Trump’s Venezuela strike sparks constitutional clash as Maduro is hauled into US
The Trump administration’s stunning overnight operation in Venezuela Saturday involving at least seven military strikes and the capture of Nicolás Maduro drew familiar legal criticisms from across the political spectrum.President...
By Fox News · Fox News
The Trump administration’s stunning overnight operation in Venezuela Saturday involving at least seven military strikes and the capture of Nicolás Maduro drew familiar legal criticisms from across the political spectrum. President Donald Trump's decision to authorize the strikes, which early reports say killed dozens of foreign military and law enforcement personnel, follows decades of presidents sidestepping Congress to launch offensives abroad. But experts and lawmakers warned that the legal questions do not end there. While Maduro and his wife are detained in New York and face prosecution for alleged narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation and weapons charges, Trump has said the U.S. incursion in the South American country was about more than Maduro's capture. Trump said the U.S. plans to take over Venezuela and exploit its enormous oil reserves, a sweeping vow that raised a bevy of concerns among Democrats and non-interventionist Republicans. DEFIANT MADURO DECLARES HE IS A 'PRISONER OF WAR' IN FIRST US COURT APPEARANCE Clark Neily, a senior vice president at the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank, told Fox News Digital that Trump’s decision to carry out Maduro’s arrest tested constitutional limits but was likely legal. Neily said, though, that the president’s subsequent suggestions of regime change in a sovereign nation were more problematic. "When a decision is made to entangle the United States in that kind of situation – and, there's also been talk by Trump of putting boots on the ground, so that could involve the commitment of substantial military resources and potentially put the lives of our service members on the line – that's really the kind of decision that I believe the Constitution commits to the Congress and not to the unilateral discretion of a president," Neily said. Congress has the sole power to declare war, but presidents have long used military force without formal congressional approval. Neily said a top historical comparison c…