The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee called on the Trump administration to immediately provide the legal justification for ongoing military strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats, after it was revealed that a select group of GOP senators received that justification during a classified briefing on Wednesday. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who is a member of the so-called Gang of Eight group of intelligence and congressional leadership, told reporters during a press briefing that someone should be held accountable for barring Democrats from the secret briefing, the exclusivity of which was first reported by CQ Roll Call. Warner said that after the news broke, the White House said it would make the legal justification and other details from the briefing available to some Democrats — a promise that Warner said had not been fulfilled and was “bullshit.” “Every United States senator ought to be read in and until that happens I don’t know how you begin to rebuild trust,” he said. When asked to clarify whether the legal justification would be shared with all senators, why Democrats were excluded from the briefing and whether there were future briefings being planned on the hostilities, White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said Democrats were pushing "bogus claims" about the administration's efforts to "kill narcoterrorists" as a way to distract from the government shutdown. "The Department of War has held nine bipartisan briefings on narcoterrorist strikes, with additional bipartisan briefings scheduled, and individually works through requests from the Hill. It’s pathetic that these Democrats care more about running cover for foreign drug smugglers and illegal immigrants seeking taxpayer-funded health care than paying federal workers and protecting American citizens from deadly narcotics," Kelly said. Kelly did not say whether the legal justification for the strikes would be shared more widely, or why Democrats were excluded from Wednesday's briefing. In remarks made during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., decried the partisan nature of the briefing, noting that the panel traditionally conducts its business in a nonpartisan manner. Kaine said the briefing was the latest example of a disturbing trend with the Pentagon that started when, as a nominee, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth refused to meet with Democrats on the committee. Since then, Kaine said, questions from Democrats to the Defense Department have gone unanswered, notably after 25 senators directed questions to the Pentagon on Sept. 10 about the legal authority and evidence supporting the administration's strikes against alleged narcotics traffickers. "We have not been given answers to those questions," Kaine said. "The news yesterday followed recent news that Pentagon officials have been instructed not to communicate directly with members of Congress, except through the congressional liaison office, which has not been the case in the past." Kaine also noted that news reports said that military officials connected to the strikes had been asked to sign nondisclosure agreements. "I don't speak for anybody else on this committee other than me, but I work my tail off on this committee, this is the dominant responsibility I have as United States senator, I represent a state that has more military equities than most. I'm a military dad," Kaine said. "I don't deserve to be treated like an annoyance, an obstacle or an enemy by the Pentagon." Meanwhile in the House, Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., said in a post on X that during a classified House Armed Services Committee briefing Thursday on the strikes — to which all panel members were invited — the Pentagon pulled its lawyers from the meeting with no notice. Those lawyers are the “exact people who would supply a legal justification for these strikes,” Moulton said. Rep. Gregory W. Meeks, D-N.Y., the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a member of the Armed Services panel, said in a statement Thursday that the briefing was "incredible for how little information was shared, how little time briefers stay to answer questions and how completely absent any credible legal rationale was" for the strikes. "There remain many questions unanswered, and I am more concerned about this administration’s conduct today than I was yesterday," Meeks said. Partisan tensions Warner also criticized his Republican colleagues who attended the briefing and did not speak out when they realized that no Democrats were involved. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said in an interview on Wednesday that he did not realize Democrats were barred from the briefing until he arrived there, and that it was not how he would have preferred to do it. On Wednesday afternoon, a stream of Defense Department officials and some officers in uniform could be seen departing the area of the Capitol that houses a SCIF, a secure briefing room where classified material can be discussed. The partisan nature of the briefing sparked near immediate tension in the Capitol. Sen. Tammy Duckworth , D-Ill., a member of the Armed Services panel, could be heard near the Senate subway asking the top Democrat on the panel, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., if Republicans were “not having secret classified briefings without us?” Reed appeared to nod in the affirmative. “I am absolutely disgusted that they would come and have a briefing only to Republicans and keep it secret from Democrats on the justification for these attacks in Venezuela,” Duckworth later said. “This is ridiculous. This is not how we will operate in the Senate.” The tension over the briefing comes as the U.S. continues to carry out strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers in international waters. In a post on X Wednesday, Hegseth said the U.S. had killed an additional four people, alleged drug smugglers, in the waters of the eastern Pacific, bringing the total number of people killed by recent U.S. strikes to 61. Last week, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced the U.S. had dispatched its most advanced aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, to the Caribbean, near Venezuela. And news reports indicate the CIA is operating in the country, sparking questions of whether the ultimate goal of the U.S. in Venezuela is regime change rather than counter-narcotics operations. White House officials have repeatedly said that Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro is illegitimate and a dictator. The day that Rep. Meeks issued his statement was corrected.
