The Trump administration informed congressional leaders about the strikes only after the Venezuela operation began, congressional sources said. The gang of eight, the House and Senate leaders and the chairs and ranking members of the intelligence committees, received the notification.
The chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, GOP Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, confirmed in an interview with Fox News that he was not told in advance of the strikes. He indicated that he views Maduro’s arrest as a law enforcement effort that would not require advance congressional notification.
“Congress isn’t notified when the FBI is going to arrest a drug trafficker or a cyber criminal here in the United States,” he said. “Nor should Congress be notified when the executive branch is executing arrests on indicted persons X,” and he pointed out that “the FBI was part of this operation, part of the arrest of Maduro and his wife, who were indicted here in the United States.“
“So, Congress doesn’t need to be notified every time the executive the branch is making an arrest, and that’s exactly what happened this morning in Venezuela, and now Maduro’s going to come to the United States, and he’s to going to face justice,” Cotton said.
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the vice chairman of the committee, in a statement referred to Maduro as a “corrupt authoritarian who has repressed his people,” but said the Constitution “places the gravest decisions about the use of military force in the hands of Congress for a reason. Using military force to enact regime change demands the closest scrutiny, precisely because the consequences do not end with the initial strike.”
He also expressed concern that the U.S. operation would lead authoritarian regimes to take similar action: “If the United States asserts the right to use military force to invade and capture foreign leaders it accuses of criminal conduct, what prevents China from claiming the same authority over Taiwan’s leadership? What stops Vladimir Putin from asserting similar justification to abduct Ukraine’s president?”
Natalie McCormick contributed to this post.