‘We Thank Them’: Marco Rubio Salutes Media for Holding Story of Venezuela Strike

Secretary of State Marco Rubio commended news publications for choosing not to publish information about the U.S. operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro until American troops were out of harms way.

Rubio discussed the military action on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. Stephanopoulos pushed Rubio on President Donald Trump’s failure to seek congressional approval for the mission.

“I’m still not clear on what the legal authority is for the United States to run the country of Venezuela, but several members of Congress and other legal experts have said this operation to take Maduro was illegal because you didn’t seek congressional authorization,” said Stephanopoulos. “Why wasn’t congressional authorization necessary?”

“It wasn’t necessary because this was not an invasion. We didn’t occupy a country. This was an arrest operation. This was a law enforcement operation,” said Rubio. “He was arrested on the ground in Venezuela by FBI agents, read his rights, and removed from the country.”

Later, Rubio claimed that another reason the administration hadn’t sought congressional approval was due to the possibility of leaks which would have been dangerous for American forces conducting the operation.

“[T]he number one reason is operational security,” said Rubio. “It would have put the people who carried this on in very – in harm’s way. And frankly, a number of media outlets had gotten leaks that this was coming and held it for that very reason, and we thank them for doing that or lives could have been lost. American lives.”

The New York Times and the Washington Post learned of the Trump administration’s plans for Venezuela shortly before they were carried out on Friday, according to a report from Semafor. Journalists at the publications held off publishing the information to avoid endangering US troops.

“The decisions in the New York and Washington newsrooms to maintain official secrecy is in keeping with longstanding American journalistic traditions — even at a moment of unprecedented mutual hostility between the American president and a legacy media that continues to dominate national security reporting,” wrote Semafor’s Max Tani and Shelby Talcott, reported the story.

Watch above via This Week.