Senate Pushes Forward With Boat Strike Probe As House Pulls Back

Top House Republicans say they’re done investigating the “double-tap” boat strikes. But the Senate won’t let the issue go.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) is still requesting the entire panel see the video of the military operation — in which two survivors of a missile strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat were killed in a follow-up attack. And Senate Democrats are pushing for its public release, beyond just the smattering of lawmakers who have seen it.

They’re also asking for legal justifications for the military operation and additional briefings on the broader plan in Venezuela.

That contrasts dramatically with the House, where a formal inquiry by the Armed Services Committee appears all but dead. The fight is emerging as a test of whether Congress will meaningfully check U.S. lethal operations under President Donald Trump — and whether information Democrats deem damaging to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Trump administration will ever be made public.

As committee chair, Wicker could press for DOD briefings, more legal documentation and even public hearings on the issue. He declined to go into specifics on his next steps, but said Thursday he would “listen to my colleagues.”

Committee ranking member Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said Wicker told him Pentagon officials have not yet answered “serious questions” about the strike.

The investigation appeared to be nearing an end this week when House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said in an interview that the video and classified briefings provided by the Pentagon convinced him the strike was lawful. “It’s done,” he said. I’ve got all the answers I needed.”

Democrats on his committee are pushing back on that assessment.

House Armed Services ranking member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) told reporters he still expects next week's bipartisan briefing with Adm. Mitch Bradley — the commander who ordered the Sept. 2 second missile strike — to go on as planned.

Smith, in an X post Thursday, said the investigation “is very far from over” and called on the administration to “release the video” to the public. He argued that “hundreds of questions” remain about the chain of command, the legality of the strike and the campaign overall.

“As the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, I'm going to keep pushing for a full investigation, but that full investigation starts with the public seeing the video,” he said. “They can judge. If they see that video, they're going to want a further investigation.”

The military’s strikes on the boat has sparked formal inquiries from Congress about the circumstances and legality of the attack, with some experts and Democrats saying that the killings could amount to a war crime.

Wicker and Reed issued a joint statement in late November calling for vigorous oversight to determine “the facts related to these circumstances.” Since then, Pentagon officials have briefed lawmakers on the event several times in classified settings.

And Senate Democrats are still pushing, arguing that the next step is bringing that video out of the back rooms and into public view.

Pentagon officials "have been bragging about and almost marketing the videos showing explosions on the boats, and now they're somehow saying, ‘but we can't show you this part of the video with the survivors,'" said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. "That doesn't pass anybody's smell test.”

Defense officials, at least for now, don’t have plans to release the footage. Trump has said he would be comfortable with making it public, but Hegseth said Saturday that doing so could compromise military methods and operations.

Language in the annual National Defense Authorization Act would withhold a quarter of Hegseth’s travel budget next year unless the video — and video of other boat strikes — is provided to Congress.

Connor O'Brien contributed to this report.