Even military personnel aren’t buying the Trump administration’s justification for yanking Nicolás Maduro out of office.
CNN’s military analyst Cedric Leighton, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, called Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s defense of the late-night smash-and-grab capture of the Venezuelan president and his wife “a bit of a stretch” on Saturday’s CNN This Morning Weekend.
“It is definitely a stretch to say that this was the protection of law enforcement personnel to conduct this operation,” Leighton told CNN’s Victor Blackwell.
Leighton was referring to the administration’s position that the multiple bombs dropped on Venezuela during the military’s arrest of Maduro, which Venezuela’s government said killed an unknown number of civilians and military personnel, were only done to “protect” the American military personnel that were “executing the arrest warrant.”
The world learned of the Trump administration’s justifications via a Saturday morning tweet from Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah.
In the post, Lee said Marco Rubio called him to discuss the early-morning attack in Caracas, and that the 54-year-old Secretary of State informed him “the kinetic action we saw tonight was deployed to protect and defend those executing the arrest warrant.”
“This action likely falls within the president’s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect U.S. personnel from an actual or imminent attack,” Lee added.
Lee had grumbled two hours earlier about the attack happening without Congressional approval. The Constitution grants the president the authority to begin military operations without consulting Congress, but Congress must approve a declaration of war.
According to Lee, Rubio said he did not anticipate further military activity in Venezuela now that Maduro has been captured.
The legal implications of America’s late-night raid and kidnapping of Maduro remain unclear. The attack was only known to top military and administration officials, and Trump did not inform any members of Congress, including the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, before the raid.
The Senate Armed Services Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In her bombshell Vanity Fair interview published mid-December, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said Trump would need congressional approval for a land war in Venezuela.
Maduro, 63, and his wife Cilia Flores, 69, are to face trial in a New York court for various crimes related to Maduro allegedly being the leader of the “Cartel of the Suns,” an amorphous operation that the U.S. government alleges is involved in smuggling drugs into the United States.
The U.S. government accused Maduro of leading the drug trafficking operation in March 2020, which Maduro denied. In November, the U.S. government declared Cartel of the Suns to be a Foreign Terrorist Organization, bolstering its legal justifications for ousting Maduro.
Maduro refused to leave power despite evidence suggesting he lost Venezuela’s last election in a landslide.
