Trump Denies Reports That He's Planning Strikes on Venezuela

President Donald Trump denied that he is considering strikes on Venezuela, contradicting a media report that he’d given approval for such a move as well as his own past statements that he was preparing land attacks after a series of boat strikes.

Trump replied “no” when asked by reporters Friday aboard Air Force One if it was true he is weighing whether to attack military sites in Venezuela. He said “no” again when asked if he had decided on the matter.

The comments appeared to contradict a report in the Miami Herald earlier Friday that the Trump administration has opted to attack military installations inside Venezuela, and the strikes could come at any moment. The Wall Street Journal had also reported on Thursday that the administration had identified potential targets but hadn’t made a decision on whether to carry them out.

Asked earlier about the reports, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said “unnamed sources don’t know what they’re talking about” and any announcement would come from Trump.

The reports, and Trump’s comments, further clouded the picture around the US president’s intentions for Venezuela and his push to fight narco-traffickers in the Caribbean. Last week, Trump said “the land is going to be next” after a series of attacks since mid-September on alleged drug-running boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific. The US government has provided little documentation to support its accusations the vessels were carrying drugs, other than descriptions and video clips showing footage of the bombardments.

At the time, Trump also said he wouldn’t need to seek congressional authorization to attack drug cartels. He said “land drugs are much more dangerous for them” and that “you’ll be seeing that soon.” The US Constitution grants Congress the sole power to formally declare war.

Trump advisers, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have said Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is an illegitimate leader and that his regime is facilitating trafficking. Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, has also urged the administration to ramp up pressure on Maduro to leave power.

Moving ahead with land attacks would significantly escalate a far more aggressive campaign by Trump to stop the flow of drugs. The administration announced last week it was sending a naval strike group, including an aircraft carrier, to Latin America. The US has also deployed guided missile destroyers as part of its border-security operations, in addition to the aircraft used in the strikes. 

Trump earlier confirmed he had authorized covert Central Intelligence Agency operations in Venezuela.

Citing an official it didn’t identify, the Journal said potential targets include military-controlled ports and airports that are alleged drug-trafficking hubs. 

The administration’s stance has been fanned by opposition leaders in Venezuela, including Machado. Machado told Bloomberg’s The Mishal Husain Show that increasing pressure is “the only way to force Maduro to understand that it’s time to go.”

Congressional Controversy

It’s also touched off a partisan firestorm back home. Senate Republicans received a briefing Wednesday from government officials, including representatives from the Pentagon and the Justice Department, according to Senator Mark Warner, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said Democrats were not invited.

“Along with that briefing, they shared the Office of Legal Counsel’s opinion that tries to lay out legal justification for those strikes,” Warner told reporters on Thursday. “They shared it with one political party. That is not how the system is supposed to work. That is not how national-security decisions are supposed to be made.”

Senator James Risch, the Idaho Republican who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and attended the briefing, said he was satisfied with the legal basis presented by the administration.

“I don’t think anybody left there feeling that the president was doing something that he couldn’t do,” Risch said.

The United Nations accused the US of violating international law by attacking boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Based on the “very sparse” information provided by the US, none of the people on the targeted boats appeared to pose an imminent threat to the lives of others, human-rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement Friday.

“These attacks – and their mounting human cost – are unacceptable,” Turk said. “The US must halt such attacks and take all measures necessary to prevent the extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats, whatever the criminal conduct alleged against them.”