Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) criticized the Trump administration’s legal position on military boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea saying it didn’t pass the “smell test.”
Partial transcript as follows:
MARTHA RADDATZ: Do you support regime change? Do you support getting rid of him? And if so, how would you do it?
WARNER: Listen, I think Maduro is a bad guy. There’s plenty of other bad leaders around the world where we don’t have this level of massed forces. You know, I thought Donald Trump was going to end the endless wars and not make America the policeman for the world. If anything, it seems like, you know, in this case he’s trying to up the ante. In Ukraine, where I think there is a just alliance of democracies against Putin, he seems to be taking the opposite action. So, I’m not sure where he’s headed here. I do fear that boots on the ground in Venezuela could be a disaster.
RADDATZ: This certainly was a distraction to the boat strikes. The second strike in particular with the survivor. Let me ask you first to clarify. Do you think the strikes on those suspected drug boats are actually drug boats? You’re on the Intelligence Committee. I know you’ve seen intelligence. Are you confident those are actually drug boats?
WARNER: I’m confident the majority of these boats have drugs on them. They knew the 11 individuals on the boat — the strike on September 2nd. They don’t know all of the individuals on many of the other boats.
And what I worry about is this legal opinion, which really seems to stretch — I don’t think passes the smell test, saying, somehow having the — having drugs on these boats is the equivalent of say the Iranian Revolutionary Guard having bombs and weapons. And I think the American people and Congress deserve to see the video that I saw of — with these survivors, what took place, how they were waving, it appears, to the airplanes, and then they take this strike. I also think it’s important that all of the documentation of the execution order, the after action report. There’s a legal option in the JAG Corps. We need to see that as well because I am reluctant to kind of reach the conclusion that some of my colleagues have that this was an illegal strike.
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