Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Deputy Leader San­jiv Bood­hu has called on At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie to dis­close the le­gal opin­ion he ob­tained on the Unit­ed States boat strikes in the Caribbean. His call fol­lows the im­peach­ment bid against US De­fence Sec­re­tary Pe­ter Hegseth over the strikes and oth­er mat­ters.

The im­peach­ment res­o­lu­tion was filed on Mon­day by Re­pub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Thomas Massie.

The charges in­clude:

• Three charges of il­le­gal­ly wag­ing war against Iran in vi­o­la­tion of the War Pow­ers Res­o­lu­tion

• One charge of ig­nor­ing laws in­tend­ed to min­imise civil­ian ca­su­al­ties

• One charge of over­see­ing “ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings” in the Caribbean Sea and east­ern Pa­cif­ic Ocean through strikes on al­leged drug boats

• One charge of sup­press­ing free speech, linked to ef­forts to pun­ish De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Mark Kel­ly over a video in which he told ser­vice mem­bers they could refuse il­le­gal or­ders

• One charge over the cap­ture of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro with­out con­gres­sion­al au­tho­ri­sa­tion, de­scribed in the res­o­lu­tion as “an act of war against a sov­er­eign coun­try ex­e­cut­ed un­der the guise of nar­cotics law en­force­ment in­tend­ed to as­sert US con­trol over Venezuela’s oil re­serves”

• One charge of il­le­gal­ly wag­ing war against Yemen in vi­o­la­tion of the War Pow­ers Res­o­lu­tion

The charge con­cern­ing ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings al­leges that Hegseth abused his pow­er by or­der­ing US Armed Forces to be­gin a cam­paign of lethal strikes that killed 221 peo­ple aboard small boats in the Caribbean Sea and east­ern Pa­cif­ic Ocean.

Last evening, the Re­pub­li­can-con­trolled US House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives blocked the im­peach­ment ef­fort against Hegseth, vot­ing 211 to 204 to re­fer the res­o­lu­tion to a com­mit­tee, ef­fec­tive­ly halt­ing the at­tempt to re­move him from of­fice.

Speak­ing be­fore the US House vote yes­ter­day, Bood­hu said: “The same way Mr ‘Le­gal Opin­ion’ Je­re­mie spoke pub­licly about his Gov­ern­ment’s sup­port for the ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings of per­sons in and around T&T’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters, po­ten­tial­ly in­clud­ing two T&T na­tion­als—a mat­ter which is be­fore the US courts—and po­ten­tial­ly oth­er Cari­com cit­i­zens, let him now tell the coun­try ex­act­ly what his le­gal opin­ion is.

“Je­re­mie is the UNC Cab­i­net’s le­gal ad­vis­er and tit­u­lar head of the Bar. He shouldn’t hide be­hind Min­is­ter Sean Sobers or the team they sent to the Unit­ed Na­tions Hu­man Rights Re­view to de­fend them­selves against in­ter­na­tion­al stake­hold­ers’ con­cerns about their re­peat­ed states of emer­gency in T&T.”

Bood­hu added: “The AG must al­so tell cit­i­zens to what ex­tent the Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment in­volved it­self in the ex­trac­tion of Pres­i­dent Maduro and his wife from Venezuela. Gov­ern­ment has a du­ty to pro­vide full dis­clo­sure to cit­i­zens, who dai­ly see sit­u­a­tions the Gov­ern­ment needs to ad­dress pub­licly. But they’re not do­ing so.”

Je­re­mie did not re­spond to Guardian Me­dia’s What­sApp queries about his view of the sit­u­a­tion or his le­gal opin­ion up to press time.