Article III Project founder Mike Davis defends the constitutionality of the U.S. invasion of Venezuela and capture of President Nicolas Maduro. Davis on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast:

STEVE BANNON: Mike Davis immediately, in fact, a New York Times reporter had President Trump’s number and folks, you know, a couple of three reporters may have his number. He called him. President Trump gave him 50 seconds and actually teed up this 11 o’clock press briefing. The second question this guy asked him is, well, do you really have the legal authority to do this? I mean, already they were on President Trump. So you’ve been the biggest advocate of in Project 2025 and the Years in the Wilderness, the inherent, going back to President Lincoln, the inherent powers in Article Two of the president of the United States as commander in chief to repel an evasion and actually to, you know, get into a, you know, get basically try to put down a conflict between some bad guys that are trying to destroy the United States. And in this case, maybe just enforcing a, what, a warrant from a federal court. What happened here? What powers did the president use today, sir? MIKE DAVIS, ARTICLE III PROJECT: Well, there’s an indictment out of the Southern District of New York, a four-count indictment that Attorney General Pam Bondi just released. It was unsealed. It’s a four-count indictment for narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the United States. And so there was this indictment that was unsealed. There was an arrest warrant and the president executed this arrest warrant, went and got the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, and he brought them back to, he’s bringing them back to court in New York City. They’re going to stay in a Brooklyn jail. The president absolutely has that constitutional and statutory power to do that. Separate from that, remember what Maduro did. Maduro unleashed trendy Aragua terrorist on the United States who kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered Americans, including Lakin Riley. We have people, we have hundreds of thousands of Americans who have died from fentanyl poisoning because of Maduro and his wife. And so the president absolutely has the Article II and statutory power to do what he did. There’s no question about it. I would say to the Democrat politicians who are crying about this today, President Trump made it much easier for these Democrat politicians to go have margaritas with Maduro in this Brooklyn jail. They don’t have to travel down to Venezuela. They don’t have to travel down to Caracas to do it now. BANNON: And they don’t have to go to El Salvador to have Mai Tais with them. So you’re saying here that the indictment, he was actually using his power as the chief magistrate and chief law enforcement officer since there was an indictment from the attorney general in a federal court, the Southern District of Manhattan, to allow the military to go execute on that indictment and to bring him in as a criminal? DAVIS: Yeah, Southern District of New York in Manhattan. And there was a separate indictment in 2020 also. So there are two different indictments. This is the latest indictment, and these are very serious charges. Maduro and his wife are going to spend the rest of their lives in federal prison in the United States. President Trump is following the rules. His attorney general is following the rules. I want to say congratulations to President Trump and his team, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hecsef, the Attorney General Pam Bondi. They did a flawless job of executing this arrest warrant and bringing these alleged criminals to justice. BANNON; Mike, do you think the reason… Now, you had the Article 2 powers as commander-in-chief, and we’ve had this with Trende Aragra and what he’s trying to do to the United States and obviously killing people with the drugs that are coming up here, which is also part of the indictment. It’s one of the things that does jump out here because we’ve been talking about this now for when President Trump got back, but Eric Prince had been talking about this even in the first term. They did not round up the rest of the bad hombres, and he’s got some very bad hombres that are his inner circle. Do you think that’s because they very narrow casted this around this indictment and let’s go extract this guy and getting back on federal charges, and then we can negotiate with these other guys? I’m sure these other guys are co-conspirators, are part of it. Why would they not go in and get those on enforcing this indictment? DAVIS: President Trump was correct to focus on getting these two big fish and getting them out of Venezuela, getting them into U.S. custody. I’m not seeing where Maduro’s security forces put up much of a fight. There were no American deaths. I don’t think there were American injuries, or at least none were reported. You look at the Venezuelans celebrating on the streets of Caracas around the country, Venezuelans in America. I don’t think that too many people in Venezuela are losing much sleep. I think they’re pretty happy about this, and I’ve actually had a meeting with this opposition leader, Maria Carina Machado. She’s very pro-America. She’s tough. If she’s the next leader of Venezuela, that’s going to be a very good thing for the United States of America. We’re going to have a key ally in Venezuela. Remember, Venezuela was once a very wealthy, successful country before Chavez and Maduro destroyed this country with their left-wing Marxist socialism. I think that a leader like Machado can restore Venezuela and make Venezuela great again. I look forward to that day. We won’t have Venezuelans flooding our country if they have a country they can go back to.

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