Rubio ‘anticipates no further action in Venezuela’ with Maduro’s capture

US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio says he “an­tic­i­pates no fur­ther ac­tion in Venezuela” with the US mil­i­tary’s re­port­ed cap­ture of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro.

This is ac­cord­ing to Re­pub­li­can Sen­a­tor Mike Lee of Utah .

“He in­formed me that Nicolás Maduro has been ar­rest­ed by US per­son­nel to stand tri­al on crim­i­nal charges in the Unit­ed States, and the ki­net­ic ac­tion we saw tonight was de­ployed to pro­tect and de­fend those ex­e­cut­ing the ar­rest war­rant,” post­ed Lee on X, for­mer­ly Twit­ter, ear­ly Sat­ur­day af­ter he said he spoke di­rect­ly with Ru­bio, the son of Cuban im­mi­grants who mi­grat­ed to Mi­a­mi.

“This ac­tion like­ly falls with­in the pres­i­dent’s in­her­ent au­thor­i­ty un­der Ar­ti­cle II of the Con­sti­tu­tion to pro­tect US per­son­nel from an ac­tu­al or im­mi­nent at­tack,” he added, stat­ing that Ru­bio “an­tic­i­pates no fur­ther ac­tion in Venezuela now that Maduro is in US cus­tody.”.

Lee had ear­li­er ex­pressed skep­ti­cism about the US mil­i­tary ac­tion.

“I look for­ward to learn­ing what, if any­thing, might con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly jus­ti­fy this ac­tion in the ab­sence of a de­c­la­ra­tion of war or au­tho­riza­tion for the use of mil­i­tary force,” he wrote on X ear­ly Sat­ur­day.

In con­firm­ing US mil­i­tary strikes on Venezuela ear­ly Sat­ur­day, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald J. Trump wrote on his so­cial me­dia net­work, Truth So­cial, that Maduro and his wife were “cap­tured and flown out of the coun­try.

“The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca has suc­cess­ful­ly car­ried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader,” he wrote.

“This op­er­a­tion was done in con­junc­tion with US Law En­force­ment,” Trump added. “De­tails to fol­low. There will be a News Con­fer­ence to­day (Sat­ur­day).”

Trump de­scribed the US mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion as “bril­liant.”

“A lot of good plan­ning and lot of great, great troops and great peo­ple,” he told the New York Times terse­ly. “It was a bril­liant op­er­a­tion, ac­tu­al­ly.”

But Ari­zona De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Ruben Gal­lego, a US Ma­rine Corps vet­er­an, who was de­ployed to Iraq, char­ac­ter­ized US strikes in Venezuela as “il­le­gal.”

“This war is il­le­gal,” he wrote on X ear­ly Sat­ur­day, adding that it was the “sec­ond un­jus­ti­fied war in my life time.”

Both De­mo­c­ra­t­ic and Re­pub­li­can leg­is­la­tors have been ex­press­ing pro­found alarm over Trump’s es­ca­lat­ing mil­i­tary build-up in the Caribbean Sea un­der the pre­text of com­bat­ting nar­co-traf­fick­ing.

Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fi­cials have re­port­ed that over 125 peo­ple have been killed in the Caribbean Sea and Pa­cif­ic Ocean since the US mil­i­tary at­tacks be­gan on al­leged drug-traf­fick­ing ves­sels in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber.

US Sen­a­tor Pe­ter Welch of Ver­ment has ex­pressed deep con­cern over Trump’s de­ploy­ment of Na­tion­al Guard troops, war­ships, and fight­er jets to the re­gion.

Welch em­pha­sized in his speech on the US Sen­ate floor that Con­gress must as­sert its au­thor­i­ty un­der the War Pow­ers Act be­fore the Unit­ed States takes fur­ther unau­tho­rized mil­i­tary ac­tion.

The sen­a­tor crit­i­cized the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion for not pro­vid­ing Con­gress with enough in­for­ma­tion about re­cent mil­i­tary strikes and de­mand­ed more trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

WASH­ING­TON, Jan. 3, CMC