Ever since President Trump greenlit the Pentagon to conduct airstrikes on drug boats from Venezuela attempting to smuggle drugs into the United States, the mainstream media has spent the last several weeks wrestling with the legality of the strikes.

In a video uploaded to X recently by Rep Tim Burchett, the lawmaker from Tennessee confirmed the strikes are 100% legal.

Burchett came to the conclusion after being briefed about the legality of the strikes by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.

Watch Burchett explain below:

Now that strikes on the narco terrorists are being deemed as legal by top Trump officials, The New York Times reported that experts are now arguing about the legality of the oil tankers being seized:

President Trump’s recent actions against tankers near Venezuela, the dramatic seizure of a vessel called Skipper and the detention of another called Centuries, appear to bend international maritime laws and customs, legal experts say.

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Countries have authority to seize vessels in their territorial waters. But policing international waters can be difficult, which is why large numbers of vessels transport illicit or dubious cargo often with impunity. The United Nations has established rules for shipping under its Convention on the Law of the Sea. While the United States has adopted many of the rules in practice, it has not ratified the convention.

The Trump administration’s actions differ in crucial ways from the approach that other administrations, including Mr. Trump’s first one, took toward ships engaged in trade the government wanted to restrict. By moving so forcefully, legal experts say, the president may embolden other countries to use similar tactics when it suits them. If such seizures and detentions become more common, that could hurt the shipping industry and international trade.

Previously, the United States typically put pressure on foreign shipping companies to direct their vessels to a place where they would give up oil and other products targeted by the U.S. government. In 2020, the Trump administration used this approach to remove Iranian fuel from four Greek-owned tankers destined for Venezuela.

That method avoided the potentially provocative step of using the U.S. military to take over ships in international waters, which are supposed to be neutral.

“That’s what I think is novel about this,” said Francisco Rodríguez, a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a left-leaning research organization.

Now, some analysts fear that the recent seizure and detention will undermine the rules and customs that have for decades maintained order on the high seas.

Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a research institute that favors restraint in foreign policy, said other countries, particularly China, might conclude that they, too, could take similar steps.

“This would be a precedent that they could fall back on,” she said, “that they were only doing what the United States had indicated was legal.”

Take a look at the oil tanker being seized below:

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This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.
 

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