The price for Donald Trump’s nihilism abroad is a government at home that fails to protect the rights of persons and respects no laws, writes Judge Andrew Napolitano.
Department of Justice, Washington. (Joe Lauria)
When President Donald Trump first announced that he had ordered the Pentagon to attack fishing boats and speedboats on the high seas which he said carried dangerous drugs destined for willing buyers in the United States, many of us who monitor the government for its indifference to the Constitution perceived it as truly criminal and utterly scandalous.
The military commits murder when it intentionally kills a civilian non-combatant who poses no immediate threat to the U.S. or to military personnel. The crime is committed by all personnel in the chain of command who knowingly participate in these attacks.
The order to kill civilian non-combatants is an unlawful order which the military personnel who receive it have a legal and moral duty to challenge and either decline to carry out or resign from the military.
It was scandalous because the president and his secretary of defense boasted about it.
When this view was articulated by six members of Congress, the secretary of defense sought — without a hearing — to reduce the military pension of one of them who is a retired Navy captain, and the Department of Justice sought to indict all six. Trump called for their summary execution.
The federal judge to whom the challenge of the Pentagon’s pay reduction order was assigned ruled that never in American history had a recipient of a military pension had it reduced for pure speech, much less a recipient who is also a U.S. Senator. He invalidated the pension reduction.
Then, when the DoJ presented its case against the six members of Congress to a grand jury in the District of Columbia and asked the grand jurors to indict the six for disturbing the morale of the military, the grand jury declined to do so.
Bear in mind that at a grand jury proceeding, there is no judge or defense counsel present. The grand jurors hear only what the government wants them to hear; and still they told the government: No.
Skipping Due Process
President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth during the 24th 9/11 Pentagon Observance Ceremony at the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., Sept. 11, 2025. (DoW/Madelyn Keech)
I offer this background as a baseline to examine the thinking of the Trump administration officials involved in this sordid business. They believe they can kill and punish without due process and prosecute those who verbally challenge them.
While the military committed murder, the prosecutors who sought to indict members of Congress for speech committed misconduct in office because they employed the tools of government in direct contravention of the Constitution.
It gets worse.
Last year, we learned that after a targeted attack on a speedboat in September had failed to kill all of its occupants, the admiral in charge ordered a second strike so as to kill the three survivors as they were clinging to debris and trying to stay alive. This, too, was an act of murder; and, like all these boat attacks, a war crime.
War crimes are not pardonable by the president and may be prosecuted by any sovereign nation at any time. War crimes have no statute of limitations or venue requirements for prosecution.
In response to the public and congressional outcry over the murders of the hapless boat attack survivors, the Pentagon began to rescue survivors whom it failed to kill. When Pentagon lawyers asked DoJ lawyers what to do with them and DoJ lawyers asked for the evidence of their crimes, the Pentagon demurred and promptly transported them home.
What evidence there was — if any — was destroyed by the Pentagon, yet another crime. Last week, we learned of two developments that altered this landscape.
Criminal Indifference to Human Life
Venezuelan speedboat moments before U.S. attack. (White House video via NBC News)
When two of the survivors whom the military brought home served notice of their intent to sue the government for a violation of their civil rights by attempting to kill them, and when the families of two of the non-survivors of the same attack served notice of intent to sue the government for wrongful death, we learned that the Pentagon had stopped its policy of rescuing survivors and began calling in the Coast Guard— which is no longer in the Pentagon but rather in the Department of Homeland Security — to do the rescuing.
We also learned last week that when an attack on Dec. 30 left eight survivors, and the Coast Guard was called to rescue them, it took 44 hours for the Coast Guard rescue plane to arrive on the scene.
The Pentagon now refuses to inform the Coast Guard of its planned attacks — as it apparently mistrusts its sister agency with any foreknowledge of killings. Those DHS folks are apparently in no hurry to rescue survivors either.
The Coast Guard plane that eventually arrived at the site of the Pentagon attack only to find an empty sea took an absurd 3,000-mile circuitous route from Los Angeles north to Lake Tahoe then west to Sacramento then south passing over Los Angeles to Costa Rica and then west to the search area 650 nautical miles out to sea in the Pacific Ocean.
What’s going on here?
What’s going on is a deliberate series of secret macabre government decisions that — contrary to law — it is better for survivors to drown at sea than have all this played out in a federal courtroom.
The law, of course, regards these uncharged persons — living and dead — as innocent and it imposes upon the military that killed them, not a largely domestic agency it mistrusts, the legal obligation to rescue the survivors.
This criminal indifference to human life transgresses the natural law, the Constitution and federal statutes. But it is worse than that. It reveals a deep-seated nihilism animating the Trump administration.
Nihilism rejects all standards of human behavior, recognizes no restraints on the exercise of power and accepts no universal concepts of right and wrong.
The price for this nihilism abroad is a government at home that fails to protect the rights of persons, operates without transparency and respects no laws. Who voted for this?
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, was the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel and hosts the podcast Judging Freedom. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.
Published by permission of the author.
COPYRIGHT 2026 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
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The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Thank you Judge – always enjoy getting a legal education from you and your writings.
Why worry? We have Homeland Insecurity on the job 24/7… 24 minutes a day… 7 days a year. Yeah, they killed a couple of Americans and didn’t regret it. So that’s why we don’t need them!
ICE the ICE as long as we are at it.
The most severe mass murdering criminals are obviously running free, and are even in positions of highest power in most of the “western” countries.
Especially in the u.s.
A thorough wash- out is urgently needed, and the responsible individuals must be held accountable!
And for a better future, ways must finally be found to ensure that only sane and genuine characters, seeking the well being of all people and the planet, get into positions of power.
Judge Napolitano is spot on. Trump is mentally ill while everyone in power acts as though his bizarre and criminal behavior is normal. Everyone in the military chain of command, including Trump, should be arrested and tried for war crimes and murder.
You hope for too much.
I agree 100%.
Thank you, Judge Napolitano.
I march side by side with this man who speaks with such perfect clarity and moral righteousness against the disgusting and truly loathsome acts he describes. This is not the country in which I grew up. Nor could I ever imagine when I entered law school 50 years ago that the founding document which has brought us all our gifts would be treated with such contemptible disdain.
I shared this excellent article on Facebook, although to do so I had to copy it and reformat it as for some unfathomable reason, Facebook “prohibits” my posting of links to articles on Consortium News. My observation? [the article] deals with how our military is being made to abandon the morality we ourselves imposed on the world following the Second World War in order to justify execution of the losers. Perhaps it can help us understand what happens to those willing to sacrifice their lives for their countries as they’re betrayed and their morals are frayed by their cowardly, chicken hawk political leaders.
FOR THE MANY NOT THE FEW
How It Is And What Should It Be
A capitalist society is one where nothing matters more than money. That’s why when you go to a hospital or doctor your health is not the priority. All services rendered are based on how much and who pays. The same is true for all interactions between the “justice” “healthcare” “electoral” and all other so called democratic institutions and the public. This is inconsistent with and contrary to the American constitution. During the last 150 years the elite class have worked hard to promote Supreme court decisions that undermine the constitution and hand over governance to the richest people. A recent example is the 2009 “citizens united” decision that finally proclaimed that corporations are people and money is free speech. That’s why the USA is now officially an oligarchy and not a democratic republic and almost every politician is bought and paid for, including a president who is an autocratic fascist dictator. This is why we have been going from one war to another that benefit no one but the rich elites. All this happened right under the nose of the people with the guidance of a propaganda media posing as free press. It happened without a shot fired in defense of the constitution.
The founders warned us about “factionalism” and to be wary of groups that form in order to control governance for their own benefit. The faction that has taken over America are the rich elites and they are foreign as well as domestic. The common sense solution is to make it illegal for anyone running for office to accept any money or gifts and to make all elections publicly funded. It is also necessary to strictly adhere to and enhance “separation of church and state” principles so that religious beliefs don’t become the ruling faction.
The only political and economic system that is compatible with the constitution is republican democratic socialism. An egalitarian humanitarian socialism is the only political economic system that puts the cares and concerns of all the people as it’s first principle. So that a nation’s wealth and resources serves all the people not just an elite few. This is why the founders created the American constitution. For the many not the few. Especially, not the rich religious few.
Marx was right. Socialist revolution is needed. (NOT “republican democratic socialism”, which is not socialism at all.)