Charlie Savage

And to really start to peel it back, I think we have to go back in time a couple months before this military operation started to really see how focused Trump and people like Marco Rubio around him are on Maduro and Venezuela in particular.

Right after Trump comes into power, your listeners may remember there was a giant controversy over the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th century wartime deportation law that allows the government to summarily remove people who are citizens of a country that we are at war with or that is invading us.

And Trump tried to, in fact, successfully sent a couple plane loads full of Venezuelans to this notorious prison in El Salvador without giving them due process hearings under a claim that he could do so under this law that had not been used since World War II.

But as part of that, Trump declared in an official document that he signed that the

This Venezuelan gang that he had designated as terrorists, Tren de Aragua, was controlled by Maduro, was coming to the United States and committing crimes here at the direction of Maduro.

Right.

So part of what's fascinating about that is that it turns out that the U.S.

government does not believe that's true, that the intelligence community actually has produced memos evaluating the available evidence and thinks the opposite is true, that this gang, for one thing, is not organized enough to pass on orders to anybody.

It doesn't have a sort of central hierarchy command and control structure whatsoever.

But two, it's actually at odds with Maduro and Maduro forces are getting into gunfights with them and so forth.

And one of those memos was eventually declassified.

And so we can see it.

This is not just source reporting.

Yes.

Notwithstanding all that, Trump continues to say this gang is being controlled by Maduro, keeps calling Maduro illegitimate and saying justice is coming and the Justice Department doubles a reward for his capture.

He was indicted in the first Trump administration for drug trafficking.

And then they move all these naval assets off the coast of Venezuela.

And these are not things that you would really use to interdict or even blow up

little boats that you think are carrying drugs.

These are things that carry cruise missiles and thousands of Marines.