The U.S. Strike on a Venezuelan Boat: International Law, Human Rights, & Legal Authority

Episode Notes

Transcript

Dr. Anthony C. Arend:

Nothing in the fact scenario that we have heard publicly indicates that that vessel was engaging in an armed attack against the United States. Even if presuppose for a moment, even if that vessel were bringing drugs or attempting to bring drugs into the United States, that’s not an armed attack. And so whether you look at this action under the framework of the Law of the Sea, or from the framework of the law relating to the recourse to force, it seems to me to be a clear violation by the United States of international law.

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J. Craig Williams:

Welcome to the Lawyer 2 Lawyer on the Legal Talk Network. I’m Craig Williams, coming to you from Cape Cod, Massachusetts. I write occasionally a blog named May have please the court and have three books out titled How To Get Sued the Sled and My newest book. How would You Decide 10 famous Trials That Changed History? You can find all three on Amazon. In addition, our new podcast miniseries in Dispute, 10 famous trials that changed history is currently featured here on the Legal Talk Network and on your favorite podcasting app. Please listen and subscribe. Well. On September 2nd, 2025, the US Navy killed 11 civilians on a boat in the Caribbean Sea that President Rum claimed was operated by the Venezuelan gang trend UA who were allegedly carrying drugs bound for the United States. The response was Swift legal experts weighed in on whether this attack was a violation of the international law and whether it was considered a criminal act against civilians.

In response to the attack, vice President JD Vance posted on X killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military. Senator Rand Paul responded to Vance as tweets saying what a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial. So is this attack on civilians considered a war crime? And how will Venezuela respond to this attack Today on Lawyer 2 Lawyer, we’ll discuss the recent US Navy attack on a boat in the Caribbean. We’ll talk about the specifics and legal issues behind the strike and whether this was a violation of international law and a criminal act against civilians. And without further ado, we’re joined by our very special guest, Dr. Anthony C. Arend. He’s Professor of Government and Foreign Service and chair of the Department of Government at Georgetown University. Tony served as a senior associate Dean for Graduate and Faculty Affairs and later vice team in the Walsh School of Foreign Service. From August, 2015 to July, 2018, he serves as director of Master of Science in Foreign Service Program from 2008 to 2017. His research and teaching is in the fields of international law, national security law, international legal theory, and human rights. Welcome to the show, Tony.

Dr. Anthony C. Arend:

Great pleasure, Craig. Happy to be here.

J. Craig Williams:

Tony, how did you become interested in international law and national security? It’s a pretty niche type of an interest.

Dr. Anthony C. Arend:

Well, the funny thing is, Craig, when I was in high school, we had to put a resume together. Career goal was at the top of the resume and I put international law on it. I didn’t know what international law was. It wasn’t until I started college and I spent my junior year studying in Germany that I actually got to do significant research on human rights and human rights law. And then when I came back after my junior year, I took my first international law course in the fall of 1979 when I was two years old and I was hooked. So after taking that first international law course, I was really hooked in it and it’s been what I’ve been doing ever since.

J. Craig Williams:

That’s amazing. Well, we’re here today to talk about what happened with killing cartel members in a boat from Venezuela. Tell us what happened and give a little bit of a legal framework about why these things can happen and why they can’t.

Dr. Anthony C. Arend:

So as far as I can tell, this is an unprecedented action by the United States, meaning we have never engaged in this kind of counter narcotics operation. Now here’s what we know from what’s been publicly reported. There was a boat that had about 11 people in it that allegedly was going to be bringing drugs into the United States. Now that’s what we know that’s been publicly reported. Apparently there was a US strike against the boat and Rand Paul is reporting today that it was apparently a drone strike against the boat. Apparently this occurred on the high seas and what we mean by the high seas is the area beyond the territorial sea of any one state and beyond another zone called the contiguous zone. So it would be in an area where there is no single state that has jurisdiction. So on the high seas now, that’s what we know, or at least what I know, what’s been publicly reported.

Now, from a legal perspective, there are sort of two areas of the law that we use to analyze this. One is the law of the sea. And so the Law of the Sea are rules that have developed over hundreds of years about how states and vessels have to behave on the oceans. The most applicable treaty on the Law of the Sea is the 1982 convention on the Law of the Sea. Now, I would note the United States is not a party to this convention, and that’s another long story, but the United States regards convention as establishing customary, which is also binding customary international law to which the United States is obliged to follow. So that’s kind of the applicable law relating to the oceans, the law of the sea. That’s one area of the law. The other area of the law is the law relating to the recourse to force.

This is established in the United Nations charter and there are various provisions relating to that, which I’m going to talk about in a second. So sort of two areas, law of the sea and the law relating to the recourse to force. So what does the Law of the Sea say? What does the law of the Sea Treaty say? Well, the law of the Sea Treaty does prohibit certain actions on the high seas such as piracy, slave trade, and drug trafficking. Okay? So if this vessel were in fact engaged in drug trafficking, that would be a violation of international law. However, the law of the Sea Treaty does not allow any state to shoot a vessel engaging in drug trafficking on the high seas. As a matter of fact, the law of the SEA treaty doesn’t even allow you to seize a vessel engaging in drug trafficking.

It’s kind of interesting. It prohibits drug trafficking, but it doesn’t allow you to seize the vessel in contradistinction. It does allow you to seize a vessel engaging in piracy or slave trade. So what does that mean? Well, that means even if the United States Coast Guard or the Navy were to see a vessel on the high seas engaged in drug trafficking, they could radio or contact the state that was the flag state of that vessel and ask for permission to board the vessel. But without that, they couldn’t board the vessel and they certainly couldn’t shoot down the vessel or shoot the vessel. So that’s kind of one area of the law. So under the law, the sea, what took place would be illegal. Now, I said there was another area of the law. This is the law relating to the recourse to force. This was established really in the United Nations charter in 1945.

Matter of fact, we’re about to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the United Nations on October 24th of this year. That was when the UN charter entered into force. So the UN charter begins with a presupposition that you are not to engage in the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or which would in any other way violate the provisions of the United Nations charter. So what does that mean in this context? Well, in this context, that would mean that you could not on the high seas simply use force against a vessel of another state. Now, the UN charter provides two exceptions to this prohibition on the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of a state. What are those exceptions? One is self-defense. So if you could show that that vessel were engaging in an armed attack, and that is the language of the United Nations charter, if you could show that that vessel were engaging in an armed attack against the United States, then the United States could use military force in response to that armed attack.

Customary international law, which also relates to this would say it could also be an anticipation of an armed attack. Meaning if you could show that the armed attack was imminent, you could also use force. So that would be one exception to this general prohibition on the threat or use of force against state. The other exception would be force that’s been authorized by the security council. Well, clearly the security council didn’t authorize this use of force. So for the action against the Venezuelan ship vessel to be lawful, you would actually have to demonstrate that that vessel was engaging in an armed attack against the United States or was about to engage in an armed attack against the United States. Nothing in the fact scenario that we have heard publicly indicates that that vessel was engaging in an armed attack against the United States. Even if presuppose for a moment, even if that vessel were bringing drugs or attempting to bring drugs into the United States, that’s not an armed attack. And so whether you look at this action under the framework of the law of the sea, or from the framework of the law relating to the recourse to force, it seems to me to be a clear violation by the United States of international law.

J. Craig Williams:

Let’s take the circumstance where these 11 people or some of them were armed with pistols or rifles. Does that fall into an armed attack?

Dr. Anthony C. Arend:

Not unless you could demonstrate that that possession of weapons or rifles was going to be used against the United States in some way that constituted an armed attack. And here I would note it’s important. International law traditionally differentiates from what I’m going to call the public use of force and criminal activities. So criminals carry weapons all the time, but if there are criminals engaging in drug trafficking and they’re on the high seas, that in and of itself does not constitute an armed attack against anyone. So you would actually have to show that this was a public armed attack, meaning that either the people on the vessel were acting on behalf of a state like Venezuela, or you could make an argument that they were belonging to a very specific terrorist group that was engaging in an armed attack against the United States. Traditionally, drug smugglers are not terrorists, they’re criminals. And again, that’s not a good thing, but they’re not engaging in a political terrorist act against the United States and simply calling them such saying, oh, well these are really terrorists doesn’t make it so under international law.

J. Craig Williams:

Well, president Trump has said that the United States has got legal authority, had legal authority to strike. Have there been circumstances where the Coast Guard has interdicted drug smugglers and international waters?

Dr. Anthony C. Arend:

Yes, there have. And I would argue that that is illegal too. However, you used the word interdict, which I think is important. That’s why I believe this to be unprecedented. This was not an interdiction, this was an attack. They blew the vessel up. And to my knowledge, and perhaps someone could find something where that’s happened before, but to my knowledge, this is the first case where the United States has acted by obliterating and killing everybody on the vessel rather than trying to interdict it. I would argue that on the high seas interdicting, a drug vessel is still a violation of international law. Remember I mentioned early on when I was talking about the law of the sea that there are some zones connected to the coastal state. So there’s a territorial sea and the territorial sea extends 12 nautical miles and nautical miles about the same as a statute mile.

It’s a little bit longer, but the territorial sea extends 12 nautical miles from the coast in the territorial sea. The coastal state has sovereignty over the seabed, subsoil, and super adjacent airspace. If the vessel were in the territorial sea, they could clearly interdict it again, even there, unless they could prove it was engaging in an armed attack, they couldn’t use force against it, but they could interdict it if it were in. So the territorial C is 12 nano als beyond the territorial sea. There is another zone which is established under international law called the contiguous zone, and the contiguous zone is called such because it’s contiguous to the territorial sea, it can extend an additional 12 nautical miles beyond the territorial sea. In the contiguous zone, the coastal state has certain rights including the rights to take action against a vessel that would be engaging in drug smuggling. So if it’s an additional 12 nautical miles, so up to 24 nautical miles from the coastline, the coastal state could once again interdict the vessel. But you can only use force if let’s say the vessel were there and you were trying to arrest it and it fled or something like that, you could use force in those circumstances. But to arrest it, you can’t just target the vessel and shoot it out of the water.

J. Craig Williams:

It pretty much eliminates through process, doesn’t it?

Dr. Anthony C. Arend:

Exactly. I mean, exactly. And again, if you sort of think of the two paradigms, one is use of military force and the other is criminal behavior. We give due process to people that are engaging in criminal behavior, certainly is inherent in the American system, but really inherent throughout the world. If somebody is engaging in the use of military force, there are certain rules you have to follow. You have show that they’re engaging in an armed attack and you can respond in self-defense if you capture someone there, they’re whole detailed series of rules that you have to follow. But ultimately, if somebody’s presenting an armed threat to you, you can use military force. And you may say, well, that’s not due process, but we’re kind of in a different paradigm there. But if somebody’s engaging in criminal activity, they would be entitled to the same due process rights that someone engaging in criminal activity in the United States would be entitled to.

J. Craig Williams:

At this time, let’s take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsors. We’ll be right back and welcome back to Lawyer 2 Lawyer. I’m back with Dr. Anthony C. Arend professor of government and foreign Service and chair of the Department of Government at Georgetown University. You were talking earlier about zones. Doesn’t the United States claim a zone out some 200 miles?

Dr. Anthony C. Arend:

So that’s a difference. So the answer is yes. So there are four-ish zones that the United States claim. So the United States claims a 12 nautical mile territorial C where we enjoy complete sovereignty. Beyond that, we claim an additional 12 nautical mile contiguous zone where we enjoy sovereign rights over certain things. One of them relates to customs, one of ’em relates to fiscal immigration, sanitary issues. Well, there’s a third zone, which is called the exclusive economic zone, which extends to a maximum of 200 nautical miles from our coast. In the exclusive economic zone, however, we only have what are called sovereign rights for purposes of exploring, exploiting, managing, conserving the living and non-living resources of the seabed, subsoil, and super adjacent waters. Now, what does that mean in that 200 nautical mile economic zone, we have the right to regulate fishing, extracting oil or natural gas or mining polymetallic nodules from the seabed or something like that. That only relates to rights concerning those sorts of resources. And what that actually means is that the coastal state, if we’re going to say the United States has the right to make domestic laws concerning all those activities, and if another state sends a vessel in and they violate those laws, we would have the right to seize that vessel again, not shoot it out, but seize that vessel. But the facts as are presented in the Venezuelan vessel case, don’t implicate our rights in the exclusive economic zone.

J. Craig Williams:

Some members of the administration, I think it was Mark Rubio, have said that the problem has been that the interdiction of drug runners has not been effective. So now the administration is adopting this new tactic. Is there any possibility that you can find any legality for this attack?

Dr. Anthony C. Arend:

No. No, I really can’t unless the administration were to demonstrate, at least to my sufficiency, that the vessel was somehow engaging in more or less a traditional armed attack against the United States. So there’s no way I can find legality based on what has been presented. And in terms of whether the traditional approach to interdiction has been effective or not, which Secretary of State Rubio has apparently noted. I don’t know enough information to respond to that, but the answer in my view would not be to engage in this kind of tactic for any number of reasons. And somebody may say, well, who cares if it’s legal or not? What difference does that make the United States as military force to get away with it? One of the problems with international law is reciprocity. If we start doing something and saying, well, we have a right to do it, then what we do is we lead to a dangerous precedent where other states start saying, well, look us did it, then we can do it. And that could be very, very troubling. I mean, we saw this during the George W. Bush administration. When the United States began doing things like engaging in water boarding and other enhanced interrogation tactics, it led to a concern that, well, okay, if the United States is going to do it, then somebody else is going to say, well, the US did it and therefore we can. And you can lead to a disillusion of a rule, which is traditionally in our interest as well as in everybody’s interest

J. Craig Williams:

And what’s in place to stop us. I mean, we have international law, we have United Nations law, we have our own laws. Is there any, and we also have a recent Supreme Court case that pretty much grants immunity to President Trump and the administration for acting in this kind of thing. What can be done at this point?

Dr. Anthony C. Arend:

Well, so that’s a very good question. And the United States has nuclear weapons. The United States is a permanent member of the Security Council internationally, from what we would think of as a traditional legal enforcement mechanism, it is unlikely, if not impossible, that there would be some kind of international action against the United States. Now that having been said, depending on what happens, you could actually have lawsuits within the United States against the government. You may not be able to have them against the President, but against the government. And I’ll just give you one example where these lawsuits can in fact produce a result where the United States is held for violating international law. So in the case of Hamdan versus Rumsfeld from 2006, som Hamdan was a Yemeni national who was captured by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. In 2001 turned over to the Americans. The Americans took him to Guantanamo.

President George W. Bush set up a procedure through a military order that he promulgated saying that people can be tried in the military commission. And then he designated Hamdon to be tried in the military commission. So Hamon was given a judge advocate, general lawyer, a military lawyer to represent him, Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift. And Swift said, I don’t think the president has this authority to do this. He brought suit in federal district court. It made its way up to the US Supreme Court, and my colleague Neil Katyal, argued on behalf of Hamdan and Hamdan won the Supreme Court, said that you were prohibited both under US domestic law and under international law as embodied in the Geneva Conventions from 1949 from trying Harman in this military commission. So that’s a case, an explicit case where the federal government was told, you can’t do this because it violates international law.

It violates a treaty in this case to which the United States is a party. There may be ways in which the United States could be held accountable for some of these actions through domestic courts. Now we’d have to meet all our standard requirements. You’d have to show that somebody had standing to sue. You would have to show that this doesn’t fall into the realm of being a political question and all sorts of things, but there may be a way to hold it accountable there. But honestly, the best way to hold the United States accountable is by our fear that if we cause the deterioration of a norm of international law, it’s going to lead to other states doing the same thing. I distinctly remember watching the Senate Farm Relations Committee during the Bush administration, and then Senator Joe Biden was on the committee and it was relating to enhanced interrogation techniques, perhaps even specifically waterboarding.

And I remember then Senator Biden saying in so many words, the reason I want the United States to follow the laws of war is so that if my son Beau were captured, the other states would be inclined to follow the laws of war with respect to him. So that’s to me a very powerful inducement. We want to follow the rules so that others follow the rules. That’s no guarantee that they’re going to follow the rules. But if we precipitate the disintegration of the rule, that’s certainly going to make it less likely that other states are going to comply with those rules.

J. Craig Williams:

It seems like that’s exactly what’s happened now. So in the circumstance where we have presidential immunity, is this a crime? Is it a war crime? Is it accepted from the immunity that the president has been granted

Dr. Anthony C. Arend:

Under the immunity case? And I’m going to begin by saying I am well familiar with the immunity case. I think it’s a very poorly written decision that leaves a lot undecided and actually throws many things back to the federal district courts to figure out. But under that decision, one thing that is clear is when the president is acting in his or her official capacity once, well, so when the president’s the president, you can’t bring a suit or a criminal case against the president. But once the president is no longer the president, that was what was at issue in the immunity case. And what that case said is that the president cannot be subject to any kind of criminal action for things relating to his or her core presidential authority. And certainly ordering the use of force would be in that category. So the president would be immune subsequent to his services president.

But that doesn’t mean that others involved in these things would enjoy immunity. In other words, somebody actually ordered the action below the president, somebody pressed the buttons, somebody did these kinds of things, and those would be the people that potentially would be held accountable for violating international law in a variety of ways. So even though the president himself might be able to escape any kind of legal process, there would be a bunch of other people that wouldn’t necessarily be able to escape legal processes. But again, there’s a lot of hurdles. Before we would actually get to that point, again, we’d have to show that the nature of what was going on, whether the person had standing or not, and so on.

J. Craig Williams:

What individual responsibility do members of the military have regarding these orders from the president?

Dr. Anthony C. Arend:

So this is a very good question under the uniform code. So the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is a federal statute adopted by Congress, sets forth the legal framework for the military. And one of the most basic rules for the US military is that you are under an obligation only to follow lawful orders. And if an order is unlawful, you are under an obligation not to follow that order. And the military are instructed in this in particular, with respect to the laws of war, there are training films, there are courses which everyone in the military has to take that goes through various scenarios and also tells for instance, enlisted people. What do you do if the lieutenant says, okay, we don’t have time to take these people as prisoners of war, just shoot ’em all. How do you respond to that? So the military is actually trained in that.

Now it gets more complicated because what I just described is clearly wrong, but when you start to get into areas that are grayer, there tends to be a deference to the person who’s issued the order. And it can be harder to hold people accountable for those violations. But I mean, you think of the Cali case, so the Meline massacre, for example, where Lieutenant Callie was telling various people to just go ahead and destroy the village and destroy these people. And he was held accountable for that. And I think the military continually has this concern when you have an order, if you do have an order coming directly for the president, it does fall into a more challenging area. One thing I would commend you to look at is General Heen, general John Heen, who was the former head of Strategic Command, which is headquartered in off at Air Force Base, which is outside of Omaha, Nebraska.

In 19 19, 20 17, I believe he was at the Halifax Security Conference and he was asked about an unlawful order from the president on the use of nuclear weapons. And in the interview he says, we’re taught not to follow unlawful orders. If the president were to give me an unlawful order, I would essentially go back and say, well, what do you want to do? How can we make it lawful? So the military is actually educated in that regard and at lower levels through the chain of command, I think individuals would be more inclined to disobey a clearly unlawful order when the president is giving it. Yeah, it’s much more complicated and it can be more difficult to hold somebody accountable for that.

J. Craig Williams:

Presumably, you’ve already got someone from the JAG cord giving you the go ahead to do it

Dr. Anthony C. Arend:

Potentially. Yeah, and I say potentially, the reason I note that is the communication that was made by the President to Congress allegedly in accordance with war powers resolution didn’t really give very much in the way of legal analysis. And I don’t know what kind of legal input was given. In this particular case. My analysis of the law here is not unusual or novel. It’s pretty straightforward. And while I have no inside information, my guess would actually be that if you presented this to a JAG officer, they’d say, well, no, you can’t actually do that. That would be my guess

J. Craig Williams:

Based on Jag Jag officers we’ve had on the show before. I think I would completely agree with you. Let’s take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsors. We’ll be right back and welcome back to Lawyer 2 Lawyer. I’m back with Dr. Anthony C. Arend, professor of government and Foreign Service and chair of the Department of Government at Georgetown University. Let’s turn to what the possibilities are going to be in the future. You mentioned that one country may stop paying attention to these kind of rules. Certainly, Venezuela’s on the table is saying that everything is fair game. We haven’t declared war from what I know, but where are we with Venezuela?

Dr. Anthony C. Arend:

I don’t know. And it’s curious as to why the president is so adamant about striking out at Venezuela in particular, because if we’re dealing with drug trait, yeah, Venezuela is involved, but there are a lot of other states and there seems to be this particular animus with Venezuela. So I don’t know where that’s going to go. Some people have asked me why do we think, and I said, this is going to sound trivial, but because he can, because Venezuela is not a powerful state, because Venezuela does not have a lot of people, other states that are supporting it. And so this is an opportunity perhaps to show strength and to make it look like we’re doing something or that he’s doing something. In this case I’m worried about in the broader sense, I mentioned the UN Charter framework for the use of military force. The provision of the UN charter that I was citing is Article two, paragraph four, and it says, all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state or in any other way inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.

Now, we’ve seen violations of this over the years historically, but what we’ve seen lately is the willingness to allow for the use of force to annex territory. Now, if you think of the first Gulf War, so August 2nd, 1990, Iraq invades Kuwait. The whole international community says you can’t just go and annex another state. That’s not allowed. Well, in 2014, we saw Russia do that with Crimea, and then in 2022, we saw Russia attack the rest of Ukraine, not the rest of Ukraine, parts of Ukraine as well. And the United States seems to be accepting that. Well, they may just get part of Ukraine. And then at the same time you have the president coming out and making absurd statements about Greenland, making absurd statements about Panama and even Canada. He seems to have backed away from that and perhaps sending the signal that the United States is just not that concerned about great powers using force in their area to alter the territorial boundaries.

Well, that would be a fundamental rejection of the world order that was established in 1945, and this incident about the Venezuelan vessel is a small piece of that, but it seems to reflect a willingness on the part of the United States, let alone Russia. And then we could put in China and its claims regarding the South China Sea and Taiwan and elsewhere. But it seems to be an indication, the part of the United States to say these norms relating to the use of force, even these norms relating to territorial acquisition, they don’t seem to be that important anymore. And that would be a fundamental, a tectonic shift in the way we understand international law since 1945,

J. Craig Williams:

Aren’t we already there? I mean, look what’s happening in the United States from the standpoint of upsetting the existing government that we’ve got, if we’re going to upset our own government and pull it apart, aren’t we only going to do the same thing with the international order?

Dr. Anthony C. Arend:

I worry that we are now. Maybe I’m still an optimist. Well, I’m definitely still an optimist. I don’t know that it’s irreversible yet, but I think we’re at that point. I think the first Trump administration was problematic, but there were many people that were pulling back, general Kelly, general Mattis, that were affirming the traditional norms of international law and the existing world order. None of those people are present in the current administration, and we got two or three and a half more years left by the end of those three and a half years. We may be there, and it may be extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to pull things back together again. The trivial example is Humpty Dumpty. I mean, once that egg has fallen off the wall, you can’t put it back together again. Again, I’m hopeful enough to think we’re at the precipice, but we haven’t yet fallen off it, but we’re getting close.

J. Craig Williams:

We sure. And on that note, we’ve just about reached the end of our program, so it’s time to wrap up and get your final thoughts.

Dr. Anthony C. Arend:

Well, I want to emphasize when I speak in class and when I talk to students is that we are at an inflection point. The people my age and the people in government now in many respects have failed to uphold this world order at least over the past several years. And as a consequence, I see the hope in the new generation, meaning the people that are like under 40 years of age, being able to appreciate the effectiveness of the global order and the need for a rule-based order. And I see this in our students. My sense is we’re going to go through some very bad periods for three years, perhaps even more, but I see the possibility of a response to that. I see the possibility in students I observe and other younger people that they want to move back to a domestic system where we have stability, where we have the respect for the rule of law and an international system, which is rule-based. I see that, but we got to get through these three years. So when I talk to students, alums, others, I always say the future’s there for anyone to change. That’s a quote from Jackson Brown, the great singer songwriter. But then I say to the students, how will you change the future? I think our future is in their hands.

J. Craig Williams:

Great. Well, thank you very much for being on the show today.

Dr. Anthony C. Arend:

My pleasure, Craig’s a lot of fun. Thank you for great questions, and it was a great honor.

J. Craig Williams:

Well, here are a few of my thoughts about today’s topic. It’s undoubtedly that this is a war crime and there is no legal justification for it other than our president saying that this is the way that things are going to be handled from now on, which seemingly is the way that things are being handled domestically as well. It’s not surprising. The only way this thing is going to stop or things are going to happen is to do something about it. So step up, talk to your senators, talk to your representatives, and exercise your vote. Well, that’s it for my rant on today’s topic. Let me know what you think. If you like what you heard today, please rate us on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcasting app. You can also visit [email protected] where you can sign up for our newsletter. I’m Craig Williams. Thanks for listening. Please join us next time for another great legal topic. Remember, when you want legal think Lawyer 2 Lawyer.

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