‘Explicitly Lied’: Democrat Accuses Marco Rubio of Deceiving Congress During Venezuela Briefing

Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) accused Secretary of State Marco Rubio of lying to Congress by failing to disclose the Trump administration’s plans for regime change in Venezuela.

Ryan made the charge on CNN’s Inside Politics Monday, where Dana Bash asked about Rubio calling criticism of the mission a “phobia.”

“He’s saying Venezuela doesn’t look like Libya, doesn’t look like Iraq, it doesn’t look like Afghanistan. And so the analogy is wrongheaded,” Bash said.

“The same things were said — I remember I was a cadet at West Point in the lead up to the war in Iraq — The same things were said about Vietnam when comparisons were made in a similar way,” Ryan, a combat veteran, began.

“It is such chickenhawk B.S. from Rubio, who’s not served a single day in uniform, to dismiss that as a phobia. You want to tell that to my friends on this bracelet that I lost in combat?” Ryan continued. “You want to tell that to the innocent Iraqis that were killed? You want to tell that to the Venezuelan people who are saying, ‘We’re glad Maduro is gone,’ as am I, but what the heck is the plan afterwards? And are we just going to hand this to another dictator who’s going to do the will of our increasingly authoritarian president in Donald Trump?”

Bash then asked about the classified briefings Rubio held with Congress, and Ryan accused the secretary of perjury.

“Well, one, we’ve had to fight to get any information from the administration which defies the Constitution,” Ryan said, continuing:

Two, in the most recent classified briefing, which I was in and happened right before Christmas, Marco Rubio personally, explicitly, lied to me and the Congress and to the people’s representatives. We asked over and over, “What is the larger plan? Is there an effort at regime change being planned?” We know, given the sophistication of this operation, the reporting that’s happened that was well in the works, and I understand very much understand the need for operational security. this is we have to get beyond that and recognize this is an act of war to say we’re going to run another sovereign nation. And the people and the Congress have to be part of that conversation.

The Washington Post reported on a November briefing where Rubio “indicated that the administration is not currently preparing to target Venezuela directly and didn’t have a proper legal argument for doing so.”

On Sunday, Rubio told NBC’s Meet The Press that the administration didn’t believe congressional approval was necessary.

Watch the clip above via CNN.