can tell you there’s no way they’ll be able to run away from it now.

Your friend, in defiance,

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