Transcript: Hegseth Case on Strike Collapsing as Damning New Leaks Hit

Bridgeman: Well, the thing to keep in mind here is that there’s absolutely nothing, no set of facts, right, that you could look at that would make these individuals in the fight, right? The fact of radioing for help, for rescue—that certainly doesn’t make a shipwrecked survivor of an attack on their boat “in the fight,” right? The idea that there might have been cocaine in the water—which, by the way, is contradicted by others who saw the video—that certainly wouldn’t make these survivors “in the fight” if there were still packages of cocaine bobbing around in the water. So there’s nothing that they could have been looking for, right, given there’s not even an allegation that these individuals were armed in the first place that could have made it lawful to presume they were still in the fight based on what was being seen on that feed.

Sargent: Well, now there’s the CNN report that Admiral Bradley, who oversaw the operation, told lawmakers in a briefing that this boat was linking up to another vessel headed for Suriname, a small country east of Venezuela. Then, amazingly, the admiral said that the larger vessel could still possibly have gone on to the United States. Tess, again, it’s these same words: “could,” “maybe,” “possibly.” They had no solid evidence of any kind that these men were still in any fight or that the drugs were still on the boat or that the drugs were headed for the U.S. Now, again, putting aside the fact that the entire thing is illegal, this specific case is in total collapse now, no?

Bridgeman: It is, and you know, again, within the paradigm that the law of armed conflict somehow magically applies to this purported criminal activity. What we’re looking at here might be a kind of legal theory that essentially holds that things being sold to finance a war effort are themselves targetable. And that’s known as war-sustaining objects.