Hakeem Jeffries says Venezuela attack about oil, not drugs
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said it’s not believable that the military action in Venezuela has anything to do with stopping the flow of drugs into the United States after President Trump pardoned a former Honduran president of his drug crimes.
Mr. Trump pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez last month of his 45-year prison sentence for possessing machine guns and conspiring to import cocaine to the U.S. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was taken from his country Saturday and brought to New York to face drug charges.
“The notion that the American people are supposed to believe that the military action that the Trump administration took had anything really to do with a counter narcotics effort is belied by the fact that it was Donald Trump, just a few weeks ago, who pardoned the former president of Honduras, who’s one of the world’s leading narco traffickers,” Mr. Jeffries told reporters Monday.
“The former president of Honduras said he wanted to jam cocaine down the nostrils of the gringos, and this is the person that Donald Trump pardoned? And the American people are now supposed to believe that this whole situation that has unfolded in Venezuela has anything to do with a counter narcotics operation?” he said. “Get lost.”
The U.S. launched strikes on alleged drug boats in the region to stop them from reaching the U.S. and to put pressure on the Maduro regime. Some 35 boats were struck, with at least 115 people killed.
There had been one confirmed strike on Venezuelan land before the U.S. swept and captured Mr. Maduro and his wife.
SEE ALSO: Democrats wanted Maduro gone — until Trump took him out
Mr. Jeffries said the action as an “unprecedented military action” that was done to support the oil industry. Venezuela’s top export is oil.
“Why are we engaging in this kind of aggressive military behavior on behalf of big oil companies that make billions of dollars of profit each and every year at the same period of time when electricity bills in the United States of America are out of control because of what Donald Trump and Republicans did in their one big, ugly bill,” he said.
He acknowledged that Mr. Maduro is “a bad guy, a dictator, someone who is not the legitimate head of government or head of state in Venezuela.” Still, he said, the president didn’t get congressional approval before the military action.
“The American people reject the possibility of another unjustified foreign war that seems to be on the horizon because of Trump’s desire to reward big oil in the United States of America, while continuing to not do a damn thing to make life better for the American people,” he said.
