Democrats say they were left in the dark on Trump's drug boat strike
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President Trump in the Oval Office on Sept. 3. Photo: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Leaders on the Senate Intelligence Committee are expecting to receive a bipartisan briefing this week about the deadly U.S. strike on a drug vessel off the shore of Venezuela, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: Lawmakers want more information from the White House on what Trump officials have indicated is just the start of a broader military campaign.
🔦 Democrats were left in the dark on the operation, multiple sources told Axios, and they want answers on the legal basis for the strike.
- Their leaders raised similar concerns following President Trump's airstrikes on Iran in June.
- U.S. officials said the attack on the ship — which killed 11 members of the Tren de Aragua cartel, according to Trump — targeted drug trafficking. But it's threaded with the hopes of regime change in Venezuela.
The big picture: Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a member of the Senate Intel panel, told Axios that stopping drugs from reaching U.S. soil is a "positive thing" but said he has not been officially briefed on the operation.
- "Donald Trump will be gone at some point, and we should not put our service members in a position that they're doing things that are outside of legal boundaries," Kelly said.
- Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also told Axios he received no briefing, background or information about the strike: "That is concerning."
The other side: Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) told Axios that as a senior member of the Intel committee, he has been briefed on the strike.
- Risch declined to provide any details on what that briefing looked like or when it took place, given the classification of such communications.
- Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who spent time in South America last month and has family in Colombia, cheered on the strike. "They were bringing drugs that were going to kill Americans, so we killed them first," he said. "We're going to be doing a lot more of that."
- Moreno said he didn't think Congress needs to be notified ahead of such strikes.
Zoom out: Trump announced the stunning strike on Tuesday in his militarized war on drugs.
- The U.S. has been amassing ships off Venezuela's shores and escalating tensions between the U.S. and the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
- The administration has labeled Maduro the leader of a drug-trafficking terrorist cartel.
