Trump weighs strikes targeting cartels inside Venezuela, part of wider pressure campaign on Maduro, sources say

By Zachary Cohen, Kylie Atwood, Kristen Holmes, Alayna Treene, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump is weighing a multitude of options for carrying out military strikes against drug cartels operating in Venezuela, including potentially hitting targets inside the country as part of a broader strategy aimed at weakening leader Nicolas Maduro, according to multiple sources briefed on the administration’s plans.

Tuesday’s deadly strike on an alleged drug boat departing Venezuela was a direct reflection of those options, sources said, and marked a significant escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign against drug cartels, many of which it’s designated as terrorist groups. Multiple sources told CNN Tuesday’s strike was just the beginning of a much larger effort to rid the region of narcotics trafficking and potentially dislodge Maduro from power.

Asked by a reporter on Friday if he would like to see regime change in Venezuela, Trump said, “We’re not talking about that.”

“But we are talking about the fact that [Venezuela] had an election, which was a very strange election, to put it mildly,” Trump said, referring to last year’s presidential race in Venezuela marred by accusations of electoral fraud.

The US has moved substantial military firepower into the Caribbean in recent weeks, a move meant in part to be a signal to Maduro, according to multiple White House officials.

Ships armed with Tomahawk missiles, an attack submarine, a range of aircraft and more than 4,000 US sailors and Marines are now all positioned near Venezuela. Two White House officials told CNN 10 advanced F-35 fighter jets are also being sent to Puerto Rico, where a Marine unit is currently conducting amphibious landing training exercises.

The administration has taken steps to connect Maduro to its broader anti-drug mission – labeling him as a narco-terrorist with ties to some of those recently-designated cartels – and doubling the bounty for his arrest to $50 million.

‘Green light’ to kill terrorists

Earlier this year, Trump authorized the military to carry out lethal operations against cartels his administration designated as terrorist groups, according to a source familiar with the matter, a move in which the president appeared to claim the power to treat suspected smugglers not as criminals, but enemy combatants.

Asked Tuesday if the US would consider strikes on Venezuelan soil against the Maduro regime, Secretary of State Marco Rubio didn’t count out the possibility.

“This is a counter-drug operation,” Rubio said. “We are going to take on drug cartels wherever they are, wherever they are operating against the interests of the US.”

Rubio added more detail to the boat strike on Wednesday, saying, “Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up. And it’ll happen again. Maybe it’s happening right now,” Rubio added.

What that ultimately means for Maduro remains unclear. But multiple sources told CNN that some Trump officials believe the strike this week and future strikes on Venezuelan drug traffickers could put pressure on people around Maduro who have benefitted from the cartels’ illicit revenue streams, potentially squeezing them so much that they consider ways to oust the Venezuelan leader.

“The preferred course of action is for Maduro to leave on his own, to read the tea leaves,” one source briefed on the administration’s plans told CNN. “And then I think the message is ‘Do you want it to be easy or do you want it to be hard?’”

The Trump administration is being intentionally nebulous, the person said, cautioning that as of now, there is no indication that Trump has decided to move forward with military strikes against targets inside Venezuela.

However, two White House officials in speaking to CNN also left open the possibility of similar strikes in the future. One of the officials said Trump has told national security and defense officials that “if there is an opportunity to kill terrorists, he will immediately give them the green light to do so.”

Concern around Washington

Still, as of Friday, a lack of answers had fueled significant concern throughout Washington about what, if any, legal justification the administration has for Tuesday’s strike – and any additional military actions that could come later.

A briefing on Tuesday’s strike for members of Congress and select staff had been scheduled for Friday morning but was abruptly canceled with no explanation, according to sources familiar with the plans. The cancelation was so last minute that staffers had already gathered in a conference room on the Hill, one of the sources said.

“None of it is clear at all,” another person familiar with the cancelled congressional briefings told CNN, adding that the administration has not provided any details about the legal justifications for Tuesday’s strike, or evidence supporting their claim that it targeted known-drug traffickers.

On Thursday, the White House sent a letter to Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Senate president pro tempore, explaining its view that the president acted within his constitutional authority as commander in chief to conduct Tuesday’s strike. The letter, a copy of which was reviewed by CNN, makes clear the open-ended nature of the mission.

“It is not possible at this time to know the full scope and duration of military operations that will be necessary,” the letter read. “United States forces remain postured to carry out further military operations.

Rubio takes the lead

Shortly after Trump took office, Richard Grenell, Trump’s envoy for special missions, which included Venezuela, visited Caracas to meet with Maduro. The surprise visit prompted speculation that the White House might be walking back the “maximum pressure” campaign against Maduro that it had previously pursued. Grenell returned to the US with six Americans the US had deemed illegally detained and the White House celebrated their return.

But the episode set up a clash between Rubio, who has long opposed giving any concessions to Maduro, and Grenell, who was pushing to make deals with the leader. In the months since the visit, the White House has made clear that it opposes Maduro.

Since then, as much as any Trump official, Rubio has been the public face of the administration’s anti-cartel campaign. He was the first member of Trump’s national security team to reveal details about the boat strike after Trump announced it, promptly telling reporters that Trump would be using the “full power of America” to take on drug cartels.

His remarks came hastily on the tarmac in Florida before he flew to the region to discuss the administration’s intention to “eliminate” the threat of drug trafficking to Americans. Though Rubio initially said that the alleged Venezuela drug boat was likely bound for Trinidad or another Caribbean country, a day later, after Trump said it had been headed for the US, Rubio amended his remark and said the boat was “eventually” headed to the US.

Rubio also appeared to lay the groundwork for the lethal strike in the weeks before it occurred. On the same day that the State Department and Justice Department announced an increase in the reward for the arrest of Maduro, Rubio said that designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations would allow the US to use every tool possible, including the Pentagon, to target the groups.

Rubio has long been a harsh critic of Maduro, and in recent days has made the case that going after Maduro’s involvement in the drug trade is a critical piece of the administration’s goal to dismantle transnational organized crime.

“Nicolás Maduro is an indicted drug trafficker in the United States, and he’s a fugitive of American justice,” Rubio said on Thursday.

‘Are we going to invade Venezuela?’

Despite all this, behind the scenes the US continues to coordinate with Venezuelan officials on deportation flights. The Trump administration also recently re-issued a license for US energy giant Chevron to resume oil operations in Venezuela, home to the largest proven oil reserves in the world.

That apparent contradiction has prompted some experts and former officials to question what the administration’s truly trying to accomplish.

“Are we going to invade Venezuela and depose the regime when it’s offering most of what the administration is asking?” said Benjamin Gedan, the Venezuela director at the National Security Council under the Obama administration. “Other than regime change, it’s probably pretty open to cooperating with this administration. So that’s why the kind of sudden build of the naval forces has been surprising, because there have been a lot of hints that the US was actually headed toward normalizing relations with this regime,” he added.

The White House, meanwhile, continues to stress that all options are on the table as it relates to Venezuela, Maduro and the cartel mission, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying Trump “is prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice.”

“The Maduro regime is not the legitimate government of Venezuela,” Leavitt said when asked by reporters late last month about the possibility of sending US troops to Venezuela. “It is a narco-terror cartel, and Maduro, it is the view of this administration, is not a legitimate president. He is a fugitive head of this cartel who has been indicted in the United States for trafficking drugs into the country.”

Venezuela’s role in the drug trade

More broadly, experts point out that Venezuela plays a minimal role in the region’s drug trade, raising questions of whether drugs are being used as a pretext to go after Maduro, according to a former US official familiar with the situation.

In his first term, Trump repeatedly sought to oust Maduro by deploying various pressure tactics in hopes of facilitating a democratic transition in Venezuela.

It has long been a policy objective of the US to try spur the Venezuelan military to turn against Maduro, but it has not been successful, said Gedan, now a foreign policy fellow at Johns Hopkins University.

Retired US Ambassador Luis Moreno echoed that sentiment, telling CNN that the US has been trying to encourage dissent “forever.”

“Sometimes it works, but until you get some of the key elite units stationed outside Caracas, especially the paratroopers at the air base the outskirts of Caracas, the one that Hugo Chavez came from, that unit is crucial,” said Moreno.

Moreno, who spent much of his career at the State Department working on counternarcotics, said profits from trafficking “somewhat” support Maduro but “the amount of money, the Russians, Cubans, everyone else, and the oil – it’s not going to substitute for the oil.”

“It’s the Venezuelan military security forces that make immense money from taking payoffs from Colombian traffickers,” Moreno said. “I don’t know if that goes directly to supporting Venezuelan infrastructure.”

Gedan, however, noted that Venezuela reportedly receives a significant income “from its share of cocaine trafficking, illegal gold exports and other illegal economies.”

Venezuela is not a cocaine-producing country, and although transit through Venezuela is not ruled out, other countries are identified as emerging players in international drug markets where the sharp increase in homicides is linked to the rise in drug trafficking, according to the UN.

Rubio has sharply rejected any suggestion that Venezuela is not a key piece of the drug flow coming to the US.

“I’ve seen a lot of this reporting, and it’s fake reporting and I’ll tell you why. It says that somehow Venezuela is not involved in the drug trade because the UN says they’re not involved,” Rubio said. “I don’t care what the UN says. The UN doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

CNN’s Jennifer Hansler, Natasha Bertrand and Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this report.

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