Senate Democrats are furious that the Trump administration held a briefing for lawmakers on Wednesday about U.S. military strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and only invited Republican senators to attend.
“What the administration did in the last 24 hours is corrosive not only to our democracy but downright dangerous for our national security,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters on Thursday, warning that the move set a “troubling precedent” that had trampled on the longheld bipartisan tradition of bipartisan briefings of Congress on U.S. military activities abroad.
“They know they screwed up,” Warner added of Trump’s White House. “And where in the hell were my Republican senators, whom we have worked on everything [with] in a bipartisan fashion? Why didn’t they say, ‘Isn’t this a little bit weird they don’t have any Democrats in the room?’”
The U.S. military killed 14 people in missile strikes against alleged drug cartel boats in the Eastern Pacific earlier this week, part of nearly a dozen attacks on vessels off the coast of Venezuela in recent months. Critics have called the use of force unconstitutional since it lacks congressional authorization. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have pressed for more information about the strikes, including their legal justification.