In a legally-mandated memo to Congress, the Trump White House outlined its legal rationale for carrying out the January drone strike to kill top Iranian commander Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani in Baghdad.
The two-page unclassified memo comes after a series of evolving justifications from the White House that predicated the need to carry out the brazen assassination attempt outside the constitutional war-making powers of Congress on what Trump officials described as an “imminent threat” to American lives.
That language mirrors the vagueness of the Trump administration in the days and weeks following the Jan. 3 attack.
“Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel, but we caught him in the act,” Trump told reporters at the time.
When pushed, Pompeo and the rest of the Trump White House began walking back the “imminent threat” claim, saying: “It’s never one thing.
The answer to both is a strong YES., but it doesn’t really matter because of his horrible past!
The Senate passed a measure 55-to-45 last week that would curtail Trump’s powers to carry out a military operation in Iran. »