Trump Offers First Legal Justification for Venezuela Boat Strike
Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
On Sept. 4, President Donald Trump sent a letter to Congress offering his administration’s legal justification for the military strike it carried out on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea two days prior.
According to the report, which the executive branch is statutorily required to send to Congress within 48 hours of U.S. armed forces being “introduced…into hostilities,” U.S. forces “struck a vessel at a location beyond the territorial seas of any nation that was assessed to be affiliated with a designated terrorist organization”—Tren de Aragua—“and to be engaged in illicit drug trafficking activities.”
The letter claims that the Trump administration relied on the president’s Article II constitutional authority as the domestic legal basis for its actions, and maintains that it was acting pursuant to the United States’ inherent right of self-defense as a matter of international law.
Read the letter here or below:
