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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.