Trump says US knocked out ‘big facility’ as part of Venezuela campaign
By Kevin Liptak, Donald Judd, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump said the United States took out a “big facility” last week as part of a pressure campaign against Venezuela but provided few additional details on the action.
“We just knocked out — I don’t know if you read or you saw — they have a big plant, or a big facility, where the ships come from. Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard,” Trump told John Catsimatidis, the major Republican donor whose radio show airs on WABC. The interview occurred on Friday.
Asked for more details Monday as he talked to reporters at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said “there was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs” and that an “implementation area” was “no longer around.”
Pressed on whether the US military or an entity like the CIA was behind the operation, Trump would not say.
“I don’t want to say that,” Trump told CNN. “I know exactly who it was, but I don’t want to say who it was. But you know, it was along the shore.”
The comments came amid questions about the president’s ongoing US military campaign against Venezuela and its leader Nicolas Maduro, including strikes on alleged drug boats and a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the matter earlier Monday. It was not clear to what facility the president was referring nor where it was located.
One US official said the president was describing a drug facility, but declined to provide further detail about the action. There have been no reports from Venezuela of a major facility like the one the president described being destroyed.
Trump has been threatening strikes on land in Venezuela for weeks as the US has launched strikes destroying 30 boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. American officials have said previously that targets could include drug production facilities or known trafficking routes.
The president has also authorized covert CIA action inside Venezuela as part of the campaign to increase pressure on Maduro. The CIA declined to comment on Trump’s remarks.
During a Christmas Eve phone call to troops aboard the USS Gerald Ford, which Trump recently ordered deployed to the Caribbean Sea, Trump called the region an “interesting place” to be, and said the US would be “going after the land.”
If the timing the president referred to during his interview is correct, the strike on the facility would have occurred around the same time.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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CNN’s Zachary Cohen contributed to this report.
