Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has slammed a report alleging he ordered U.S. service members to launch a second strike on a suspected drug-carrying vessel after an initial attack left two survivors, denying experts’ claims that he may be guilty of war crimes.

“As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland,” Hegseth wrote on X Friday night.

He was likely referring to a bombshell report by The Washington Post about a Sept. 2 attack on a suspected drug-carrying vessel in the Caribbean Sea.

In a story published earlier on Friday, the Post reported the former Fox News host had issued a verbal directive to the special ops commander overseeing the strike to “kill everybody” aboard the boat.

According to the Post’s source, a first missile tore through the waters off Trinidad, hitting the vessel and setting it ablaze. Commanders watched the boat burn on a live drone feed for several minutes, but were later surprised to see two survivors holding onto the burning wreckage.

To follow Hegseth’s directive, the special ops commander allegedly ordered a second strike, killing the remaining crew and bringing the death toll to 11.

Sources familiar with the matter also confirmed the account to CNN.

Reports of the attack raised concerns about the constitutionality of the strikes, with some experts and lawmakers saying the alleged “double-tap” may violate the law of armed conflict, which forbids targeting an enemy combatant who’s out of the fight due to injury or surrender.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who shared the story about Hegseth’s alleged directive, accused the defense secretary of knowingly giving “illegal orders to murder people.”

While Hegseth did not expressly deny that a second attack killed survivors on the boat, he insisted the “current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict — and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.”

Since Sept. 2 — the date of the first reported airstrike on what the Trump administration calls “narco-terrorists” — more than 80 alleged drug smugglers have been killed in at least 22 attacks in both the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific oceans.

In his response — which included a paragraph criticizing former President Joe Biden for his “kid gloves approach” toward “narco-terrorists” — Hegseth stressed that every killed trafficker is “affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.” The administration, however, has yet to publicly release evidence that the boats were carrying narcotics or of the alleged traffickers’ affiliations with terrorist groups.

“These highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be ‘lethal, kinetic strikes'” designed to “stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people,” Hegseth wrote. “The Trump administration has sealed the border and gone on offense against narco-terrorists. Biden coddled terrorists, we kill them.”

Hegseth’s rebuttal came shortly after President Donald Trump announced he would issue a “full and complete pardon” to former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who’s currently serving a 45-year sentence at a federal prison in West Virginia for drug trafficking and weapons convictions.

“[Hernandez] has been, according to many people that I greatly respect, treated very harshly and unfairly,” Trump said of the ultra-conservative, disgraced politician.

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