Lawmaker fires back at Marco Rubio over Venezuela attacks: 'Finally a public hearing!'

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) was among several lawmakers grilling Secretary of State Marco Rubio over the US attacks on Venezuela.

Kaine called out Rubio and the Trump administration for not seeking congressional approval or consulting lawmakers in the five months since initiating strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea, sending troops into the conflict and the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

"We started this operation on September 2nd with the attack on Venezuelans and boats in open waters, and now we are nearly five months in. Next week is five months. Finally, a public hearing! Wow! How novel," Kaine said. "Finally, a public hearing in the Senate or House. This is the first public hearing we've had. Two hundred folks who are on secret designated combatant lists have been killed, U.S. troops have been injured, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent, an armada amassed the announcement of a new Monroe Doctrine, which does not land well in the Americas. Democrats have been asking over and over again, can we have a public hearing? Can we share what we know with the American public? Finally, a public hearing. But even that hearing is constrained."

Kaine delivered a sharp critique against Rubio and the Trump administration, expressing his frustration over the attack.

"I'd like to talk about the complete weakness of the legal rationale about the strikes on boats in international waters. But I can't, because the administration has only shared it with members in a classified setting," Kaine said. "I can't tell you why the domestic rationale is hollow and the international rationale is hollow. I can't tell you why the rationale for attacking Venezuela is hollow, because, again, the rationale has been shared with us in a closed setting. I can't share with you the grim details of the murder of shipwrecked survivors in open waters that we all know, because we've seen the videos and we've questioned the US military officials involved about legality, because the administration will not release that publicly. They release the boat strike videos publicly, but they hid the second strike that killed struggling shipwreck survivors, even from Congress, for nearly three months. But I can't really talk to you about it."

Kaine questioned what the administration was hiding and why they were targeting these boats.

"I can't talk to you about the weakness of the targeting criteria being used to attack boats in the Caribbean and Pacific," he added. "I would encourage any colleague, if you have not go to the classified setting and ask for a briefing on each strike and ask this question, 'what was the evidence that there were narcotics on that craft?' You will be very surprised if you ask that question about every strike. And so even in this first public hearing, five months in, there's a lot we can't talk about. If it was such a righteous operation, why is the administration and the majority in the senate so jealously protecting the details about it from being revealed to the American public?"

Kaine also described how his constituents have asked him about the American military actions in Venezuela.

"I have Virginians deployed in this operation. I can't answer their families questions," Kaine said. "Thank God we're having a public hearing five months in. This is supposed to be the greatest deliberative body in the world."