“To authorize the President of the United States to issue letters of marque and reprisal for the purpose of seizing the assets of certain Russian citizens, and for other purposes.
Specifically, the holder of such a letter shall be authorized to employ all means reasonably necessary to seize any asset, such as a yacht or plane, outside of the United States that belongs to a Russian citizen on the Office of Foreign Asset Control’s List of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons.”
This bill authorizes the President to issue letters of marque and reprisal to privately armed individuals and entities to seize the assets of certain Russian citizens.
The U.S. Coast Guard is an officially constituted military unit and police officers have their own enforcement and seizure powers so don’t need “letters of marque”.
As you note, the bill is entirely silent on the important topic of flags. Perhaps this is to ensure that the newly constituted privateers don’t go colonising other countries.
Always embarrasing when you send a chap off to scuttle a few Spanish Russian ships and he comes back and says “Oh by the way, I’ve seized Panama for the CrownUS Government great State of Texas”.
The bill does propose that the intrepid adventurers will have to post a security bond so they definitely won’t go off doing any naughty, pirate-y things.
I assume the point is that right now the assets are being seized by governments, and Lance Gooden would really like them to go to certain private individuals. The language to old-time piracy is fun but really, there are a lot of pirates in business sector who might be interested.
