Warner demands intel sharing after secret GOP Venezuela briefing

Mark Satter, CQ-Roll Call on Oct 30, 2025

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WASHINGTON — The top Democrat on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee called on the Trump administration to immediately provide the legal justification for ongoing military strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats, after it was revealed that a select group of GOP senators received that justification during a classified briefing on Wednesday.

Mark Warner, D-Va., who is a member of the so-called Gang of 8, told reporters during a press briefing that someone should be held accountable for barring Democrats from the secret briefing, the exclusivity of which was first reported by CQ Roll Call.

Warner said that after the news broke, the White House said it would make the legal justification and other details from the briefing available to some Democrats — a promise that Warner said had not been fulfilled and was “bullshit.”

“Every United States senator ought to be read in and until that happens I don’t know how you begin to rebuild trust,” he said.

In remarks made during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., decried the partisan nature of the briefing, noting that the panel traditionally conducts its business in a nonpartisan manner.

Kaine said the briefing was the latest example of a disturbing trend with the Pentagon that started when as a nominee, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth refused to meet with Democrats on the committee. Since then, Kaine said, questions from Democrats to the Defense Department have gone unanswered, notably after 25 senators directed questions to the Pentagon on Sept. 10 about the legal authority and evidence supporting the administration’s strikes against alleged narcotics traffickers.

“We have not been given answers to those questions,” Kaine said. “The news yesterday followed recent news that Pentagon officials have been instructed not to communicate directly with members of Congress, except through the congressional liaison office, which has not been the case in the past.”

Kaine also noted that news reports said that military officials connected to the strikes had been asked to sign nondisclosure agreements.

“I don’t speak for anybody else on this committee other than me, but I work my tail off on this committee, this is the dominant responsibility I have as United States senator, I represent a state that has more military equities than most. I’m a military dad,” Kaine said. “I don’t deserve to be treated like an annoyance, an obstacle or an enemy by the Pentagon.”

Partisan tensions

Warner also criticized his Republican colleagues who attended the briefing and did not speak out when they realized that no Democrats were involved.

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said in an interview on Wednesday that he did not realize Democrats were barred from the briefing until he arrived there, and that it was not how he would have preferred to do it.

On Wednesday afternoon, a stream of Defense Department officials and some officers in uniform could be seen departing the area of the Capitol that houses a SCIF, a secure briefing room where classified material can be discussed.

The partisan nature of the briefing sparked near immediate tension in the Capitol.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth , D-Ill., a member of the Armed Services panel, could be heard near the Senate subway asking the top Democrat on the panel, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., if Republicans were “not having secret classified briefings without us?”

Reed appeared to nod in the affirmative.

“I am absolutely disgusted that they would come and have a briefing only to Republicans and keep it secret from Democrats on the justification for these attacks in Venezuela,” Duckworth later said. “This is ridiculous. This is not how we will operate in the Senate.”

The tension over the briefing comes as the U.S. continues to carry out strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers in international waters.

In a post on X Wednesday, Hegseth said the U.S. had killed an additional four people, alleged drug smugglers, in the waters of the eastern Pacific, bringing the total number of people killed by recent U.S. strikes to 61.

Last week, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced the U.S. had dispatched its most advanced aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, to the Caribbean, near Venezuela. And news reports indicate the CIA is operating in the country, sparking questions of whether the ultimate goal of the U.S. in Venezuela is regime change rather than counter-narcotics operations.

White House officials have repeatedly said that Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro is illegitimate and a dictator.