Former US Ethics Officials File Complaint Over DOJ Role in 'Wholly Illegal' Venezuela Assault

A group of former US ethics officials filed a complaint Wednesday demanding an investigation into the Justice Department lawyers who crafted the legal rationale justifying the Trump administration's patently unlawful assault on Venezuela and ongoing effort to plunder the country's natural resources.

The trio of ex-officials, who worked under both Republican and Democratic presidents, specifically called for an immediate ethics probe into whether attorneys at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) "violated their professional legal responsibilities in providing guidance justifying the recent invasion of Venezuela and abduction of its president, Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, as well as legal advice that has apparently been given by the Department to President Trump to justify his recent threats to take additional military action against Venezuela, Columbia, Cuba, Iran, and Denmark."

"Such unilateral use of military force absent an imminent threat to the United States violates international law and furthermore unconstitutionally intrudes on the power that rests with Congress alone to declare war," wrote Norman Eisen, Richard Painter, and Virginia Canter in their complaint. "In sum, the president and the Department of Defense, presumably relying on yet another confidential and classified memorandum from OLC, or perhaps more than one memorandum, have engaged in illegal acts of war and threats of illegal acts of war against sovereign nations."

The complaint was announced after Trump administration officials reportedly told US lawmakers in closed-door meetings this week that the Justice Department developed a new legal opinion in an attempt to justify the abduction of Maduro, an operation that killed at least 100 people, according to Venezuelan officials.

US Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that he believes the OLC opinion will declare the deadly military assault on Venezuela legal "because it was assisting a law-enforcement action."

The former ethics officials behind the new complaint against the Trump Justice Department said they are also filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request demanding that the OLC memo on the Venezuela assault be made public.

"Even before the weekend’s outrageous events, that illegality was on sharp display through Trump’s attempted escalation into a conflict with Venezuela through dozens of illegal strikes on alleged drug smugglers in international waters," the former ethics officials wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. "But the invasion of Venezuela represents a new—and wholly illegal—escalation."

The ex-officials emphasized that their push for transparency is just part of what must be an all-hands-on-deck effort to stop the administration's military assault on Venezuela and potentially other sovereign nations.

"Congress must look at other vehicles to limit the president’s unlawful aggression, perhaps with terms in spending bills that he could not so easily veto. The responsibility now lies with Congress to stop Trump," the former officials wrote, noting that GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate are likely to vote down War Powers Resolutions aimed at constraining the lawless president.

"But it does not end there," they added. "Others must step up as well, and that is why we are launching our dual legal actions of an ethics complaint and a FOIA demand. The cost of inaction against Trump’s forays into foreign wars is too high, and the window for safeguarding our nation from his illegal and corrupt blood for oil adventurism is narrowing."