“’We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must always ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there, you begin to get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture.’” – Yaa Gyasi. Homegoing
Let’s quickly get this out of the way: Nicolás Maduro is a shitty person. He was a dictator. He ignored the results of a valid election that he lost. He ran a country that can only be described as a kleptocracy. The Venezuelan oil industry was incredibly mismanaged. People were starving, many leaving the country to find food and a safe place to live. Will he be missed? Time can only tell.
What the Trump administration did last night was a violation of international law. A country was attacked, invaded, and its leader abducted. We have to ask why. It can’t be claimed as some great military victory. As an analogy, if I were to go to a nearby elementary school, single out a sixth grade boy, then beat him up, what would that make me? An asshole? Yep. A bully? Absolutely. A criminal? Beyond a doubt. Still, we need to ask: Why now? Why attack Venezuela now?
Before I answer that question I want to go back a bit in time to the fall of 1983. I had just returned to college. Ronald Reagan was president. U.S. military forces were stationed in Beirut, Lebanon as part of an international peace keeping force. To me it seemed like a bad decision. Peace keeping forces should be neutral arbiters. The U.S. was not, still is not, neutral in the Middle East. We are too closely tied to Israel to be considered in any disassociated manner in the there. And the decision to station U.S. forces in Beirut was a tragic mistake. On October 23, 1983 two truck bombs were detonated in front of buildings housing U.S. and French forces. 307 people were killed, 241 of them Americans. 58 were French.
Two days later, on October 25, 1983, the United States invaded the small Caribbean island nation of Grenada. The purported reason was to overthrow a Marxist government. Said government was building a very long runway. They claimed it was to increase access to the island for tourists. Reagan and company stated the real reason was to support planes arriving from the U.S.S.R. An additional claim was made that the invasion was to protect U.S. students studying at a medical school there. The interesting part to that claim was, that when interviewed, the students didn’t feel that they weren’t under any threat. Was the timing an accident? Doubtful.
The Grenada invasion and the recent attack on Venezuela have in common that neither of them were spur of the moment military actions. Both required months of planning. It’s the timing of the actions that needs to be questioned. Grenada diverted attention away from the Marines murdered in Beirut. It changed the narrative of the president’s supporters from questioning why we were in Beirut to supporting the invasion of Grenada. We need to see Venezuela in the same light.
Jack Smith, the Special Counsel appointed to investigate the January 6, 2021 insurrection, testified in a deposition for the House Judiciary Committee. He testified in a closed hearing on December 17, 2025. His stated preference was to stand before an open hearing. Here are a few of the things he said (the full deposition is available on PBS as well as other sites:
- Smith expected most witnesses in a criminal proceeding regarding January 6, 2021 to be supporters of the president: “The president was preying on the party allegiance of people who supported him,” Smith said. “The evidence that I felt was most powerful was the evidence that came from people in his own party who … put country before party and were willing to tell the truth to him, even though it could mean trouble for them.”
- “That witness, Mr. Tabas, was of a similar group of witnesses who — these are not enemies of the president. These are people in his party who supported him,” Smith continued. “And I think the fact that they were telling him these things … would have had great weight and great credibility with a jury.”
- He denied that the investigation was influenced by political bias and stated that it was not intended to impact the 2024 election: “We certainly were not in any way intending to affect the outcome of the election. And to make sure we complied with the policy, we met with Public Integrity to make sure we were doing that,” Smith said.
- “I would never take orders from a political leader to hamper another person in an election. That’s not who I am,” Smith said in the deposition.
- He made clear that Trump was responsible for the attack on the Capitol: “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power,” Mr. Smith said, according to the transcript.
- “The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit,” Smith said, bristling at a question about whether his investigations were meant to prevent Trump from reclaiming the presidency in 2024.”So in terms of why we would pursue a case against him, I entirely disagree with any characterization that our work was in any way meant to hamper him in the presidential election,” he added.
- When pressed that Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen and his calls for violence were protected speech under the First Amendment he replied: “Fraud is not protected by the First Amendment,” he said in the interview.
- “He was free to say that he thought he won the election — he was even free to say falsely that he won the election,” Mr. Smith said. “But what he was not free to do was violate federal law and use knowingly false statements about election fraud to target a lawful government function.”
So when was the text and video released? On the evening of December 31, 2025. The period between Christmas and New Year’s day is considered a “slow news cycle”. Most people have checked out and are not following the news. OK, political junkies like me are, but the average American is not. This is especially true on New Year’s Day when most people would not have followed this story. This was NOT an accident.
So let’s do a quick timeline:
- December 17, 2025, Jack Smith testifies
- December 31, 2025, Jack Smith’s testimony is released
- January 3, 2026, U.S. forces, acting on orders from President Donald J. Trump, attack Venezuela and capture Nicolás Maduro
I need to add one more key date: Sunday, January 4, 2026. Why does this date matter? “Sunday” part is the key. There are several news programs on Sunday mornings watched by political insiders: Face the Nation on CBS, Meet the Press on NBC, This Week with George Stephanopolos on ABC, and State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash on CNN.
Yesterday, January 2, 2026 the planned topic on all of these shows would have been the Jack Smith testimony. Now? It will be all about Venezuela.
Don’t Look Behind the Curtain. This is an act much like one performed by a magician, an illusionist. The MAGA crew in the White House wants the focus on their agenda, their topics, rather than their culpability in what happened on January 6, 2025. Don’t get me wrong: the attack on Venezuela would have happened at some point. We need to remember to focus not only on what happened, but also the what and why of the timing.
Don’t be fooled. This is an attempt to cover-up Trump’s crimes.
I need to close with a significant worry: what will happen next in Venezuela? Please recall that when George W. Bush attacked Iraq he had a plan to rebuild the country after Saddam Hussein was ousted. I won’t detail the disaster that became. We all remember. What is Trump’s plan for Venezuela now that Maduro is gone? At his press conference today he was vague. He doesn’t appear to have a plan beyond his idea that we, the United States, have taken back “our” oil. He talked about the profits to be made. There is no plan to ensure the welfare of the Venezuelan people. He’s unsure who will govern the country now that Maduro is gone other than to say that Maduro’s hand picked Vice President is now in charge. Is the chaos after the removal of Saddam Hussein in the Venezuela’s future? Will we see the factionalism and the civil war, the continued dysfunction in Libya that started with the fall of the regime of Muammar al-Qaddafi? Only time will tell. Yet be concerned.
The Ugliness is the Hope.
Resist. Persist. Oppose. Propose. Be the opposition with a proposition.