Bipartisan scrutiny of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s reported order to “kill everybody” aboard an alleged drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean grew Monday as the Trump administration worked to contain the fallout.

Lawmakers in both parties, including the Republican chairmen and the Democratic ranking members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, have vowed to investigate following a Washington Post article about Hegseth’s alleged order — marking a rare instance of GOP unease with the Trump administration.

The calls for accountability intensified Monday as lawmakers returned to Washington, D.C., from a one-week Thanksgiving break.

“There needs to be an investigation,” Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters Monday at a news conference intended to show resolve in the face of the Trump administration’s investigation into the senator. “We need to pull some of these members of DOD and the military into the Armed Services committees in the House and the Senate.”

In his own news conference Monday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said that he believes “there will be bipartisan investigations in both the House and in the Senate in order to determine whether war crimes were committed, and either U.S. law or international law or both, were violated.”

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer called for the Pentagon to disclose evidence of what transpired during the lethal strikes.

“What we need right now more than anything else is the truth and the facts, which is precisely what Secretary Hegseth has refused to give,” he said during a speech on the Senate floor. “There are tapes in the possession of the Department of Defense that would show exactly what happened during these military strikes.”

Those comments followed statements over the weekend from Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and ranking member Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and from House Armed Services Chairman Mike D. Rogers, R-Ala., and ranking member Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., that said their panels are investigating the allegations of a so-called double-tap strike.

The Washington Post first reported Friday that for the Sept. 2 strikes that kicked off the Trump administration’s military campaign against alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean, Hegseth verbally ordered the military to kill everyone on board the targeted boat.

When a surveillance drone spotted two survivors clinging to the boat’s wreckage after the first missile hit, the military launched a second strike in line with Hegseth’s order to leave no survivors, killing the two men, according to the Post.

Multiple strikes confirmed

On Monday, the White House confirmed the military conducted a second strike Sept. 2, but denied Hegseth ordered everyone killed.

U.S. Special Operations Command chief Adm. Frank Bradley ordered the second strike and “worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday.

Meanwhile, after the Armed Services committees announced their investigation, Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Dan Caine spoke with committee leadership, his office revealed Monday.

“The discussion centered on counter-narcoterrorism operations in the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility; addressing the intent and legality of missions to disrupt illicit trafficking networks which threaten the security and stability of the Western Hemisphere,” Caine’s office said in a statement. “During the call, the chairman reiterated his trust and confidence in the experienced commanders at every echelon and his pride in those serving in the Joint Force.”

Wicker told reporters Monday that he also spoke to Hegseth over the weekend in addition to Caine and that he expects to speak to Bradley too.

“We’re going to do a vigorous oversight,” Wicker said. “It’s a very serious charge, and we’ll find out if there’s anything to it.”

In addition to Wicker and Rogers, several other Republicans have expressed alarm about the reported double strike.

“Obviously, if that occurred, that would be very serious. And I agree that that would be an illegal act,” Rep. Michael R. Turner, R-Ohio, an Armed Services Committee member, said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., an Armed Services member and former Air Force officer, similarly said on Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that the report was a “big concern” and that he wanted to “get the facts.”

“I don’t think he would be foolish enough to make this decision to say, ‘kill everybody,’ ‘kill the survivors’ because that’s a clear violation of the law of war,” Bacon said.

The military’s own manual for the laws of war cites “orders to fire upon the shipwrecked” as an example of a “clearly illegal” order.

Dueling investigations

The Pentagon’s investigation into Kelly centers on a video he made with five other Democratic lawmakers with national security backgrounds reminding service members they have an obligation not to follow illegal orders.

Asked Monday if the alleged double strikes were the type of action he and the other Democrats were warning about, Kelly said the video was not prompted by the military campaign in the Caribbean but rather Hegseth and President Donald Trump’s history of disparaging military law.

“If what seems to happen actually happened, I’m really worried about our servicemembers,” Kelly said of the strikes. “I was talking about this from the beginning of this operation, that the thing that I am most concerned about is the very difficult situations that this secretary of Defense is going to put service members into, and it’s because this guy is so unqualified for the job.”

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(John T. Bennett, John M. Donnelly and Chris Johnson contributed to this report.)

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