Fox’s Jonathan Turley Says Trump Can Justify Legality of Strikes By Citing Same ‘Authority’ Obama Used to ‘Vaporize’ U.S. Citizen

Law professor and Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley pushed back on critics questioning the legality of President Donald Trump’s strikes on Venezuela’s capital, which led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.

Trump announced that Maduro and his wife were captured following reports of massive strikes on Caracas. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Maduro and his wife have been indicted in southern district of New York for ” Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices, and Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns and Destructive Devices against the United States.”

Maduro’s election victory was not recognized as legitimate by the United States and others.

Critics have questioned the legality of Trump’s move, a criticism he dismissed in a Fox News interview on Saturday morning.

“We’re stopping drugs from coming into this country and nobody’s been able to do it until we came along. But they should say great job. They shouldn’t say, oh, gee, maybe it’s not constitutional, you know, the same old stuff that we’ve been hearing for years and years and years,” he said.

Turley argued later on Friday that Trump could back up the legality of his strikes by citing the killing of American citizens in drone strikes under former President Barack Obama. Anwar al-Awlaki, allegedly a senior organizer for al-Qaeda, was killed in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen, launching heated debate about the legality of killing American citizens overseas.

Turley said:

The administration is acting within the navigational beacons of the Noriega case. And by the way, for all these Democrats objecting, the authority that Trump could cite is Barack Obama. Barack Obama vaporized a US citizen without a criminal charge. One would think that if a president could do that, and I don’t remember Democrats objecting en masse that you could arrest someone for trial with an existing indictment.

Watch above via Fox News.

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