The Hague’s Next VIP Defendant: Why Trump’s War With Venezuelan Fishing Boats Could Land Him in the ICC’s Crosshairs

The ICC is considering charging Trump/Hegseth and others with "Extrajudicial Murder" of 21 Venezuelans

October 7, 2025

A prominent Wall Street Journal op‑ed is openly musing about plans to take Donald Trump to The Hague. At the same time, the administration has embraced lethal boat strikes “near” Venezuela and declared a “non‑international armed conflict” with drug cartels. Put those threads together and you get a chilling possibility: Trump’s next courtroom cameo might be before the International Criminal Court.

If you kill people near an ICC member state and brag about being at war, don’t be shocked when The Hague takes an interest.

The op‑ed that should terrify Trump’s lawyers

This isn’t activist chatter. A conservative legal voice in the WSJ just warned that the push to try Trump at the ICC is real enough to plan against. When skeptics start sounding alarms, it means the machinery is already humming—briefs drafted, referrals gamed out, and a target painted on Mar‑a‑Lago’s frequent flyer.

In recent weeks, the Pentagon has blown up multiple small boats off the Venezuelan coast, with fatalities on board. Officials insist the targets were cartel operatives and that some strikes happened in international waters. Then came the legal gambit: the administration told Congress the U.S. is in a non‑international armed conflict with drug cartels, a framing meant to unlock the laws‑of‑war toolkit.

That’s a problem. Declaring a “war” on cartels to justify preemptive killings at sea is a radical departure from standard international practice. And in law, location is everything.

The ICC’s door opens on territory—and Venezuela has the key

The ICC can prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of a member state, regardless of the suspect’s nationality. Venezuela is an ICC member. If even one fatal encounter happened inside Venezuela’s 12‑nautical‑mile territorial sea or struck a Venezuelan‑flagged vessel, territorial jurisdiction clicks into place over any responsible official—up to and including the former President.

The ICC already has an active Venezuela file focused on abuses by Venezuelan authorities. Translation: the Court’s spotlight is already trained on that theater; adding a strand about foreign perpetrators on Venezuelan territory would not require reinvention.

What the charges could look like

“Extrajudicial killing” is a human‑rights label, but The Hague files crimes, not adjectives. Two theories matter:

• War crimes: Unlawful killings in the context of an armed conflict. The White House’s “we’re at war with cartels” line tries to create that context. But that still requires an actual conflict with an organized armed group and a nexus between the strike and that conflict—plus proof the killings were unlawful (status of victims, precautions, proportionality).

• Crimes against humanity: Murder carried out as part of a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population, pursuant to a state policy. A one‑off interdiction won’t cut it. A repeat pattern that treats any “drug boat” as killable—especially where civilians are swept in—starts to look like the kind of policy The Hague was built to punish.

And no, “former president” is not a legal force field. The ICC doesn’t recognize head‑of‑state immunity, and trials can’t proceed in absentia. If judges ever issue a warrant, every trip abroad becomes a game of handcuffs roulette.

Why “international waters” won’t save him

You’ll hear it on loop: international waters, international waters. Fine. Where are the coordinates? The government hasn’t publicly released them. If any strike crossed the invisible line into Venezuela’s territorial sea—or targeted a Venezuelan‑registered boat—the “international waters” mantra collapses. One mistake on a nautical chart could be the difference between political bluster and an arrest warrant.

Trump, if charged, will have to do what Netanyahu and Putin do to stay out of the clink at the Hague - Fly AROUND countries that have agreed to the ICC warrants and never set foot in those countries again.

LOLZ.

“We’ll investigate ourselves.” About that…

The ICC is a court of last resort. If a country genuinely investigates and prosecutes, The Hague steps back. But rubber‑stamp internal reviews, classified summaries, and politics‑first outcomes don’t cut it. Add years of public hostility toward the ICC and you’ve written the Prosecutor’s complementarity brief for them: the home system won’t deliver real accountability, so the Court must.

Canada is a trusted member nation of the International Criminal Court, and we’re right next door. It’s going to be Netanyahu-awkward if Trump gets indicted and tries to sneak up to Canada for a meeting or round of golf.

There would be something beautiful watching Munties perp walk him to a waiting C-130 to make the cross Atlantic trip to Brussels after watching him force hundreds of thousands of migrants, legal or not, onto deportation planes, though, wouldn’t it?

How a case would be built (and why Trump should be nervous)

1. Nail the map: GPS coordinates for every fatal strike, and the flag state of every boat hit. Eleven‑point‑nine nautical miles from shore is a different universe than twelve‑point‑one.

2. Confirm the conflict: Show an organized armed group and protracted violence, not sporadic interdictions spun as “war.”

3. Prove the crime: Victim status, precautions taken (or not), proportionality analysis, rules of engagement.

4. Climb the chain: Orders, briefings, approvals, and real‑time oversight that connect the Commander‑in‑Chief to specific operations.

5. Beat the escape hatch: Demonstrate that domestic “investigations” are performative, not genuine.

None of this is science fiction. Variations on this roadmap have already taken down sitting heads of state and put non‑party leaders on wanted posters.

The bigger picture: Trump vs. The Hague is personal—and escalating

The Trump world has spent years painting the ICC as a hostile foreign court. Mainly to run cover for Netanyahu, Putin, and others like him who think it’s their God given right to murder innocents to remain in power. That posture plays well at rallies but backfires in The Hague, where it reads as proof that meaningful accountability won’t happen at home. It also hardens the resolve of investigators, NGOs, and allied governments who prefer their war‑crimes prosecutors un‑intimidated.

If you kill people at sea near an ICC member, declare yourself at war, and dare the world’s war‑crimes court to do something about it—don’t clutch pearls when it does. The legal path to The Hague is narrow but real. And it turns on facts the White House doesn’t want to publish: where the boats were, and who was on them.

If even one strike is on the wrong side of that invisible line, Trump’s next court appearance won’t be in Manhattan or Georgia. It’ll be in The Hague.