U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy have denounced President Donald Trump’s recent operation against Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro as reckless, unlawful, and destabilizing. They describe the U.S. military action that led to Maduro’s capture and extradition as an “invasion” that undermines international norms. That outrage would carry more weight if it weren’t contradicted by the very policies the senators supported under the Biden administration only a year ago.
CT Democrats decry Venezuela takeover: No oversight, no rule of law, no plan
When President Joe Biden was in office, the United States did not treat Maduro as a legitimate head of state entitled to diplomatic deference. Instead, the State Department increased the reward for information leading to his arrest to $25 million—an extraordinary step reserved for the world’s most dangerous criminals. That decision reflected bipartisan consensus that Maduro was not merely an authoritarian ruler, but the leader of a state-sponsored criminal enterprise threatening U.S. national security.
That is the context Senators Blumenthal and Murphy now choose to ignore.
The hypocrisy is hard to miss. To condemn President Trump for acting on a threat that both administrations publicly identified and pursued is not principled oversight; it is partisan revisionism masquerading as concern for international law.
This debate is not about ideology. It is about facts. The U.S. Department of Justice indictment against Maduro alleges that he and senior members of his inner circle conspired to traffic massive quantities of cocaine into the United States and provided material support to designated terrorist organizations.
According to the superseding indictment, Maduro’s regime weaponized the Venezuelan state itself—using military, intelligence, and political institutions to facilitate narco-trafficking, dismantle democratic governance, and enrich regime insiders while ordinary Venezuelans suffered economic collapse.
Calling Maduro a narco-terrorist is not political rhetoric. In late 2025, the United States formally designated the so-called Cartel of the Suns—an organization tied to Venezuela’s senior military and political leadership—as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. The designation was based on evidence of large-scale drug trafficking, violence, and collaboration with transnational criminal and armed groups. That determination was not partisan; it was prosecutorial.
Senators Blumenthal and Murphy argue that unilateral military action in Venezuela is destabilizing or unlawful. That argument might be persuasive if they acknowledged that the underlying objective—holding Maduro accountable—was one they themselves endorsed. The disagreement between the Biden and Trump administrations was not about whether Maduro posed a threat. It was about how aggressively the United States should act to neutralize it.
The Biden administration relied on sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and legal pressure, including bounties and repeated Treasury actions against regime insiders. President Trump escalated to covert and overt military pressure, increased the bounty to $50 million, and authorized direct counternarcotics and counter-narco-terrorism operations aimed at disrupting trafficking networks protected by the Venezuelan state.
If the senators believed Biden’s sanctions and arrest rewards were justified, they owe the public a coherent explanation for why enforcing the same policy with greater force suddenly crossed a legal or moral line.
History offers little support for their selective indignation. Presidents of both parties have used covert and overt action when diplomacy failed to neutralize transnational threats. During the Cold War, administrations authorized CIA operations against hostile regimes engaged in subversion and criminal conduct. After September 11, presidents dramatically expanded the use of special operations and intelligence assets to dismantle terror networks operating beyond conventional battlefields.
To declare Trump’s action unprecedented while ignoring this history is not serious analysis; it is convenient amnesia.
This fight is not abstract. Cocaine and other hard narcotics continue to devastate American communities. For years, Maduro’s Venezuela has been accused of facilitating drug flows through state-protected corridors and shielding corrupt intermediaries with ties to powerful cartels and armed groups. Venezuela may not be the sole source of cocaine, nor a major conduit for fentanyl, but dismantling a regime that actively protects and profits from transnational criminal networks unquestionably degrades those networks’ capacity to operate.
The United States has long used indictments, extraditions, and bounties—from Pablo Escobar onward—to fracture criminal organizations, disrupt supply chains, and deter future traffickers. Holding Nicolás Maduro accountable fits squarely within that tradition.
If Senators Blumenthal and Murphy genuinely care about combating narco-terrorism and strengthening the rule of law, they should support accountability for foreign leaders who exploit their own people while exporting violence and poison abroad. They are free to criticize presidential tactics. What they should not do is launder their own party’s record while attacking another administration for pursuing essentially the same objective.
Accountability for Nicolás Maduro is not a partisan cause. It is a matter of national security and public health. The debate should focus on means and methods—not on rewriting history for political convenience
Timothy Herbst served as first selectman of Trumbull, Connecticut, from 2009 to 2017 and was a candidate in the 2018 Republican gubernatorial primary.