Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) on Monday appeared on CNN with a copy of the Defense Department’s Law of War Manual, citing the government document for his analysis of the U.S. military strikes in September against suspected drug traffickers off the Trinidad coast.

The Washington Post reported Friday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a verbal order to “kill everybody” aboard a suspected drug boat on Sept. 2, and that a second strike was launched to kill the survivors, citing two people familiar with the matter.

“This is something called the Department of Defense Law of War Manual,” King told “The Source” host Kaitlan Collins. “It’s in three volumes. And the third volume applies to this situation directly. First let me say this is a case where the law is very clear. The facts aren’t.”

“Again, we’ll wait to get the facts, but it appears that two people survived the initial boat strike and they were in the water hanging on to the wreckage of the boat,” he added. “And the special forces went in and killed them. That’s against the law. That’s a war crime.”

King reiterated, “That’s a stone-cold, clear war crime.”

The senator went on to read from Section 18.3.2.1 in the manual, or “Clearly Illegal Orders to Commit Law of War Violations.” The document states in a hypothetical scenario that “orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.”

King grilled Hegseth during his confirmation hearing in January with hypothetical scenarios about the use of torture and his stance on the Geneva Conventions. King said Monday, “It’s exactly what I was concerned about because he never would answer my questions.”

“And I was asking him about the basic structure, the Geneva Convention and the laws of war,” he continued. “And he kept pivoting back to saying, ‘We don’t want to restrict our warfighters and warriors’ and all the kind of things that you’ve heard him say.”

King appeared convinced Monday this act was a war crime, but still had a lot of questions.

He told Collins, “Who gave what orders when? What was the nature of the secretary’s order? What did he say? What order did he give the admiral? Then what did the admiral do? What did the secretary know about the strike? All of those things are very relevant.”