Connecticut representative on Venezuela strikes and Maduro operation

(CBS, KYMA) - Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) spoke with spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday about the strike against Venezuela and President Nicolas Maduro's arrest.

President Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, landed in New York Saturday evening after being indicted in the state, according to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The arrest comes after the U.S. launched a strike against Venezuela, reportedly approved by President Donald Trump.

This led Brennan to ask Rep. Himes, who is the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, if he can explain what the U.S. is doing after he and his colleagues were informed about the strikes after it happened, to which the congressman said:

"I was delighted to hear that Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been in regular contact with the administration. I've had zero outreach. And no Democrat that I'm aware of has had any outreach whatsoever. So apparently, we're now in a world where the legal obligation to keep the Congress informed only applies to, to your party, which is really something. But yeah, no, look, I know exactly where we are...We're in the euphoria period of acknowledging across the board that Maduro was a bad guy and that our military is absolutely incredible. This is exactly the euphoria we felt in 2002 when our military took down the Taliban in Afghanistan. In 2003 when our military took out Saddam Hussein, and in 2011 when we helped remove Muammar Gaddafi from power in Libya. These were very, very bad people, by the way, much, much worse than Maduro in Venezuela, which was never a significant national security threat to the United States. But we're in that euphoria phase, and what we learned the day after the euphoria phase is that it's an awful lot easier to break a country than it is to actually do what the president promised to do, which is to run it. And so again, let's let my Republican colleagues enjoy their day of euphoria, but they're going to wake up tomorrow morning, knowing, 'Oh my God. There is no plan here any more than there was in Afghanistan, Iraq or in Libya.'"

Brennan followed up by asking what exactly is the point of leverage in order for the Trump Administration to treat Congress like a co-equal branch of government, when he will expect to get answers, and if his Republican colleagues promise him they will get some of the answers to the questions he asked, and Himes said:

"Of course, not...Two thirds of my Republican [colleagues] wake up every single morning, and the only question they have is, what can I do to prove my loyalty to the president today? And we see this because the president has completely shifted who he was. I mean, as I watched that news conference yesterday, I thought, oh my god, this is Dick Cheney and the neocons. Not only are they taking out a...they're doing a regime change in a country, by the way, not a Tier 1 threat to the United States, but that they just don't like. They're warning the other dictators. This is Dick Cheney in 2002 saying we're taking down Saddam Hussein and, by the way, Syria and Iran better watch out. And the fascinating thing about that, and why it's really hard to answer the question of where the hell they're going to go from here, is that the president won by promising MAGA and his own people that this kind of stuff was done, that the neocons were over, and here we are. That was Dick Cheney in the conference yesterday, you know, deciding that the United States was going to, you know, militarily change regimes and threaten other ones, just because we don't like them."

During the interview with Himes, Brennan said the Trump Administration is saying what they did was legal.

They also said the snatch and grab operation of taking an indicted criminal, like Maduro, to the U.S. through military force had precedent as well as referencing what happened in the late 1980s with Noriega in Panama.

This prompted Brennan to ask the congressman what's his challenge to that, and Himes said:

"First, it's clearly illegal under international law, right? No full stop, UN Charter. No question there. Now you may not care about international law, but if you don't care about international law, remember, you're going to be making an appeal to international law to try to get restitution for the seizure of Chevron's oil stuff. So maybe you want to rethink how much disdain you show for international law. Clearly, not legal under the Constitution because though Presidents of both parties have argued against this, the Constitution is really pretty clear that the representatives of the people get to be consulted and ultimately approve military activity. That has not happened here at all. And, so again, there's nothing legal about this. And, more to the point, again, under the international law point, think of what Russia and China just learned. Russia and China just learned that all you need to do if you want to go into Estonia is to say that the leader of Estonia is a bad person. You don't even need to make a particularly good case. Look, there's no national security expert saying that Venezuela was a mortal threat to the United States three weeks ago. So what China and Russia just learned is that the beacon of liberty and rule of law in the world has now green lighted snatch and grab operations in Estonia, in Taiwan, wherever Xi and Putin decide they want to go next."

To watch more of Brennan's interview with Himes, click here.