Closed-door briefings on the Trump administration’s military campaign against alleged drug-smuggling boats provided lawmakers with little clarity on the overall strategy of the operation and whether the ultimate goal is to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
After separate House and Senate briefings Tuesday from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, lawmakers on both sides of the regime-change debate said they received no clear answers on the administration’s endgame.
“I want to know what’s going to happen next,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a confidant of President Donald Trump and influential GOP defense hawk. “Is it the policy to take Maduro down? It should be.”
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., similarly told reporters that “the main question in front of us [is], what is the administration’s strategy?”
“It seems clear to me, their goal is to force Maduro out and the question, what comes next — how do we prepare for and handle the consequences of a brutal dictator being removed whether by his own military or by popular uprising or by our military — there was no clear answer to that question, and I’m not sure there is a clear answer,” Coons said.
Hegseth and Rubio briefed the full Congress for the first time since the administration’s anti-drug military campaign began in September, amid heightened scrutiny from lawmakers on the strike that kicked off the campaign.
Lawmakers have been demanding answers after The Washington Post first reported late last month that the Sept. 2 strikes included a second round that killed survivors of the first round, raising questions about whether Hegseth or the military officers overseeing the operation violated the laws of war against targeting shipwrecked survivors.
While administration officials have acknowledged there were two rounds of strikes, they have denied any wrongdoing or that Hegseth ordered everyone aboard the boat killed.
Despite the attention on the Sept. 2 strikes — and weeks of lawmakers demanding a wider release of the video of the attack — lawmakers were not shown the video Tuesday, they said after the briefing. So far, the video has only been shown to a limited group of congressional leaders and leadership on key committees.
But all members of the House Armed Services and Senate Armed Services committees will be able to see the video Wednesday in briefings with Special Operations Command chief Adm. Frank Bradley, Hegseth confirmed Tuesday.
“This is the 22nd bipartisan briefing on a highly successful mission to counter designated terrorist organizations, cartels, bringing weapons — weapons meaning drugs — to the American people and poisoning the American people for far too long,” Hegseth told reporters.
Still, Hegseth said there are no plans to publicly release the full video.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters that during the briefing he reiterated his demand to release the unedited video to at least the full Senate, but was rebuffed.
“There is no problem with sources and methods because the senators will see it in the SCIF,” Schumer said, referring to the secure room where lawmakers receive classified briefings. “I also believe that every American should see an appropriate version of this.”
A prelude to war?
The briefing also comes after Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, suggested that the goal of boat strikes are to oust Maduro.
“He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he will,” Wiles said in an interview with Vanity Fair published Tuesday.
Noting Wiles’ comments, Rep. Gregory W. Meeks, D-N.Y., the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told reporters that the House briefing provided “no real answers about whether or not what we’re about to enter into is a war in Venezuela.”
“If this is about regime change, it seems to me that the administration should say that’s what it is, and should come to Congress to ask for that authorization, which has not taken place,” Meeks said.
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said his takeaway from the briefing is the strikes are intended to deter drug trafficking, adding that the idea of regime change “is not what was presented.”
“Maduro is a bad guy, but I’m very hesitant to have an American invasion to do that,” Bacon said. “I’m all for pressuring the guy, but invasion is a totally different story. “
The House could vote later this week on a resolution from Meeks intended to block Trump’s boat strikes, as well as a separate resolution from Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., aimed at preventing military action in or against Venezuela. Similar measures have already stalled in the Senate, which may have a war powers vote this week as well.
Partisan divide
Overall, the briefings appeared to do little to change minds about the boat strikes, with Republicans in lockstep with the administration and Democrats roundly opposed.
“It’s a very rigorous process, both from an intelligence operation and also legal analysis and targeted on what I think appropriately has been called a weapon of mass destruction, which are the drugs that are coming into the United States and killing our citizens,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
By contrast, Sen. Christopher S. Murphy, D-Conn., said the administration was just “checking a box” with the briefing.
“There’s nothing they said in that briefing that justifies what they’re doing legally or or tactically,” Murphy said. “So this is basically boys with toys wasting billions of dollars on a mission that doesn’t make us any safer.”
Caroline Coudriet, John M. Donnelly and Mark Satter contributed to this report.
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