Venezuela Justice Department memo Maduro presidential power.

A legal memo that came out days before the U.S. military operation against Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro said such a move would “not rise to the level of a war in the constitutional sense” and would serve “important national interests. The heavily redacted version of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel opinion was released this week. It sheds new light on how the administration came to conclude that it was legally permitted to oust Maduro as Venezuela’s president. That memo also spells out a muscular view of American presidential power.