On November 2, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that ground strikes in Venezuela would require congressional approval. She said that if Trump “had to authorize any activity on the ground, then it’s a war, so (we need) Congress.”
Days later, Trump administration officials privately told members of Congress the same thing — that they lacked the legal justification to support strikes against any ground targets in Venezuela.
Just two months later, however, the Trump administration has done what it previously indicated it could not.
It launched what Trump called a “large-scale strike against Venezuela” and arrested its president, Nicolás Maduro, to face charges. And she launched this regime change effort without congressional approval.
(Trump claimed in November that he didn’t need congressional authorization for action on the ground, but that clearly wasn’t the consensus view in the administration.)
It seems that the mission is, for now, limited to the removal of Maduro. But as Trump noted, it involved an attack inside the country – the same circumstance that some in the administration previously indicated required authorization that he did not have. CNN reported back in early November that the administration was seeking a new legal opinion from the Department of Justice for such strikes.
And Trump in a news conference on Saturday spoke repeatedly about not only the arrest of Maduro, but also the leadership of Venezuela and its oil extraction – comments that can certainly be understood to suggest that this was about more than arresting Maduro.
A fire at Fuerte Tiuna, Venezuela’s largest military complex, is seen from a distance after a series of explosions in Caracas on January 3, 2026. The US military was behind a series of attacks against the Venezuelan capital Caracas on Saturday. – AFP/Getty Images
Legally questionable strikes inside another country – even those narrowly designed to remove foreign leaders – are hardly unheard of in recent American history. But even in that context, this is remarkable.
Justifications of the move
This is because the Trump administration has taken little care to offer a consistent set of justifications or a legal framework for the attack. And he doesn’t even appear to have notified Congress in advance, which is usually the bare minimum in such circumstances.
A full explanation of the claimed justification has yet to be released, but the early signs are characteristically confusing.
Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah said shortly after the strikes that Secretary of State Marco Rubio told him that the attack was necessary to, in Lee’s words, “protect and defend those who execute the arrest warrant” against Maduro.
“This action likely falls under the president’s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect American personnel from actual or imminent attack,” said Lee, a frequent critic of unauthorized foreign military action.
Hours later, Vice President JD Vance repeated that line.
“And a PSA to anyone who says this was ‘illegal’: Maduro has multiple charges in the United States for narcoterrorism,” Vance said on X. “You don’t get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas.”
At a later news conference, Rubio repeated the line that the military was supporting a “law enforcement function.”
But there are many people living in other countries who are under indictment in the United States; it is not the usual course of the US government to launch strikes on foreign countries to bring them to justice.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro participates in a civic-military rally in Caracas, Venezuela, on November 25, 2025. – Jesus Vargas/Getty Images/File
The administration also had not previously indicated that military force could be legally used for this reason.
Initially, Trump threatened ground attacks inside Venezuela to target drug traffickers – this despite the fact that Venezuela is apparently a relatively small player in the drug trafficking game.
Later, the administration suggested that strikes might be needed because Venezuela sent bad people to the United States.
And then, after initially downplaying the role of oil in the US pressure campaign against Venezuela and Maduro, Trump said he aimed to bring back “the oil, the land, and other assets that were previously stolen from us.”
The signals were confusing enough that even the hawkish Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina in mid-December indicated that the administration lacked “clarity” in its messages.
“I want clarity here,” Graham said. “President Trump is saying that his days are numbered. It seems to me that he wants to go. If the goal is to take him because he is a threat to our country, then say it. And what happens next? Don’t you think a lot of people want to know that?”
Despite the focus on the law enforcement operation on Saturday, Trump said at the news conference that the United States will now participate in the governance of Venezuela, at least temporarily. And repeatedly talked about her oil.
“We will rebuild the oil infrastructure,” Trump said, adding at another point: “We will run the country well.”
And even if the administration offered a more consistent justification, this does not mean that it would be an appropriate one.
Controversial 1989 memo
The most recent major example of the use of the US military for regime change is, of course, the war in Iraq. That war was authorized by Congress in 2002. The broader war on terror was authorized by Congress in 2001, after the September 11 attacks.
Since then, administrations have sought to justify various military actions in the Middle East using those authorizations – sometimes questionably. But Venezuela is in a completely different theater.
While many have compared the effort in Venezuela to Iraq, the better comparison — and one the administration seems intent on making — is Panama in 1989.
As in Venezuela, the leader of Panama at the time, Manuel Noriega, was under indictment by the United States, including for drug trafficking. And as in Venezuela, the operation was less a large-scale war than a carefully designed effort to remove the leader from power.
The Office of the Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice concluded in 1980 that the FBI did not have the authority to arrest and abduct a foreign national to face justice. But the George HW Bush administration’s OLC reversed that in the summer of 1989.
A memorandum written by William P. Barr, who would later become attorney general in that Bush administration and the first Trump administration, said that a president had “inherent constitutional authority” to order the FBI to take people into custody in foreign countries, even if it violated international law to do so.
That memo was quickly used to justify the operation to remove Noriega. (As it happens, Noriega was captured on the same day as Maduro: January 3, 1990.)
But that memorandum remains controversial to this day. It is also an extraordinarily broad grant of authority, potentially allowing American military force anywhere
Pedestrians walk past destroyed containers in the port of La Guaira after explosions were heard in Venezuela, Saturday, January 3, 2026. – Matias Delacroix/AP
And the situation in Venezuela may vary since it is a larger country that may be more difficult to control with its leader in foreign custody. It also has significant oil wealth, which means other countries may take an interest in what happens next. (China called the attack a “blatant use of force against a sovereign state.”)
Both in the news conference and in an interview with Fox News on Saturday morning, Trump invoked the possibility of a further military option, reinforcing that this could be more than simply arresting Maduro.
This also means that questions about Trump’s legal authorities can be tested again – as he has already tested them with his questionable legal attacks on alleged drug boats and other actions in the region.
What is clear is that Trump is looking once again to test the limits of his authority as president – and the tolerance of Americans for it. But this time he’s doing it on one of the biggest stages yet. And his history of running afoul of the law is certainly not over.
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