On an unknown date, Trump clandestinely directed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to engage in covert actions against Venezuela. Trump acknowledged this fact on October 15.
On that same day, Trump stated that he was considering strikes on Venezuela itself.
“We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” the president told reporters hours after The New York Times reported the secret authorization.
The New York Times
The authorization permits the CIA to engage in lethal, covert actions against Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his allies. The scope of operations include the broader Caribbean region, which has seen a string of illegal strikes against small vessels, which the Trump administration alleges of being narco-terrorists with limited evidence. The intelligence operations may be unilaterally conducted by the CIA, or in conjunction with military activities.
Justifying this authorization, Trump vaguely and wrongly said that Venezuela had “emptied their prisons into the United States of America.” In reality, and according to United States intelligence, there is no cooperation between Maduro, Tren de Aragua, and other Venezuelan prison gangs.
Secretary of State and national security adviser Marco Rubio further justified Trump’s escalation against Maduro by labeling him a “narco-terrorist;” the Trump administration has put forward a $50 million reward for information that would enable the arrest and conviction of Maduro on drug trafficking charges. CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who has shaped the administration’s Venezuela strategy alongside Rubio, has clarified that a key objective is to oust Maduro from power. The CIA worked toward this objective as early as Trump’s first time in January 2019. Chief domestic policy adviser Stephen Miller is in support of this goal.
In 2017, Trump, during his first term, threatened direct military action against Venezuela while it was in the throes of a more overt political crisis following an election that was widely considered fraudulent by the domestic opposition and international community. Trump ultimately backed down. However, with the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group in the Caribbean, and Trump’s domestic political problems as they relate to the Epstein files, how far Trump is willing to go during his second term remains to be seen.
