Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Arizona, said on the Nov. 30 episode of "Meet the Press" that the Senate Armed Services will hold a public hearing on potentially illegal military orders issued by U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
"We're going to put these people under oath and we're going to find out what happened," Kelly said, referring to military members involved in a Sept. 2 strike ordered by Hegseth on survivors of an initial hit on a boat that the Trump administration claimed was carrying drug cargo, as reported by The Washington Post.
"People can tell the difference, should be able to tell the difference between something that is unlawful and something that is lawful," Kelly said. He added that he was concerned that orders handed down to troops would put them "in a tough place" and that they would later find out "they did something illegal," though the senator did not specify which orders would be illegal.
Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi, said in an Nov. 28 statement that the committee has directed inquiries to the defense department about the strikes, "and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances."
Wicker, along with Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the committee, have sent Hegseth multiple requests for basic information including legal justifications and intelligence underpinning individual strikes.
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DOD probably going to ignore Congress.