Washington — President Trump on Monday afternoon is expected to confer with his top deputies on the next steps for U.S. operations in Venezuela, according to a senior military official and two sources familiar with the upcoming White House meeting.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are scheduled to attend what sources described as a decisional meeting regarding the next steps in the escalating pressure campaign against the Maduro regime.
Mr. Trump said recently he’s spoken with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, while the U.S. president has also built up a significant military force in the region as a part of what he’s described as an anti-drug campaign against the cartels his administration has designated as terror groups. The State Department has designated Maduro himself as a terrorist.
CNN was first to report the meeting, which comes amid the president’s looming threats of military action on land and intensifying scrutiny by lawmakers over the Pentagon’s lethal strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Monday that the president will be meeting with his national security team on Venezuela and “on many matters.”
The Washington Post reported Friday that Hegseth gave a verbal order to leave no survivors in the first U.S. strike on a suspected drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean. The U.S. attack on the vessel was announced by Mr. Trump on Sept. 2. The Post reported that the initial strike left two survivors in the water, and the commander of the operation then ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s directive, killing the survivors.
A working group of former judge advocates general said that if this is true, it would constitute “war crimes, murder, or both.” The group pointed to the Geneva Conventions, which says that members of armed forces who are out of the fight because of “sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely,” and acts including “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds” are banned. The U.S. military has killed at least 80 people in boat strikes in the Caribbean and the Pacific in “Operation Southern Spear,” which it says is targeting narco-terrorists.
The JAG group called on Congress to probe any use of the military involving “the intentional targeting of anyone – enemy combatants, non-combatants, or civilians – rendered hors de combat (“out of the fight”) as a result of their wounds or the destruction of the ship or aircraft carrying them.”
On Sunday, Mr. Trump told reporters he “wouldn’t have wanted” a reported second strike on an alleged drug boat earlier this year, while pledging to look into the incident.
“The first strike was very lethal, it was fine and if there were two people around,” the president told reporters on Air Force One. “But Pete said that didn’t happen. I have great confidence in him.”
GOP Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, was also asked Monday evening about whether he has confidence in Hegseth and about the boat strike.
“The question will be based on the facts as we find them out,” he responded. “We’re going to have some discussions within the committee. Until such times we know the full facts, we won’t be making comment.”
Last week, Mr. Trump warned that Venezuelan airspace should be considered closed, and Venezuela said the U.S. had unilaterally suspended its migrant repatriation flights and wants to “undermine the sovereignty of its airspace.”
The Trump administration says it’s aiming to stop drugs from being smuggled into the U.S., while Venezuela says Mr. Trump seeks Maduro’s ouster. Over the past several weeks, the U.S. has moved a number of military ships to the western Atlantic and the Caribbean and reopened a naval base in Puerto Rico.
On Sunday, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said the reported U.S. follow-on strike on an alleged drug boat earlier this year “rises to the level of a war crime if it’s true.”
“If that reporting is true, it’s a clear violation of the DoD’s own laws of war, as well as international laws about the way you treat people who are in that circumstance,” Kaine said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
Kaine has introduced war powers resolutions to prevent Mr. Trump from conducting strikes against Venezuela, although his efforts have fallen short in the Senate. But he said Sunday that if the U.S. military takes action on land in Venezuela, the upper chamber would likely change its stance.
