US lawmakers may withold Hegseth travel funds to force boat video release

WASHINGTON: US lawmakers may withhold a quarter of Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel budget if he does not provide unedited videos of military strikes on boats in the southern Caribbean and eastern Pacific, the latest effort to obtain more information about President Donald Trump’s campaign against Venezuela.

The Senate and House of Representatives Armed Services committees included the travel budget provision in the National Defence Authorization Act, or NDAA, a massive defence policy bill released on Sunday night and likely to become law by the end of the year.

The Department of Defence did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the provision.

Members of Congress, including some of Trump’s fellow Republicans, have been demanding more information for weeks about the administration’s plans for Venezuela.

Since early September, the U.S. has massed naval power near the South American nation and carried out at least 22 strikes against vessels in the southern Caribbean and Pacific.

The Trump administration has said this is a campaign against “narcoterrorists” and would stem the flow of illegal drugs into the United States.

The strikes have killed 87 people and raised concerns that Trump is conducting a prolonged military operation without congressional authorization, despite the U.S. Constitution’s stipulation that only Congress, not the president, can declare war.

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Legal experts also have said that killing dozens of people without providing proof that they were a threat may violate international law. Such concerns increased after it was revealed that the military fired multiple times on September 2 on the first boat hit in the campaign, killing survivors rather than rescuing them.

Hegseth defended that action in remarks on Saturday. He also said then that he had not yet decided whether to make the full video of the incident public, saying it was under review.

The NDAA provision says that only 75% of Hegseth’s travel budget can be available until the Pentagon submits to congressional defence committees any overdue quarterly reports regarding “execute orders” of the Department of Defence.

It also requires that the department provide the armed services committees unedited video of strikes conducted against designated terrorist organizations in the area of responsibility of the United States Southern Command, which includes the waters around Venezuela.

Trump administration officials briefed lawmakers on the September 2 strikes late last week. Senior Democrats who observed the briefing said they were troubled by the killing of survivors in distress, though some Republicans defended the strikes as legal.