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The Associated Press revealed in a new report Saturday that four of the more than 60 people killed in U.S. airstrikes on boats were, in fact, running drugs from Venezuela — but that’s where the facts diverged from President Donald Trump’s claims.
The Trump administration has boasted of killing what it called “narco terrorists” and “cartel members” since launching the attacks in September.
This week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted about the most recent strike that killed three people, writing, “As we’ve said before, vessel strikes on narco-terrorists will continue until their the poisoning of the American people stops…To all narco-terrorists who threaten our homeland: if you want to stay alive, stop trafficking drugs. If you keep trafficking deadly drugs—we will kill you.”
After the Trump administration failed to provide any proof of its claim to Congress, the AP dug into the stories of those killed.
“The Associated Press learned the identities of four of the men – and pieced together details about at least five others – who were slain, providing the first detailed account of those who died in the strikes,” wrote reporter Regina Garcia Cano. “In dozens of interviews in villages on Venezuela’s breathtaking northeastern coast, from which some of the boats departed, residents and relatives said the dead men had indeed been running drugs but were not narco-terrorists or leaders of a cartel or gang.”
She wrote:
Most of the nine men were crewing such craft for the first or second time, making at least $500 per trip, residents and relatives said. They were laborers, a fisherman, a motorcycle taxi driver. Two were low-level career criminals. One was a well-known local crime boss who contracted out his smuggling services to traffickers.
In addition, Cano wrote that the men were not transporting fentanyl to the United States as administration officials have said; instead, they were running Colombian cocaine to Trinidad and other Caribbean islands.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement to the AP that the Defense Department has “consistently said that our intelligence did indeed confirm that the individuals involved in these drug operations were narco-terrorists, and we stand by that assessment.”
President Trump has also been in a verbal battle with Colombian leader Gustavo Petro in recent weeks over the strikes, with Trump calling Petro a “thug” and “illegal drug leader.”
The post AP Confirms Trump Killed Drug Runners — But They Were Not Carrying Fentanyl to The US first appeared on Mediaite.
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