As Congress Abdicates War Powers Responsibility, Rubio to Defend Venezuelan Operation

Secretary of State and Acting National Security Advisor Marko Rubio will today testify on the Trump administration’s actions in Venezuela earlier this month. In the weeks since kidnapping Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, President Trump has seized control of the country’s oil and directed more than $300 million of the funds from the sale to a bank account in Qatar. In response, Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, issued the following statement:

“The ongoing military actions in the Caribbean and South America, including the abduction of Venezuela’s president, are wrong, illegal under U.S. and international law and unconstitutional.

“Congressional Republicans have blocked War Powers Resolutions that would end the U.S. aggression in Venezuela, an extremely dangerous abdication of Congressional responsibility to check presidential unlawfulness.

“Marco Rubio’s central role in the planning and execution of the scheme to violate the sovereignty of Venezuela and steal the country’s oil merits a deep investigation by Congress, and potentially the removal of Rubio as Secretary of State. Rubio’s dangerously expansive vision to transform the United States into a colonizing power in the Americas must be challenged.”