WASH­ING­TON (AP) — The White House said yes­ter­day that a Navy ad­mi­ral act­ed “with­in his au­thor­i­ty and the law” when he or­dered a sec­ond, fol­low-up strike on an al­leged drug boat in the Caribbean Sea in a Sep­tem­ber US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion that has come un­der bi­par­ti­san scruti­ny.

White House press sec­re­tary Karo­line Leav­itt of­fered the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the Sep­tem­ber 2 strike, af­ter law­mak­ers from both par­ties on Sun­day an­nounced sup­port for con­gres­sion­al re­views of US mil­i­tary strikes against ves­sels sus­pect­ed of smug­gling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and east­ern Pa­cif­ic Ocean.

The law­mak­ers cit­ed a pub­lished re­port that De­fense Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth is­sued a ver­bal or­der for a sec­ond strike that killed sur­vivors on the boat in that Sep­tem­ber in­ci­dent.

Leav­itt, in her com­ments to re­porters yes­ter­day, did not dis­pute a Wash­ing­ton Post re­port that there were sur­vivors af­ter the ini­tial strike in the in­ci­dent. Her ex­pla­na­tion came af­ter Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, a day ear­li­er, said he “wouldn’t have want­ed that—not a sec­ond strike” when asked about the in­ci­dent.

“Sec­re­tary Hegseth au­tho­rised Ad­mi­ral Bradley to con­duct these ki­net­ic strikes,” said Leav­itt, re­fer­ring to US Navy Vice Ad­mi­ral Frank Bradley, who at the time was the com­man­der of Joint Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Com­mand.

“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.”

The law­mak­ers said they did not know whether last week’s Post re­port was true, and some Re­pub­li­cans were scep­ti­cal. Still, they said the re­ports of at­tack­ing sur­vivors of an ini­tial mis­sile strike posed se­ri­ous le­gal con­cerns and mer­it­ed fur­ther scruti­ny.

Trump on Sun­day vig­or­ous­ly de­fend­ed Hegseth.

“Pe­te said he did not or­der the death of those two men,” Trump said.

He added, “And I be­lieve him.”

Leav­itt said Hegseth has spo­ken with mem­bers of Con­gress who may have ex­pressed some con­cerns about the re­ports over the week­end.

Gen Dan Caine, chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, al­so spoke over the week­end with the four bi­par­ti­san law­mak­ers lead­ing the Sen­ate and House Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tees, in which he re­it­er­at­ed “his trust and con­fi­dence in the ex­pe­ri­enced com­man­ders at every ech­e­lon,” Caine’s of­fice said in a state­ment.

The state­ment added that the call fo­cused on “ad­dress­ing the in­tent and le­gal­i­ty of mis­sions to dis­rupt il­lic­it traf­fick­ing net­works which threat­en the se­cu­ri­ty and sta­bil­i­ty of the West­ern Hemi­sphere.”

Af­ter the Post’s re­port, Hegseth said Fri­day on X that “fake news is de­liv­er­ing more fab­ri­cat­ed, in­flam­ma­to­ry, and deroga­to­ry re­port­ing to dis­cred­it our in­cred­i­ble war­riors fight­ing to pro­tect the home­land.”

“Our cur­rent op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean are law­ful un­der both US and in­ter­na­tion­al law, with all ac­tions in com­pli­ance with the law of armed con­flict—and ap­proved by the best mil­i­tary and civil­ian lawyers, up and down the chain of com­mand,” Hegseth wrote.

The US ad­min­is­tra­tion says the strikes are aimed at drug car­tels, some of which it claims are con­trolled by Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro. Trump al­so is weigh­ing whether to car­ry out strikes on the Venezue­lan main­land.

Trump on Sun­day con­firmed he had re­cent­ly spo­ken by phone with Maduro but de­clined to de­tail the con­ver­sa­tion.

Speak­ing to sup­port­ers in Cara­cas yes­ter­day, Maduro said that US pres­sure has “test­ed” the coun­try, but that Venezue­lans are ready “to de­fend it and lead it to the path of peace.”

“We have lived through 22 weeks of ag­gres­sion that can on­ly be de­scribed as psy­cho­log­i­cal ter­ror­ism,” Maduro said.