How Trump Just Bombed His Way Into a Legal Nightmare
The president’s team has been desperately defending the legality of his “large-scale strike” against Venezuela.
On Saturday morning, President Donald Trump resorted to a shocking tactic twice.
First, he used American air power to capture President Nicolás Maduro.
Then, he completely undermined his team’s carefully crafted narrative regarding the legality of his invasion of Venezuela.
The president did not seek congressional approval before ordering raids against the oil-rich South American country, even though the Constitution requires Congress to authorize any act of war. Any other president might have thought twice, but not Trump.
“We’re going to run the country,” Trump said Saturday at a press conference announcing his intention to seize Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.
“We’re going to run it.”
But his decision to invade a foreign country without congressional approval could trigger a legal crisis and a political disaster, as it contradicts his “America First” principles.
Trump’s remarks come as other members of his administration are trying to portray Maduro’s arrest as a criminal proceeding, not an act of war. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been indicted on narcoterrorism charges and will be extradited to the United States to stand trial in the Southern District of New York.
According to Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah, Secretary of State Marco Rubio assured skeptical senators that no further action would be taken in Venezuela now that Maduro is in U.S. custody.
But Trump quickly contradicted that claim.
“It’s a war,” he told Fox News. “We’re losing 300,000 people a year.” The president has repeatedly claimed that 300,000 Americans die each year from drug overdoses, even though the number of overdose deaths recorded last year was less than 80,000. Most of these deaths are due to fentanyl, which is not produced in Venezuela.
Yet, Trump has attempted to frame the escalating violence against Venezuelan targets in recent months as a “new war on drugs,” ordering deadly raids on suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, and launching a CIA drone strike against a Venezuelan port terminal.
Vice President J.D. Vance also invoked drugs in an attempt to deflect growing criticism regarding the legality of Trump’s massive crackdown on Venezuela and the isolation of Maduro. “To everyone saying this was ‘illegal,’” Vance wrote in a post on X. “Maduro is indicted in the United States on multiple counts of drug-related terrorism. You don’t get to escape justice for drug trafficking in the United States simply because you live in a palace in Caracas.”
In a statement to the Daily Beast, a senior White House official described Saturday’s raid as a “law enforcement operation” conducted by the Department of Defense and the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) at the request of the Department of Justice.
The official specified that the arrests were carried out by the DEA.
He added, addressing the House and Senate majority and minority leaders, as well as the most influential members of the congressional intelligence committees: “The Gang of Eight was notified, as a courtesy, at the beginning of the operation.” However, House Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries stated on X that the Trump administration “did not seek congressional authorization for the use of military force and failed to properly inform Congress before the operation.”
Heads of state generally enjoy sovereign immunity for all their actions, with the exception of crimes against humanity. However, the Department of Justice created a legal loophole by refusing to recognize him as a head of state, thus depriving him of diplomatic immunity.
Legal analyst Scott Horton wrote on BlueSky that the Trump administration appeared to be closely following the legal precedent established by the Department of Justice under President George W. Bush, which arrested and prosecuted Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega in 1989.
Noriega contested his trial, arguing that he had been illegally “kidnapped.” However, a federal appeals court ruled, under the legal principle known as the Kerr-Frisby doctrine, that even if a defendant had been illegally brought to the United States, the court was entitled to try him.
This does not mean, however, that Trump’s strikes against Venezuela were legal.
The United States has repeatedly tried to lure Maduro to American soil to stand trial, even attempting to bribe his pilot to alter the course of his presidential plane, but it has always refrained from launching a full-scale invasion.
White House Chief of Staff Suzy Wells herself acknowledged, in a revealing interview with Vanity Fair published last month, that if the president were to extend his attacks on ships suspected of drug trafficking—attacks already based on shaky legal grounds—to targets on Venezuelan soil, he would need congressional approval.
“If he authorizes any operation on the ground, it’s war, and so we would need congressional approval,” she said.
In addition to violating the Constitution, some legal experts and international leaders argue that these strikes constitute a flagrant violation of international law, including Article 2 of the UN Charter, which prohibits wars of aggression.
The president could argue that his strikes against Venezuela were in self-defense to prevent overdose deaths, but narcotics experts believe Venezuela plays a relatively minor role in drug trafficking in Latin America.
Coca cultivation is virtually nonexistent there, with the country serving only as a secondary transit route for just 5% of the cocaine produced in neighboring Colombia, the world’s leading producer.
According to the New York Times, most of the drugs transiting through Venezuela are destined for Europe, not the United States.
These facts have led many observers—including Maduro himself before his arrest—to assert that the president’s interest in Venezuela is more closely tied to the country’s estimated 300 billion barrel crude oil reserves, a claim Trump all but confirmed in his statements to the press.
With the Supreme Court having granted Trump full presidential immunity from prosecution for all his “official acts,” this case has highlighted the embarrassing fact that the administration’s position is that U.S. courts can hold foreign presidents, but not U.S. presidents, accountable for their crimes.
