CNN army analyst and retired U.S. Air Power Col. Cedric Leighton on Saturday questioned Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s justification of the nighttime operation to bomb Venezuela and capture its leader, Nicolas Maduro.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) cited Rubio’s reasoning on social media.
“He knowledgeable me that Nicolás Maduro has been arrested by U.S. personnel to face trial on legal expenses in the USA, and that the kinetic motion we noticed tonight was deployed to guard and defend these executing the arrest warrant,” Lee wrote Saturday, including that the nighttime operation “seemingly falls” throughout the president’s authority beneath Article II of the Structure to guard U.S. personnel from an assault.
Leighton evaluated that assertion on “CNN This Morning Weekend.”
“Properly, it’s a little bit of a stretch, by way of combining a legislation enforcement motion with what truly is a army motion,” he said. “So the precise removing of a head of state has all types of ramifications from a global legislation perspective and positively from a army perspective.”
Trump announced at 4:21 a.m. on his Truth Social platform that Maduro and his spouse, Cilia Flores, had been captured and flown to the U.S. to face justice. Information of the nighttime operation in Venezuela’s capital of Caracas shocked numerous world leaders, a lot of whom decried the transfer.
The Trump administration has accused Maduro of trafficking narcotics reminiscent of fentanyl into the U.S. It has launched deadly strikes on alleged drug smugglers off the nation’s coast since September, killing scores of individuals with out due course of or congressional approval.
The administration has additionally seized multiple Venezuelan oil tankers, elevating suspicions from Democratic lawmakers, pundits and advocates for worldwide legislation about the true motivation behind the conflict — as Venezuela holds the world’s largest oil reserves.
When requested final month if this may nonetheless be justified as a campaign in opposition to drug trafficking, Trump said, “Well, it’s about a lot of things.” He elaborated in a “Fox & Mates” interview hours after Saturday’s strike.
When requested over the cellphone about “the long run” of the oil business in Venezuela, Trump said, “Properly, I see that we’re going to be very strongly concerned in it, that’s all. I imply, what can I say?”
Leighton mentioned Saturday’s operation is “very comparable” to Operation Simply Trigger in 1989, when the U.S. bombed Panama to overthrow its then-dictator Manuel Noriega, as each U.S. legislation enforcement and army personnel have been used “to assist make that arrest occur.” U.S. authorities equally needed Noriega on the time for drug trafficking.
“So there’s some precedent for this sort of motion throughout the U.S. historical past of those sorts of operations,” Leighton mentioned Saturday. “However it’s undoubtedly a stretch to say that this was the safety of legislation enforcement personnel to conduct this operation.”
Throughout his cellphone interview on “Fox & Mates,” Trump bragged about “the speed, the violence” and the “bravery” on show throughout the nighttime army operation, stating, “I watched it actually like I used to be watching a tv present.”
