Democrats Excluded From Congressional Briefing on Boat Strikes, Warner Says

The Virginia senator said ‘decisions about the use of American military force are not campaign strategy sessions.’

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) speaks during a hearing with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Washington on Sept. 4, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

Democrats were kept out of an Oct. 30 congressional briefing concerning recent lethal U.S. strikes on Latin American drug traffickers, according to Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.).

Warner, who serves on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, expressed outrage at the alleged partisan snub.

“Shutting Democrats out of a briefing on U.S. military strikes and withholding the legal justification for those strikes from half the Senate is indefensible and dangerous,” the Virginia Democrat said in an Oct. 29 statement. “Decisions about the use of American military force are not campaign strategy sessions, and they are not the private property of one political party.”

The controversy arose as several lawmakers, particularly among the Democratic Party, have challenged the legal justification for recent U.S. strikes in the Caribbean Sea and in the eastern Pacific. Warner indicated that the Oct. 30 congressional briefing was set to cover an opinion authored by the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that articulates the legal justification for such strikes.

“The administration must immediately provide to Democrats the same briefing and the OLC opinion justifying these strikes, as [Secretary of State Marco Rubio] personally promised me that he would in a face-to-face meeting on Capitol Hill just last week,” Warner’s statement reads.

Responding to Warner’s complaint, Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson stated that the recent U.S. strikes have been covered in past bipartisan briefings.

“The Department of War has briefed the appropriate committees of jurisdiction, including the Senate Intelligence committee, numerous times throughout the operations targeting narco-terrorists,“ Wilson said in an emailed statement. ”These have occurred on a bipartisan basis and will continue as such.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the White House for further comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

Since President Donald Trump took office, the U.S. State Department has designated 13 Latin American and Caribbean cartels and criminal organizations as foreign terrorist organizations. Earlier this month, the Trump administration formally notified Congress that U.S. forces are fighting a “non-international armed conflict” with these drug cartels and transnational criminal organizations.

These recent strikes on suspected cartel boats also come amid a growing U.S. pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whom the Trump administration has accused of backing cartels in his country. Maduro has denied the accusations.

On Oct. 8, the Senate voted on a resolution under the War Powers Act of 1973, sponsored by Sens. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.), seeking to halt the U.S. military strikes in the Latin American region. The measure failed in a 48–51 vote, with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Maine) crossing over to support the Democrat resolution, while Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) joined the Republican majority opposing the measure.