Senator Warner criticizes Trump for excluding Democrats from briefings on boat strikes

Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, criticized the Trump administration after it held briefings with only Republican lawmakers about U.S. military strikes targeting alleged drug boats in the Caribbean.

Warner called the move to exclude Democrats from national security conferences “dangerous and indefensible.”

The senator said in a statement: “Preventing Democrats from attending a press conference about US military strikes and withholding the legal justification for those strikes from half the Senate is indefensible and dangerous.” “Decisions regarding the use of US military force are not campaign strategy sessions, nor are they the private property of a single political party.”

He continued: “For any administration to deal with them in this way erodes our national security and conflicts with Congress’s constitutional obligation to oversee matters of war and peace.”

Hegseth says the military carried out another attack on a boat carrying alleged drug terrorists

Warner said the partisan “stunt” is a “slap in the face” to the war powers responsibilities of Congress and to the men and women in uniform. He also stressed that it sets a “reckless and deeply worrying precedent.”

Reports indicate that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a legal opinion justifying the strikes, which Democrats have demanded in recent weeks.

“The administration must immediately provide Democrats with the same briefing and OLC opinion justifying these strikes, as Secretary Rubio personally promised me he would do in a face-to-face meeting on Capitol Hill just last week,” Warner said in his statement. “Americans deserve a government that fulfills its constitutional duties and treats decisions regarding the use of military force with the seriousness they require.”

The Pentagon, in response to Warner’s criticism, claimed that “appropriate” committees were briefed on the strikes.

“The War Department has briefed the appropriate committees, including the Senate Intelligence Committee, numerous times on operations targeting narco-terrorists,” Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson said in a statement. “This has happened on a partisan basis, and it will continue to do so.”

Senators look to block Trump from participating in ‘hostilities’ in Venezuela

On Wednesday, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee also wrote a letter demanding a review of the legal justification behind the series of boat strikes that they say appear to violate multiple laws.

“Drug trafficking is a terrible crime that has had devastating impacts on American families and communities and must be prosecuted. However, the President’s actions to hold alleged drug traffickers accountable must remain consistent with the law,” the letter said.

The Trump administration has also come under scrutiny over the strikes from members of his own party, including Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has raised concerns about killing people without due process and the potential for innocent people to be killed.

Paul cited Coast Guard statistics that show that a large percentage of boats boarded on suspicion of drug smuggling are innocent.

The senator also said that if the administration plans to go to war with Venezuela after targeting boats it claims are transporting drugs for the Venezuela-linked Tren de Aragua cartel, it should seek a declaration of war from Congress. In the House of Representatives, Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, made similar statements.

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This comes at a time when US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the US military on Wednesday struck another boat carrying people he said were drug terrorists. The strikes were carried out in the eastern Pacific region at the direction of President Donald Trump, killing four men on board.

This was the fourteenth strike targeting suspected drug boats since September. A total of 61 people were reportedly killed while three survived, including at least two who were later returned to their countries of origin.

The Pentagon did not reveal the identities of the dead or any evidence of drugs on board the plane.