Charlie Savage

That's a point where, despite the OLC memo, you could see a later prosecutor, I guess this would be in the court-martial system, were there the political will to do so, taking a hard look at that.

Potentially, down the road, if there's no sweeping preemptive pardon.

Now, of course, there's also international law.

There is a court in The Hague

in the Netherlands, called the International Criminal Court.

And it exists as a standing court to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide.

We are not a party.

The countries of Venezuela and Colombia, among others, are parties.

And so there are circumstances in which, in theory, American officials could be prosecuted in The Hague for actions, let's say, inside Venezuela, against Venezuelans, in the same way right now.

The court in The Hague has an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, even though Russia is not a member of the treaty that creates the court, for his actions in Ukraine, because Ukraine is a member.

But these boats attacks are, for now at least, all in international waters.

And these boats are not flying, as far as we know or have seen on the videos, any country's flag.

They're not registered to Venezuela or Colombia.

They're just little boats.

They're not ships.

And so without being registered to a country, without being in the country's territory...

There's no jurisdiction for the International Criminal Court over these attacks.

So nothing for now, unless this operation spreads to Venezuela, as it might.

But for now, nothing on these attacks, including the September 2 attack, would come before the International Criminal Court.

So on the one hand, it is good that people are paying attention.