Congress will vote on limiting Hegseth’s travel budget unless he releases unedited video of boat strikes

By Annie Grayer, CNN

(CNN) — Tucked into Congress’ massive defense policy bill is a provision that would limit Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s travel budget unless he provides the House and Senate Armed Services committees with unedited video of US military strikes in the Caribbean.

The mandate in the must-pass piece of legislation – known as the National Defense Authorization Act – would withhold a quarter of the budget unless the Pentagon provides lawmakers “video of strikes conducted against designated terrorist organizations in the area of responsibility of the United States Southern Command.”

It comes as a September 2 “double-tap” strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean has come under intense scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune would not say on Monday if he believes the Pentagon should release the full video of the second strike in September, after senior lawmakers on key committees reviewed the footage last week.

“I think the Armed Services Committee is doing oversight on this, and I’m sure that they, working with the Pentagon, will make sure that they get all the facts and information about those raids,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju when asked if the Pentagon should release the footage.

He also indicated he was not aware of the provision in the annual defense policy package aimed at compelling the Pentagon to release the footage to the Armed Services committees. Asked why it was added to the legislation, Thune said, “I’ll find out.”

The video is currently classified and only top congressional lawmakers have seen it. But there is bipartisan support to release the full video of the controversial strikes that day.

Senate Intelligence Chairman Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, for example said over the weekend he didn’t have a problem with the video being made public. Meanwhile, the top Democrat on the House panel, Rep. Jim Himes, said “the American public needs to judge for itself,” given the divided congressional view of the video.

Last week, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley traveled to Capitol Hill for private meetings with senior lawmakers of both parties to defend the follow-up strike on the boat. As part of those meetings, lawmakers saw video of the second strike, which killed surviving crew members of the first attack.

President Donald Trump said last week that his administration would “certainly” release video of the follow-up strike “no problem,” while Hegseth on Saturday was more non-committal, saying that officials were “reviewing” whether to release the footage.

“We’ve got operators out there doing this right now, so whatever we were to decide to release we’d have to be very responsible about it,” he said at the Reagan National Defense Forum.

Trump had posted video of the initial strike to his Truth Social platform shortly after the September 2 operation and before reporting emerged of a second strike that fueled further controversy about the legality of the administration’s targeting of alleged drug boats and whether the follow-up attack constituted a war crime.

The bill puts other stipulations on Hegseth’s travel budget, including a written report on the “lessons learned” from the ongoing war in Ukraine.

GOP congressional leaders will have to navigate multiple hurdles to muscle this legislation through their narrow majority, with some Republican lawmakers having already expressed concerns with the bill.

This article has been updated with additional reporting.

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CNN’s Morgan Rimmer and Ted Barrett contributed to this report.