William A. Lee III is a practicing attorney, former chair of the Maine Ethics Commission and former adjunct professor of government and administrative science at Colby College.

Since Sept. 2, 2025, President Trump has ordered strikes on numerous vessels off the Venezuelan and Colombian coasts, killing at least 83 people. He claims they were intending to smuggle drugs into the United States and were operated by international drug cartels.

One of the vessels was reportedly heading back toward the Venezuelan coast when it was bombed. No evidence has been offered to support these claims, except Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that “big bags of cocaine and fentanyl” were seen floating in the ocean.

Trump and the truth seldom cross paths. If there were this physical evidence, it should have been produced.

A recent investigation by the Associated Press found that some of the bombed vessels off the Venezuelan coast were carrying drugs, but they were operated by low-level people from impoverished areas, and the drugs were en route to Trinidad and other nearby islands. Their ultimate destination was Europe, not the United States, contrary to what Trump has claimed.

The Trump administration’s justification for its action is that we are in an armed conflict with international terrorist organizations and these vessels were operated by these organizations and  were carrying drugs that would kill Americans.

Equating the importation of a drug for sale with the use of deadly force by armed combatants stretches the law beyond the breaking point. Besides, the drug that is killing the most Americans is fentanyl, almost all of which comes from Mexico, not Venezuela or Colombia.

Even if President Trump could have shown that these vessels were carrying drugs and headed toward the United States, a strong argument can be made that he needed congressional approval  before taking such military action.

Also, the Law of Armed Conflict, which the U.S. military follows,  does not allow the summary killing of people suspected of committing a crime when non-lethal force could be used for apprehension.

It is 1,500 miles from the Venezuelan coast to Florida. The U.S. has a massive naval presence in the area. We knew the location of these vessels and were monitoring them. We could easily have intercepted them, determined whether they were smuggling drugs and apprehended the vessel operators if drugs were found. Instead, the president ordered the vessels to be bombed, summarily executing those on board. 

Are there any consequences for the president’s actions? No, there are not. In Trump v. United States, a six-member majority of the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the president has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for criminal acts in exercising his core functions and presumptive immunity in all other official acts.

The basis of the granting of immunity was that the president must  be able to exercise “bold and unhesitating action” without fear of criminal prosecution. President Trump certainly took this decision to heart in bombing these vessels. Since command of the military is one of the president’s core functions, he is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for what many consider to be murder, though those who carry out his orders do not share that immunity.

The six members of the Supreme Court who made this decision consider themselves to be “originalists.” Originalists believe that the Constitution should be interpreted based on the meaning of the words at the time it was written without adding ideas not covered in the Constitution.

There is not a word in the Constitution about presidential immunity for criminal acts, though the immunity concept was certainly recognized. Article I, Section 6, Clause 7, of the Constitution  grants members of Congress immunity from prosecution for their speech and debate in Congress. Several state constitutions at the time recognized some immunity from prosecution for governors.

At the time the Constitution was written, we had  just fought a war to free ourselves from a king who was above the law. In this decision, these originalists acted like the “activist judges” they are so quick to criticize.

Realistically, there is nothing that can be done to change this Supreme Court decision. The decision is an interpretation of the Constitution, and Congress cannot alter the Constitution. This Supreme Court is not going to reverse itself, and there is no chance of a constitutional amendment to alter this interpretation.

This grant of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution moves us ever closer to a dictatorship. When you combine it with the administration’s numerous attacks on free speech, the persecution and prosecution of the president’s “enemies,” the spurious declarations of “national emergencies” to bypass Congress, the sending of troops into American cities to “enforce” the law and the masked and unidentified government agents arresting and denying basic due process to thousands of people, some will argue  that we are already there.

To preserve the rights that make America unique, we must fight back — peacefully. Demonstrate, write letters, engage with those of different opinions and vote. If instead we are complacent, thinking that our fundamental rights are not at risk, we may suffer the fate of the Germans of the 1930s.