Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York suggested President Donald Trump’s effort to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is working by causing “big damage.”
York appeared on Fox News’s Special Report with Bret Baier on Wednesday, hours after Trump announced that the United States seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. York noted that Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed that the U.S. was pursuing a search warrant by seizing a tanker transporting Iranian oil.
“They really did pursue due process in this,” York said of the Trump administration. “This is the way — if you want to put pressure on Maduro — this is the way to do it. If you are killing the drug dealers and then you are cutting off sanctioned oil and not allowing them to use these ghost tankers to get oil out of Venezuela to China or somewhere, that will do big damage.”
The U.S. is likely to keep the oil, just as it did in August 2020 when the U.S. seized over 1 million barrels of petroleum arranged by a designated foreign terrorist organization and bound for Venezuela. In a press release about the seizure, the Department of Justice said the petroleum was transferred into U.S. custody.
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Meanwhile, at least 30 people have been killed as a result of six strikes in the Caribbean Sea against vessels from Venezuela and Colombia since September. A recent strike left two survivors who were transported to their respective native countries. All are alleged narco-terrorists, with vessels suspected of trafficking drugs according to Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
Democratic lawmakers have called for the release of footage of a strike against survivors on the Sept. 2 operation against a Venezuelan vessel. While Trump initially signaled he was willing to make the footage public, the president has since walked back his stance.