Payback

Trump’s team gets payback for Rubio on Venezuelan assassination plot

By MARC CAPUTO

When one of Venezuela’s top leaders was suspected of conspiring to assassinate Florida Sen. Marco Rubio last year, the reaction of the United States was uncharacteristically tame.

Stiffer sanctions against Venezuela languished at the National Security Council. And Diosdado Cabello Rondon, the vice president of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, wasn’t touched by targeted sanctions even though the U.S. government has accused him of being a narco-trafficker.

But all of that changed in the past five days as Mike Pompeo, President Trump’s new Secretary of State, and National Security Adviser John Bolton began flexing their muscles in the run-up to Sunday’s elections in Venezuela — elections that the U.S. government called a “sham” perpetrated by “kleptocracy.”

On Friday, Cabello and his relatives had his assets frozen by the U.S. Treasury, and on Monday further U.S. investments in Venezuela were limited as the one-two punch of sanctions heralded a hawkish new era for the Trump administration, while revealing an enhanced role for Rubio as a Trump foreign policy emissary and ally.

Rubio, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, credited Pompeo, Bolton and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for changing the direction of U.S. policy in the region to further isolate Venezuela’s totalitarian leader, Nicolás Maduro. And he took a not-so-subtle shot at former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his allies for almost scuttling the sanctions.

“The previous secretary of state protected and assisted the people who undermined the president on Venezuela,” Rubio told POLITICO.

“Not a month goes by that the president doesn’t bring up Venezuela to me. He is personally committed to this issue,” Rubio said. Trump, Rubio added, “finally has a team that will turn his orders into action. Like I said a few weeks ago, bringing Bolton into the NSC and Pompeo into State is bad news for Maduro and [Cuban leader] Raúl Castro.”

Rubio wouldn’t disclose which State Department personnel he believed were undermining the president on Venezuela, but two senior government officials said the proposed sanctions against Cabello had been blocked at a National Security Council Deputies Committee meeting as recently as this month by Thomas Shannon, an Obama holdover who has spent about 35 years in the Foreign Service, much of it in high-level positions concerning Latin America. Shannon, who is expected to resign on June 4, couldn’t be reached for comment.

Asked whether Shannon was responsible for blocking the Cabello sanctions, a State Department spokesman would only say that “we don't comment on internal deliberations."

That’s where Pompeo came in. Unlike Tillerson, Pompeo overruled Shannon’s objections, sources said, and allowed the sanctions against Cabello to proceed. Not only does Pompeo hold similar foreign policy views to Rubio, the two were political allies before backing Trump: Pompeo had endorsed the Flordia Republican for president in his 2016 primary bid against Trump.

Rubio’s praise of and close working relationship with the administration on Venezuela, however, stands in stark contrast with another foreign policy controversy, involving China and its imperiled telecom giant ZTE, which the Trump Administration has agreed to help save. Rubio on Tuesday morning tweeted that he fears the “administration has surrendered to #China on #ZTE Making changes to their board & a fine won’t stop them from spying & stealing from us. But this is too important to be over. We will begin working on veto-proof congressional action.”

With Pompeo and Bolton, Rubio is more likely to work closely with Trump’s administration as it targets both Cuba and Venezuela, which became increasingly close under former dictators Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez . Now ruled by Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela has seen its economy crater amid widespread hunger. There’s now a refugee crisis along the borders of Colombia and Brazil and an increase in narco-trafficking that the United States has linked to Cabello.

The United States’ refusal to sanction Cabello mystified some foreign policy observers who noted that Trump had been hard on Venezuela. Yet, the administration seemed to let Cabello slide even though he was the highest-ranking Chávez loyalist to escape U.S. sanctions.

As the most prominent member of Florida’s influential Cuban exile community and a member of the Senate’s Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees, the bilingual Rubio was a natural fit to work with the White House in pushing sanctions against Venezuela. Florida also has the largest community of Venezuelan exiles in the United States.

“President Trump has been leaning forward to further implement policy in a targeted response to the crisis that has upended democracy in Venezuela. Both the President and Senator Rubio share the same opinion of the Maduro regime and the leadership role the United States must play to help restore democracy in the country,” said Helen Ferre, the White House's Director of Media Affairs who hails from Miami along with Rubio. “The President has been clear in his support of the people of Venezuela and appreciates Senator Rubio’s help in amplifying the administration’s message in the Senate.”

Last week, after Rubio’s office contacted the White House, the State Department shut down a seminar on Cuba after anti-Castro hardliners felt the agency was only featuring experts supportive of former President Obama’s policies on Cuba, in contravention of Trump’s policies that Rubio helped shape.

Rubio took a personal interest in Cabello who, according to a Department of Homeland Security memo sent to state and local law enforcement, sought to have the Florida senator assassinated.

“In some unspecified manner, CABELLO RONDON’s problems involved U.S. Senator Marco Rubio,” said the memo. “CABELLO RONDON did indeed issue an order ... to have Senator Rubio assassinated. Additionally, CABELLO RONDON was communicating with unspecified Mexican nationals in furtherance of the matter.”

The sanctions against Cabello, as well as some of his relatives and Florida businesses linked to him, capped months of work by Rubio, Pompeo and Bolton. Rubio attended a summit in Peru concerning Venezuela and in May traveled to Panama, Costa Rica and the Bahamas to talk about Venezuela and thank the other countries for their support of what’s called the Lima Group, a body composed of 14 nations who condemned the elections held on May 20 in Venezuela where some voters were offered food in return for casting ballots.

Trump has kept up the pressure on Venezuela, even refusing to rule out using military force. Less than a month after Trump was sworn into office, he began criticizing the Maduro regime.

“Venezuela should allow Leopoldo Lopez, a political prisoner & husband of @liliantintori (just met w/ @marcorubio) out of prison immediately,” Trump tweeted Feb. 15, 2017.

Maduro has continued to consolidate his grip on power, even as the United States has imposed more sanctions. Throughout, Trump and Rubio have been in close contact. In April of this year, at a tax event in Miami, the president spoke to Rubio about Venezuela and called the senator the following month when he was in Panama. And last Tuesday, at a lunch with senators on Capitol Hill, Trump again raised the issue.

Two days later, Pompeo made the final call on the Cabello sanctions.

Rubio, who trash-talked Cabello on Twitter after the alleged assassination plot was revealed last year, taunted the Venezuelan by tweeting him a photo Friday of inmates in orange jail jumpsuits after the sanctions were announced.

"What size [prison] uniform do you wear these days extra large or XX-large? Just want to make sure your stay is as comfortable as possible," Rubio wrote.