Lawmakers have taken a hard line against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, threatening to lock down a portion of his travel budget until he turns over unedited footage of U.S. military strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and copies of the orders behind the operations.
The provisions, tucked in the final text of the sweeping bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), land amid intensifying bipartisan scrutiny over a Sept. 2 operation off the coast of Venezuela, in which the military carried out a second strike on a suspected drug boat that killed two survivors.
They also come as Democrats sound the alarm on the administration’s overall strategy of sinking suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and as lawmakers express increasihttps://thehill.com/homenews/house/5641394-hegseth-boat-strikes-video-ndaa/ng misgivings about Hegseth’s leadership at the Pentagon.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who’s been critical of the September operation and sits on the House Armed Services Committee, told The Hill via text message that he supports the provision.
“It’s time to show Hegseth we are an independent branch,” he said.
Bacon has in recent days ramped up his criticism of Hegseth, telling Politico’s Dasha Burns on C-SPAN that “after ‘Signalgate,’ I think I’ve seen enough.”
He added that he thinks it was mainly leadership in the Senate and House Armed Services committees who pushed for the provision.
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