Murphy: Trump Kept Dems in Dark About Rogue Intel Sources
EXCLUSIVE: Senator's office says Trump's team hasn't disclosed using Venezuela info from questionable sources tied to 2020 election-denial efforts
The Trump administration has not disclosed to Democrats the use of controversial intelligence sources on Venezuela, according to at least one member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Pres. Donald Trump’s team has been getting information from an ex-CIA operative and a Venezuelan dissident, both of whom provided his 2020 campaign a witness whose testimony that Venezuela stole the presidential election was almost instantly debunked.
Congressional Democrats have been complaining about inadequate briefings on the administration’s Venezuela intelligence and legal justifications for what are widely recognized as illegal military attacks on suspected drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific.
As I reported in September, the two non-governmental operatives have right-wing networks and questionable records and have been feeding the Trump administration evidence that they say proves an array of sweeping claims about the regime of President Nicolás Maduro.
Their narrative of Maduro deploying Tren de Aragua as a covert army of destabilization was the foundation for Trump’s assertion of extraordinary deportation powers earlier this year under the Alien Enemies Act. A panel of judges decided the claim was unfounded.
Their narrative that Maduro heads a transnational narcotics cartel provided the predicate for a Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel memo justifying maritime strikes that have so far killed 83 people without warnings or due process.
But the Trump administration has been keeping Democrats in the dark about the questionable origins of its intelligence.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) serves on the Foreign Affairs Committee and last week said it would be “wildly illegal” for Trump to launch strikes against targets inside Venezuela.
Murphy’s office tells me that he was not aware of the Trump administration utilizing intel from the two men. Communications Director Deni Kamper said in an email that she “checked in with our foreign policy team, and we haven’t heard anything about an outside group feeding the administration information or driving Trump’s policy related to Venezuela.”
Murphy is also the ranking member of the Homeland Security subcommittee of the Appropriations panel.
Back in March, the Miami Herald revealed that former CIA Senior Operations Officer Gary Berntsen led a team that briefed Trump transition officials and continued that work after the inauguration. National-security reporter Seth Hettena wrote last month that the briefings were continuing.
Back in September, I reported that Berntsen’s partner was Martin Rodil, a Venezuelan expatriate with a history as a broker between fellow dissidents and U.S. law enforcement seeking intel on the regime. He and Berntsen claimed they’ve been briefing U.S. officials.
Then The Guardian’s Aram Roston revealed on Friday the identity of one U.S. official who’s been getting intel from Berntsen and Rodil: U.S. Attorney for Puerto Rico W. Stephen Muldrow.
According to Roston’s sources, Berntsen and Rodil have been briefing Muldrow, who was appointed during Trump’s first term and kept in office by Pres. Joe Biden. It’s not clear when the Muldrow briefings began.
In an interview last month, Rodil said that he and Berntsen had “found one person, one person, one U.S. attorney, that said, ‘I took the oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, and I will honor the oath.’ That man changed everything for us.”
Rodil did not identify his Justice Department ally but said that same prosecutor had been in office back on Nov. 7, 2024, during the Biden administration, and fended off two FBI agents who sought to take Rodil’s computer and phone at a U.S. airport.
“This is my criminal investigation,” the unnamed prosecutor told the FBI agents, according to Rodil. He didn’t indicate what investigation he was referring to, but the team has suggested that their claims of Venezuelan infiltration of the U.S. government are being pursued by investigators.
Last November, Spain’s El Independiente reported that the Justice Department deferred a request from Spanish prosecutors for Rodil to testify in a case involving allegations that he sought dirt on the progressive Podemos party there. The Justice Department’s reason was that letting Rodil testify “would interfere with an ongoing U.S. investigation.”
Nor is Muldrow their only contact. Rodil and Berntsen claim a network of supporters within U.S. law enforcement and intelligence.
Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, a high-profile election denier, says he’s been bankrolling efforts by Rodil and Berntsen to prove their 2020 election theories. And, Byrne claims, an early April briefing by Rodil to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was reflected in Director Tulsi Gabbard’s remarks at the April 10 cabinet meeting.
It was Rodil who got former Venezuelan Navy Captain Leamsy Salazar out of Venezuela more than a decade ago, as I revealed earlier this month. Years later, in 2020, Berntsen was involved in getting Salazar’s story to Trump lawyer Sidney Powell1. Salazar’s claims were debunked internally by the Trump campaign almost immediately but Powell used them publicly to challenge the certification of state votes for Biden.
Byrne also says that former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Michael Nadler is now serving as his counsel. It was Nadler who initiated prosecution against Smartmatic officials.
That indictment alleges that officials spread money around to win contracts in the Philippines, but Berntsen has said the case really involves stolen elections there.
According to Roston’s report, it’s not just that Muldrow, the Puerto Rico U.S. attorney, is listening. The Justice Department is following up on the leads Berntsen and Rodil are providing, Roston wrote.
As the two men have claimed, the administration apparently is pursuing their claims about the 2020 election. Roston reports that federal investigators have been interviewing “multiple people,” presumably including Berntsen and Rodil, “who are pushing unfounded claims that Venezuela helped steal the 2020 election.”
That has included providing U.S. officials with documents and potential witnesses. In previous reporting, I’ve written about Byrne’s claim that he and his two partners have spent years making international trips — 172, by his count — to track down witnesses and other evidence.
Roston also reported that a federal task force based in Tampa2 has talked to people on Berntsen’s and Rodil’s team, in connection with their claims of Venezuelan drug trafficking and money laundering.
It’s widely acknowledged that corruption — including narco-trafficking and financial crimes — is spiderwebbed throughout the Maduro regime. What remains controversial — and unsupported by fact, according to Trump’s own intelligence community — is the suggestion that Maduro runs a tightly organized, top-down, transnational cartel strategically spreading havoc, violence, and drugs throughout the hemisphere and stealing elections around the world.
Some Democrats have expressed confidence in a narrow range of U.S. intel — the involvement of targeted boats in drug trafficking. (Whether the victims are narco-terrorists or just work-for-hire crew members is hotly debated.)
But even those Democrats reportedly say they want more information about Trump’s information.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) is vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and has called for more transparency about Trump’s intel. In the House, ranking Intelligence Committee member Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) voiced doubts about “whether we have the same architecture to make sure innocents aren’t killed, etc., that we do when we traditionally do counter-terrorism strikes.”
Neither Warner nor Himes responded to my requests for comment.
But the questions about intelligence apply to more than the maritime killings and deportations. Raising the specters of parallels with Iraq — for which the Bush administration elevated bogus evidence — Trump has now massed the largest U.S. military buildup in the region in decades.
Reportedly, he is contemplating striking targets inside Venezuela, effectively a declaration of war. It would not be the first based on specious intelligence, but it’s historically unusual for the public to know about it beforehand.
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This was first reported by journalists Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman in their 2024 book, “Find Me The Votes,” before Berntsen’s current Venezuela work became known.
This article originally misidentified the task force as based in the U.S. Southern District of Florida. It’s been revised to reflect The Guardian’s reporting that the task force is based in Tampa.
This continues to be the most terrifying Tom Clancy Mad-Libs ever. I am glad that at least one sitting congress-critter is aware of some of these details. Kudos to you, Jonathan, for getting this out there.
Why are YOU doing what Murphy and his crack staff are PAID to do?! Can't wait for that Venezuelan "shock and awe".