“Trump Has Appointed Himself, Judge, Jury, and Executioner” 

In September The Intercept broke the story of the U S military ordering an additional strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean Since then U S boat strikes have expanded to the Pacific Ocean The Intercept has documented strikes as of early December that have killed at least people Alejandro Carranza Medina a Colombian national was one of the dozens of people killed in these strikes His family says he was just out fishing for marlin and tuna when U S forces attacked his boat on September On behalf of Medina s family attorney Dan Kovalik has filed a formal complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights We re bringing a petition alleging that the U S violated the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man in particular the right to life the right to due process the right to trial and we re seeking compensation from the United States for the family of Alejandro Carranza as well as injunctive relief asking that the U S stop these bombings Kovalik narrated The Intercept In the midst of this massive embarrassment the so-called Department of War is cracking down on journalists ability to cover U S military actions Back in October Secretary Pete Hegseth introduced major new restrictions on reporters covering the Pentagon In order to maintain press credentials to enter the Pentagon journalists would have to sign a -page pledge committing to the new rules limiting press corps reporting to explicitly authorized information including a promise to not gather or seek information the department has not officially published This week on The Intercept Briefing host Jessica Washington speaks to Kovalik about Medina s circumstance Intercept senior reporter Nick Turse and Gregg Leslie executive director of the First Amendment Clinic at Arizona State University Law also join Washington to discuss the strikes off the coast of Latin America subsequent attacks on shipwrecked survivors and the administration s response to reporting on U S forces and the Pentagon Related Pentagon Proposes It Absolutely Knows Who It Killed in Boat Strikes Prove It Lawmaker Says Americans should be very concerned because President Trump has appointed himself judge jury and executioner says Turse of the administration s justification for targeting individuals it alleges to be in a non-international armed conflict with He has a secret list of terrorist groups He decided they re at war with America He decides if you re a member of that group if he says that you are he says he has the right to kill you Leslie raised concerns about the administration s attempts to erase press freedoms It s just that fundamental issue of who gets to cover the establishment Is it only government-sanctioned information that gets out to the people or is it people working on behalf of the United States society who get to really hold people to account and dive deep for greater information And all of that is being compromised if there s an administration that says We get to absolutely put a chokehold on any information that we don t want to be disclosed says Leslie You just don t have a free press if you have to pledge that you re not going to give away information just because it hasn t been cleared It just shouldn t work that way and it hasn t worked that way And it s frightening that we ve gotten an administration trying to make that the norm What s to stop a lawless president from killing people in America that he deems to be domestic terrorists With a president who regularly targets journalists and critics Turse adds What s to stop a lawless president from killing people in America that he deems to be domestic terrorists These boat strikes the murders of people convicted of no crimes if they become accepted as normal There s really nothing to stop the president from launching such attacks within the United States Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts Spotify or wherever you listen Read Our Complete Coverage License to Kill Transcript Jessica Washington Welcome to The Intercept Briefing I m Jessica Washington Back in September President Donald Trump made community that he and his administration had ordered a military strike on a boat in the Caribbean On social media Trump claimed that members of Tren de Aragua a Venezuelan gang were transporting drugs on the vessel Reporter And also the vote that you mentioned the day before where people were killed What was unveiled on that boat and why were the men killed instead of taken into custody Donald Trump On the boat you had massive amounts of drugs We have tapes of them speaking There was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people And everybody fully understands that In fact you see it You see the bags of drugs all over the boat and they were hit Obviously they won t be doing it again JW Since then U S strikes targeting boats allegedly carrying drugs to the U S have expanded to the Pacific Ocean The Intercept has counted strikes as of early December Those strikes have killed at least people Members of Congress from both parties say these strikes are nothing short of extrajudicial killings targeting civilians that do not pose an eminent threat to the U S The administration has yet to provide the community any evidence that these boats are carrying drugs or affiliated with drug cartels which the administration has also designated as narco-terrorists The family of one of those casualties Alejandro Carranza Medina a Colombian national says he was out fishing for marlin and tuna when a targeted strike on September killed him Attorney Daniel Kovalik has filed a human rights petition on behalf of his family Kovalik filed the petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights And he joins me now Daniel Kovalik welcome to The Intercept Briefing Daniel Kovalik Thank you Jessica Thanks for having me JW Daniel I want to start with you telling us a little bit about Alejandro Who was he DK He was a fisherman He was a father of four children one adult child three minor children He was married though he was separated at the time of his death He was close to his parents as well And he was poor They were a poor family and they relied on Alejandro to make ends meet through fishing He was also by the way a member of the Fisherman s Association in Santa Marta JW What is known about the strike that killed Mr Medina DK It s as much as we know about any of these strikes he was out fishing for marlin and tuna and his boat was the victim of what the U S is calling a kinetic strike which I think essentially means it was bombed and virtually obliterated The president of the Fishermen s Association recognized from the video that it was one of their fishermen association boats that Alejandro would normally use And of discipline Alejandro never came back That s what we know about it JW What is the complaint that you re making DK First of all we re bringing it against the United States as a state party to the organization of American States They are subject to the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights which is a body of the organization of American states And we re bringing a petition alleging that the U S violated the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man in particular the right to life the right to due process the right to trial and we re seeking compensation from the United States for the family of Alejandro Carranza as well as injunctive relief asking that the U S stop these bombings JW Can you tell me a little bit more about why you filed the petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and what your goal is here DK Yes so we felt that at least at the moment it was the best place to get jurisdiction over the United States because the U S is a party to the American declaration which by the way I just note is the oldest human rights instrument in the world It was signed in Bogota in It s also known as the Bogota Declaration And the U S as I reported a petition can be brought against the U S as a country before the Inter-American Commission To get compensation from the United States and the U S Court is very complicated because of sovereign immunity issues But the U S in this affair where the Inter-American Commission has agreed to essentially to waive those immunity issues So we felt it was a good venue for us again and we will be seeking compensation as I mentioned and a finding that these killings are unlawful and we hope that does play a role in ending these killings That s really a big goal And by the way we have not foreclosed the possibility of a court development We re looking into that right now as well JW Can you tell us about the process of bringing the petition to the human rights commission and what s coming down the pipeline in this scenario DK Yeah it ll be slow going for sure But the commission will do their own research of the suggests which will include sending questions and queries to me for example about our development but also to the United States They will ask the U S to respond to the petition to give their petition on jurisdiction and on the merits to maybe give evidence And so that those will be the next attempts is an analysis of what happened here and why JW Switching gears a bit You were also hired by Colombian President Gustavo Petro who the Trump administration has sanctioned and accused of playing a role in the global illicit drug exchange What can you tell us about Petro s Scenario DK Yeah first of all these insists of him trafficking the drugs are wholly untrue I ve known Gustavo Petro for years He s been a fighter of the drug cartels through his whole political career including when he was a senator in Colombia and at present he s also very functioning in fighting the drug transaction He s bombed a number of drug labs He has engaged in a lot of crop substitution programs encouraging farmers to go from growing coca the raw material for cocaine to growing other agricultural products like food items and that s been very achieving He s reclaimed a lot of land from coca production to again legitimate crop production He s also engaged in interception of drug boats in the Caribbean but he doesn t kill people He arrests people He s confiscated a lot of money which he s genuinely donated to Gaza So this is not a drug trafficker but this is very politically motivated It s very clear given the timing of all this that the U S put him on the OFAC list to punish him For one being an advocate a very outspoken advocate of Palestine And for making it clear that he was against these bombings of the boats and also opposed to any intervention in Venezuela That s what this OFAC list designation is really about JW Petro has also spoken about making cocaine legal Can you speak to that at all DK Yeah there s a lot of discussion about legalizing all drugs You see in the U S that we now have virtually legalized marijuana in majority places And I think that makes a lot of sense The Rand Corporation did a examination years ago that indicated it s times more effective to deal with drug addiction at home than to try to destroy drugs at their source like in Colombia The obstacle isn t the drugs per se but in the incident of the United States you have people who feel they need to be sedated preponderance of the time And instead of dealing with those underlying problems of program all the social programs we have that might alleviate that need and desire are being cut right So there s a lot of discussion about legalizing drugs so they could be better regulated and frankly so they could be taxed so the sale could be taxed You could gain revenue from those again to deal with drug addiction and other social problems JW Turning back to Mr Medina s circumstance I longed to see if you had any final thoughts that you yearned to share DK Just that I ve been solicited by a minimal journalists do you think he was innocent Related Venezuela Boat Crews Targeted by Trump Are Low-Level Pawns in the Drug Tournament And do you know what my response is that I know that all of these people killed were innocent You know why Because where I come from you re innocent until proven guilty None of these people were proven guilty in a court of law and none of them were even charged as far as I know by the U S for a crime And by the way even if they had been arrested charged tried convicted even in a death penalty state they wouldn t get the death penalty because drug trafficking is not a capital crime So there s nothing lawful about these There s no justification for what the U S is doing And again another journalist from CNN authentically revealed how are you going to prove that Alejandro was innocent Again I don t have to prove he s innocent It s the U S who had to prove he was guilty before meeting out punishment to him and they never did So those are the things I d like people to keep in mind The other thing is if the U S can get away with this if they can just murder people and that s what it is murder people based on mere charges then none of us are safe There s no difference between what they re doing in the Caribbean than if a cop went up to a guy on the street in America in Chicago for example and announced Oh I think you re dealing in drugs And he shot the guy in the head There s no difference And that s not a world we want to live in And we re starting to live in that world with the ICE detentions So we re fighting not only against specifically these killings or specifically for these families we re fighting for the rule of law that protects all of us and people should welcome that no matter how they view the drug issue JW Thank you Dan for bringing your insights about this episode and about what happened to Alejandro to our audience And thank you for taking the time to speak with me on the Intercept Briefing DK Thank you I m a big fan of The Intercept Backing The Intercept people Thank you very much Appreciate you JW Thank you Break JW Intercept Senior Reporter Nick Turse broke the story of the U S military launching a subsequent attack on survivors of a strike in the Caribbean Sea back in September According to reporting from Turse the survivors clung to the wreckage of the boat for roughly minutes before being killed These strikes have horrified lawmakers on both sides of the aisles including Republican Senator Rand Paul who expressed his disgust with the attacks during a Fox Business Interview Rand Paul It has not been the history of the United States to kill people who are out of combat Even if there is a war which the majority of us dispute that a bunch of people who are unarmed allegedly running drugs is a war We still don t kill people when they re incapacitated People floating around in the water clinging to the wreckage of a ship are not in combat under any definition JW Since the Trump administration launched its campaign targeting alleged narco-terrorists off the coast of Latin America it has been laying the ground-work for a U S invasion of Venezuela without even the consent of Congress or again providing evidence for its contends Related Boat Strike Survivors Clung to Wreckage for Selected Minutes Before U S Military Killed Them Congress is now demanding the administration release unedited videos of the strikes to lawmakers or they will withhold a quarter of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth s progress budget And against this veil of secrecy and war crime accusations the Pentagon has effectively replaced its seasoned press corps with a new crop of right-wing influencers including Laura Loomer James O Keefe and Matt Gaetz who claim to be covering the military but have been accused of acting as a propaganda arm instead of a press corps Joining us now to discuss the boat strikes and the Trump administration s attempts to eliminate critical coverage are Intercept Senior Reporter Nick Turse and Gregg Leslie executive director of the First Amendment Clinic at the Sandra Day O Connor College of Law at Arizona State University Nick Gregg Welcome to the show Nick Turse Thanks so much for having me Gregg Leslie Thanks JW Nick to start can you tell us about this first strike and why it matters that the United States launched an additional strike against the survivors NT Sure This initial attack took place in the Caribbean on September The United States attacked what they say are narco-terrorists what s come to be known as a drug boat They fired a missile at this boat The boat was reduced to wreckage Basically all that was left was a portion of the hull floating upside down and there were two survivors of the initial attack They climbed aboard that piece of wreckage and they sat there for roughly minutes while they were under U S video surveillance At the end of that minutes the United States fired another missile which killed those two survivors And then in quick succession they fired two more missiles in order to sink that last remnant of the vessel There are a number of reasons why I think it s notable that there was a follow-up strike here First off there s a lie by omission behind all of this and by extension a Pentagon coverup The Intercept as you say was the first outlet to reveal that this double tap strike took place And when we went to the Pentagon about it at the time all we got was an anodyne response So it s notable that they demanded to keep it secret in the first place We of subject went ahead and published but it took the Washington Post the CNN the New York Times months to catch up The question becomes why did the Pentagon want to keep it under wraps and why didn t they admit this when we first demanded The Department of War says the U S military is in a non-international armed conflict with plus gangs and cartels whose identities it s keeping secret And if this is true if we re engaged in particular sort of secret quasi war then a double tap strike to kill survivors is illegal under international law In fact the Pentagon s own Law of War manual is clear on attacking defenseless people combatants that are incapacitated by wounds sickness or very specifically shipwreck are considered Hors de combat the French term for those out of combat or those out of the fight At that point combatants have become protected persons They re non-combatants at that point so that s another reason why this matters There s also something viscerally distasteful about killing people clinging to wreckage It s a summary execution of wounded helpless people What s worse is that the U S had the survivors under surveillance for minutes and only then executed them But I also want to be clear that while the optics of this are especially horrendous experts say that those follow up strikes aren t materially different than the other drug boat attacks There have been attacks thus far by the U S on boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific The U S has killed people And experts on the laws of war former Pentagon lawyers State Department lawyers who are experts say that those are extrajudicial killings or put another way murders There s no war there s no actual armed conflict despite what the Trump administration suggests So these aren t crimes of war They can t be there s no war They re just murders The president and the military are conducting murders and in my book that s what matters greater part JW So the administration has tried to justify these strikes by claiming the men that were killed were narco terrorists Since your initial reporting has the White House or the Pentagon provided any credible evidence that the people killed were drug traffickers NT Yeah they ve never provided the masses with any evidence of this You ll recall there was a strike on a semi-submersible craft that left two survivors that the military did not execute They didn t arrest them they didn t prosecute them They instead repatriated them to their countries of origin after blowing up their boat and sinking it And the question is why And I think it s because they didn t have viable evidence to prosecute What they have when they target these boats is advanced intelligence signals intelligence maybe human intelligence that is informants but they re not going to disclose those sources and methods in court so they don t have a court episode Now I don t know if everyone on board these boats are drug facilitators It s a question of what that even means Is a poor fisherman moving cargo that Americans want love and pay big money for a smuggler I don t know but I do believe these boats are transporting drugs That s what my sources say But that s beyond the point because these aren t capital offenses If the offenders were arrested tried or convicted they d get eight or years in prison They wouldn t face a death penalty Much less be convicted or executed Even more of a farce is the legal theory that s been advanced in a still classified Justice Department finding And it differs from particular of what President Trump and the Pentagon has mentioned in community statements about these killings of supposed narco terrorists This classified finding says that the targets of the attacks are not the supposed narco traffickers The people on board are in bloodless military speak collateral damage The administration indicates that the narcotics on the boats are the lawful military targets because their cargo generates revenue for the cartels which the Trump administration indicates they re at war with And the cartels could theoretically sell the drugs take the money and buy arms to engage in this non-existent war with America So it s a farce based on a fiction JW Nick you touched on this a little bit but why should people in the United States care about the legality of these strikes Are there implications for how the ruling body could engage with people it considers even domestic adversaries NT Yeah I think Americans should be very concerned because President Trump has appointed himself judge jury and executioner He has a secret list of terrorist groups He decided they re at war with America He decides if you re a member of that group if he says that you are he says he has the right to kill you And Donald Trump doesn t just have a list of foreign groups either under National Safety Presidential Memorandum seven the shorthand is NSPM- which he issued this fall he has a secret list of domestic terror groups or it s being compiled as we speak I think So what s to stop a lawless president from killing people in America that he deems to be domestic terrorists If he s doing this close to home in the Caribbean or the Pacific It s the illegal use of lethal force that should worry Americans These boat strikes the murders of people convicted of no crimes if they become accepted as normal There s really nothing to stop the president from launching such attacks within the United States JW Yeah that s really terrifying Nick and we appreciate you explaining to us what this expanded scope could mean And Gregg I want to pivot a little bit In the midst of everything that we re discussing here the Pentagon has effectively replaced its original press core with a group of right-wing influencers Gregg does that make uncovering the truth here more arduous GL Yeah it perpetually does and we see this from a lot of administrations to different degrees but they all know that controlling the information can get them what they want in the short term So it s a reflexive reaction that almost constantly backfires because people know when they re being lied to or when they re having information withheld from them So what we re seeing at the Pentagon where yeah amateurs are basically the ones reporting to us now it doesn t go without notice so it s not a good method It s a blatant blatantly unconstitutional denial of rights They re indeed keeping people out of covering the Pentagon for the American people because they won t sign a pledge restricting what they can account on I think it s an overwhelmingly improper way to handle a regime JW Gregg I want to push a little bit and ask we ve obviously seen reporters outside of the building break stories Nick is one example but there are countless others Does it matter for the Pentagon Press Corps to authentically be inside of the Pentagon GL I think it does and it s not just the Pentagon I ve seen this at other agencies too where the U S cabinet has an incredible array of experts on every topic and people who are fundamentally involved in the controversies that we want to know more about And any official channel of communication never really tells the full story There s perpetually somebody who wants to limit that flow of information So you can reliably get better information if you know who the people are behind the scenes And there s nothing nefarious or wrong with that You just get better information to tell the American people how their governing body is operating So that s the way it should work You don t sit there and wait for press briefings You go out and find the information and you can do that better if you re in the building JW Yeah Nick I want to get your thoughts on this Does it matter to be in the Pentagon NT You know it might seem odd coming from someone who s covered national safety for certain odd years but never shared from the Pentagon But I also think that physical access to the building matters Maybe I should back up I never liked the idea of reporters having office space in the Pentagon I never really thought that reporters should be sharing the same facility But I firmly believe that reporters should have access to that military facility and every other one by the same token And I ve been known to grumble various about mainstream defense reporters from major outlets sometimes being too chummy with Pentagon sources and laundering too multiple Pentagon talking points also failing to push back or call out Pentagon lies But they also get information and tips that you sometimes just will not get if you re an adversarial reporter outside of the building I ve inevitably thought that there were better strategies for folks on the outside and the inside to work together to share information Sometimes that one or the other couldn t use for whatever reason But I still believe that even failing that there are people inside the building who can get scoops that I and other reporters outside just can t Being in the building can help that it can help in building rapport I d like to see them get back inside the building But I also think that maybe this healing by the Department of War will in the long run lead to less reliance on official leaks and maybe finding more dissenters inside the building JW Gregg I want to go back a second and ask you to talk a little bit more about the pledge Can you explain for our listeners what the pledge was that outlets were being requested to sign in order to have permission to be in the Pentagon GL It s not a simple answer to that because it was a massive document they were expected to go through and the big issue was they couldn t print anything that wasn t officially given to them or officially cleared through Pentagon officers And you would have to write in a pledge that I understand that I m in violation of the law if I print anything that comes from somebody that hasn t been somebody gives me information that hasn t been officially cleared That s just such an outrageous comment It s not just saying you can t talk to people you can t go outside of this office but it s saying you have to agree that you will only print authorized officially distributed information and that s just not how journalism works or should work JW Outside of the boat strikes outside of the Pentagon Gregg what is the dangerous precedent that s being set by replacing the Pentagon Press Corps GL I think it s just that fundamental issue of who gets to cover the administration Is it only government-sanctioned information that gets out to the people or is it people working on behalf of the United States residents who get to really hold people to account and dive deep for greater information And all of that is being compromised if there s an administration that says We get to fully put a choke-hold on any information that we don t want to be distributed That is not in any way consistent with the American tradition and it just flies in the face of our well-established preference for a free press You just don t have a free press if you have to pledge that you re not going to give away information just because it hasn t been cleared It just shouldn t work that way and it hasn t worked that way And it s frightening that we ve gotten an administration trying to make that the norm JW Nick do you have any final thoughts NT Since the dawn of the Republic the United States military has been killing civilians and they ve been getting away with it Native Americans in the so-called Indian Wars Filipinos at the turn of the th century Japanese during World War II Koreans Vietnamese Laotians Cambodians And for the last -plus years Republican and Democratic administrations pioneered lawless killings in the back lands of the planet during the forever wars in Afghanistan Somalia Yemen and on and on The details of these wars were kept secret Civilian casualties were covered up And now this new extension of the war on terror melded with the war on drugs has come to our doorstep We have bogus terrorist designations that are being used to murder people in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific Ocean and it could soon occur within the United States The president has been killing people using the most of specious legal reasoning imaginable And it makes a classic war on terror as unlawful and murders as it was look almost reasonable by comparison So I think Americans should be demanding answers and speaking out about a secret enemy s list that s being used to excuse summary executions or to put it plainly murder And a domestic enemies list that the White House and the Justice Department just refused to say anything about JW Nick we appreciate your thoughtful analysis And Gregg do you have any final thoughts GL Yeah I think every limited years something comes along that reminds us that we need a free press If things are going too well people take a free press for a given They think of class we re able to have reporters do what they want So in a sense the bad news can lead to a good effect We know that since the time of James Madison when he explained popular executive without popular knowledge is a tragedy or a farce or perhaps both Right from the start we knew that kind of information has to reach the people to have a meaningful democracy And as a media lawyer people get tired of me and other media lawyers saying this kind of access is fundamentally pivotal to democracy as if we re saying every situation like this is going to destroy democracy But in the big picture they will When this keeps happening and if this becomes an official procedures it fundamentally threatens how democracy works And so I don t think we re ever going to overstate the situation here Something like this where you re certainly removing reporters from the Pentagon just truly interferes with how the people of the United States learn about what their regime is up to JW We re going to leave it there But thank you both so much for joining me on the Intercept Briefing GL Thanks for having me NT Thanks very much JW On Wednesday the United States intercepted and seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela President Trump bragged about the move claiming the tanker was the largest one ever seized It was a shocking escalation in the United States aggression toward the country as Trump increases pressure on Venezuelan President Nicol s Maduro Follow the Intercept for more reporting on this progressing story That does it for this episode This episode was produced by Laura Flynn Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief Maia Hibbett is our managing editor Chelsey B Coombs is our social and video producer Desiree Adib is our booking producer Fei Liu is our product and design manager Nara Shin is our copy editor Will Stanton mixed our show Legal review by David Bralow Slip Stream provided our theme music If you want to backing our work you can go to theintercept com join Your donation no matter the amount makes a real difference If you haven t already please subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts And leave us a rating or a review it helps other listeners to find us If you want to send us a message email us at podcasts theintercept com Until next time I m Jessica Washington The post Trump Has Appointed Himself Judge Jury and Executioner appeared first on The Intercept