The Trump administration received legal approval from the justice department to use the military to seize Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, but declined to address whether the operation violated international law, according to a memo released on Tuesday.
The 22-page memo from the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) discussed the UN Charter, which prohibits the use of force against another country without consent, self-defence or Security Council authorisation. However, the top OLC lawyer, T Elliot Gaiser, stopped short of deciding on the operation's legality under international law, arguing it was unnecessary as long as President Donald Trump had domestic authority.
Gaiser cited a 1989 OLC memo, signed by then-assistant attorney general William Barr, which argued a president could override international treaties like the UN Charter under the US Constitution. That memo had been used to justify the capture of Panama's Manuel Noriega. Experts have criticised the 1989 memo as legally defective, noting that the UN Charter, as a ratified treaty, has the same force as domestic law.
The memo justified the operation under a two-part test: whether it served a national interest and whether it amounted to a 'war in the constitutional sense'. Gaiser noted Maduro was under criminal indictment for drug trafficking and his election win was seen as fraudulent. He warned that using the military would start an armed conflict, but because the operation was limited to capturing Maduro without sustained occupation, congressional approval was not required.
Previous operations, such as the arrest of an al-Qaida member linked to the 1998 embassy bombings and a Libyan militant involved in the 2012 Benghazi attack, were cited as precedents. The memo's release comes ahead of a Senate vote on a war powers resolution to require congressional approval for further military action in Venezuela.
