At a Justice Department conference in February, then-acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove told the department’s top drug prosecutors that the Trump administration wasn’t interested in interdicting suspected drug vessels at sea anymore. Instead, he said, the U.S. should “just sink the boats,” according to three people present for the speech.

At the time of Bove’s comments, Trump had only been back in office for a month. The White House had made clear that combatting drug cartels and transnational criminal gangs was a priority, but few could envision that six months later the U.S. would be blowing up suspected drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean.

Since the first deadly attack on what the government says was a narco-trafficking vessel off the Venezuelan coast on Sept. 2, the U.S. has conducted some 20 strikes in international waters, killing more than 75 people. The administration says the boats were carrying drugs and posed a direct threat to the United States, but it has not provided any public evidence to support those assertions.

  • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
    13·
    1 day ago

    Two other attendees said that at the time it was unclear to them whether Bove meant to sink the boats after seizing the drugs and arresting the crew — as the U.S. Coast Guard traditionally does — or sinking them with the crew and drugs still on board.

    “It seemed so outlandish I didn’t take it seriously. It just didn’t seem reasonable until they started blowing boats up, and then holy s—-, does this all go together?” said one former senior DOJ official who was in the room. “Now that you look back on it, I think you can infer he probably meant just sink the boats with the people on them.”

    Jesus fuckin christ, it is so frustrating how like 999/1000 times when one of their friends demonstrates obviously criminal intent right in front of them cops go dumb as pig shit and are like “When he said ‘let’s just kill them all’ I thought he was being metaphorical!”