‘Narco-Terrorism’ Is a Legally Meaningless Term

Audrey Fahlberg’s report for National Review on Republican concerns about the Trump administration’s unauthorized military campaign in the Caribbean quotes one of the president’s allies, Senator Cynthia Lummis (R., Wyo.): “We all know that [Nicolás] Maduro continues in office, even though he lost the last election, and they are narco-terrorists.” Another, Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), chimes in about how Trump is “striking boats that are operating in international waters that are operated by narco-terrorists.”

Meanwhile, Republicans tell NR they’re worried about Trump’s shameful pardon of drug kingpin Juan Orlando Hernández. He’s the Honduran president convicted by a federal jury in Manhattan of shipping 400 tons of cocaine to the United States — an investigation Trump has pooh-poohed as Biden-era overkill, but that, to the contrary, spanned the first Trump administration. Indeed, the Justice Department’s Hernández probe was run for a time by Emil Bove, Trump’s former lawyer who held a high-ranking position in the current Trump DOJ before the president appointed him to the prestigious Third Circuit appeals court. (I’ll have more to say on Bove in a separate post.)

About the Author

Andrew C. McCarthy

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, an NR contributing editor, and author of Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency.

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Audrey Fahlberg’s report for National Review on Republican concerns about the Trump administration’s unauthorized military campaign in the Caribbean quotes one of the president’s allies, Senator Cynthia Lummis (R., Wyo.): “We all know that [Nicolás] Maduro continues in office, even though he lost the last election, and they are narco-terrorists.” Another, Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), chimes in about how Trump is “striking boats that are operating in international waters that are operated by narco-terrorists.”

Meanwhile, Republicans tell NR they’re worried about Trump’s shameful pardon of drug kingpin Juan Orlando Hernández. He’s the Honduran president convicted by a federal jury in Manhattan of shipping 400 tons of cocaine to the United States — an investigation Trump has pooh-poohed as Biden-era overkill, but that, to the contrary, spanned the first Trump administration. Indeed, the Justice Department’s Hernández probe was run for a time by Emil Bove, Trump’s former lawyer who held a high-ranking position in the current Trump DOJ before the president appointed him to the prestigious Third Circuit appeals court. (I’ll have more to say on Bove in a separate post.)

About the Author

Andrew C. McCarthy

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, an NR contributing editor, and author of Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency.