Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing increasing bipartisan scrutiny on Capitol Hill after the Washington Post reported Friday that his initial order to “kill everybody” during a Sept. 2 attack on a suspected drug boat from Venezuela resulted in a second strike that may have violated U.S. and international law by taking out two survivors who were clinging to the ship’s wreckage.

President Trump defended Hegseth late Sunday, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that “Pete said he did not order the death of those two men” and “I believe him, 100 percent.” But Trump also made it clear that he would have opposed targeting survivors of the initial attack — an act that military experts and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have characterized as a possible war crime.

“No, I wouldn’t have wanted that, not a second strike,” the president said.

Meanwhile, Hegseth took to social media on Sunday evening to share a mock children’s book cover depicting Franklin the Turtle blasting “Narco Terrorists” out of the water with a rocket launcher.

“For your Christmas wish list…,” the defense secretary joked in his post.

The new questions surrounding the second strike — and Hegseth’s role in it — add another layer of controversy to the Trump administration’s lethal, months-long campaign of attacking suspected drug boats in the Caribbean, which have so far killed more than 80 people without a legal process.

Here’s everything you need to know to make sense of the situation.

What happened on Sept. 2?

Citing “two American officials familiar with the matter,” the Intercept first reported on Sept. 10 that “people on board the boat off the coast of Venezuela that the U.S.military destroyed last Tuesday were said to have survived an initial strike” — but “they were then killed shortly after in a follow-up attack.”

Friday’s story in the Washington Post — which was “based on interviews with and accounts from seven people with knowledge of the Sept. 2 strike and the overall operation” — confirmed the Intercept’s reporting and added new details about how Hegseth may have played a part in the incident.

Before the initial strike, the Post reported, “Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation.”

“The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

When the smoke cleared, however, a live drone feed showed “two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.” In order to “comply with Hegseth’s instructions,” the Special Operations commander overseeing the attack “ordered a second strike,” according to “two people familiar with the matter” — and “the two men were blown apart in the water.”

The commander in question, Adm. Frank Bradley, told his colleagues that the survivors were “still legitimate targets because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo,” according to the Post.

Citing “one person who watched the live feed,” the Post added that “if the video of the blast that killed the two survivors on Sept. 2 were made public, people would be horrified.”

What has Hegseth said about the incident?

Hegseth denounced the Post’s reporting, but he did not deny issuing an order to “kill everybody.”

“As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland,” Hegseth wrote Friday on X — before affirming that “these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes.’”

“Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization,” Hegseth added. “[Former President Joe] Biden coddled terrorists, we kill them.”

A few minutes later, Hegseth posted a single-sentence follow-up: “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.”

In his remarks on Sunday, Trump gave the impression that Hegseth had refuted giving the “kill everybody” order — and suggested that there may have been no second strike at all.

“I don’t know that that happened,” Trump said when asked whether a hypothetical second strike would be illegal. “And Pete said he did not want them — he didn’t even know what people were talking about. So, we’ll look at — we’ll look into it.”

“The first strike was very lethal, it was fine,” the president continued. “And if there were two people around —but Pete said that didn’t happen. I have great confidence in him.”

Asked to clarify the issue on Monday — “Does the administration deny that that second strike happened,” a reporter asked, “or did it happen and the administration denies that Secretary Hegseth gave the order?” — White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said “the latter” before reading a statement that seemed to lay responsibility on Bradley rather than Hegseth.

“President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have made it clear that presidentially designated narco-terrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting in accordance with the laws of war,” Leavitt said. “With respect to the strikes in question, on Sept. 2, Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Admiral Bradley 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.”

What have lawmakers and legal experts said about the incident?

Critics, lawmakers and military experts view the administration’s entire campaign in the Caribbean as a possible violation of international law.

In previous administrations, the Coast Guard would intercept boats and arrest drug smugglers — not kill them.

Trump’s legal rationale, which the administration has articulated in a series of recent letters to Congress, is that the drug cartels are “nonstate armed groups” whose actions “constitute an armed attack against the United States” — forcing the U.S. to fight back in a formal “armed conflict.”

In response, experts have argued that drug cartels are not engaged in “hostilities” against the U.S. — the legal standard for armed conflict — because selling a dangerous product is different from conducting an armed attack.

It is illegal for the military to deliberately target civilians who aren’t directly participating in hostilities — even suspected criminals.

“The notion that the United States — and this is what the administration says is their justification — is involved in an armed conflict with any drug dealers, any Venezuelan drug dealers, is ludicrous,” Rep. Jim Himes, a Democrat from Connecticut and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, recently told CBS. “It wouldn’t stand up in a single court of law.”

“This is not stretching the envelope,” Geoffrey Corn, a retired judge advocate general lawyer who was formerly the Army’s senior adviser for law-of-war issues, added in an interview with the New York Times. “This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart.”

Targeting people who can no longer fight — like survivors clinging to wreckage in open water — is considered an even clearer violation of the laws of armed conflict (regardless of whether they survived an attack that was intended to be “lethal”).

That “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” Todd Huntley,  a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign, told the Post.

On Sunday, Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska agreed, saying that if the Post’s reporting is true, then it reveals “a clear violation of the law of war.”

“When people want to surrender, you don’t kill them,” Bacon told ABC. “They have to pose an imminent threat. It’s hard to believe that two people on a raft, trying to survive, would pose an imminent threat.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, both Democrats, raised the possibility of a war crime as well.

Meanwhile, the top Republican and Democrat on the Armed Services committees in both the House and the Senate have vowed to conduct “vigorous oversight” into the matter.

“We take seriously the reports of follow-on strikes on boats alleged to be ferrying narcotics in the SOUTHCOM region and are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of the operation in question,” Reps. Mike Rogers, Republican of Alabama and the chair of the House committee, and Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington, said in a statement.

“The Committee has directed inquiries to the Department [of Defense],” added Sen. Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi and the Senate committee chair, and Sen. Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island.

Kelly, a member of the Armed Services committee himself, told NBC on Sunday that he and his colleagues will put officials “under oath” as part of their inquiry.

“We’re going to have an investigation,” Kelly said. “We’re going to have a public hearing. We’re going to put these folks under oath. And we’re going to find out what happened. And then, there needs to be accountability.”

According to the Post, Pentagon officials have not provided Congress with “any specific names of traffickers or syndicate leaders they have targeted … nor have they publicly released further information beyond surveillance videos of the strikes themselves.”

Video of the Sept. 2 attack did not show a second strike, and the administration has not fulfilled a bipartisan request from lawmakers to see unedited footage. But three people with knowledge of the situation told the Post that protocols were changed after the Sept. 2 strike to “emphasize rescuing suspected smugglers if they survived.”