knew

When the Trump administration invaded Venezuela and kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro on January 3, the New York Times and Washington Post framed it as a surprise.

In a 2,000-word play-by-play, the Post (1/3/26) called it a “surprise strike” in a headline, and a “secretive operation” in the article. The Times, for its part, dubbed it a “surprise nighttime operation” (1/3/26), noting that “the military took pains to maintain so-called tactical surprise” (1/3/26).

But word quickly got out that it was not a surprise to either paper. Semafor (1/3/26), an outlet co-founded by former Times media columnist Ben Smith, reported that both the Times and Post “learned of a secret US raid on Venezuela soon before it was scheduled to begin,” but chose not to report on it, to “avoid endangering US troops.” Semafor sourced its report to “two people familiar with the communications between the administration and the news organizations.”

Semafor’s reporting didn’t clarify which individuals at each organization were aware of the forthcoming operation, but it wrote that the outlets decided “to hold off their reporting for several hours after the administration warned that reporting could have exposed American troops performing the operation.”

‘Did not have verified details’

The New York Times and Washington Post suppressed the story as Trump continues to crack down on press freedom. Trump has implemented new, restrictive media policies that led major news outlets to give up their news desks at the Pentagon (AP, 10/15/25). The president has filed costly lawsuits against the media, including a $15 billion defamation suit against the Times for multiple books and articles published shortly before the 2024 election (AP, 9/16/25). The Times, meanwhile, is suing what Trump calls the Department of War over its new press policy (New York Times, 12/4/25).

Whether the Times or Post should have exposed the operation is—at the very least—a legitimate question that should be debated in the public forum. And yet the Post has failed to even address Semafor‘s report. Times executive editor Joe Kahn, meanwhile, challenged Semafor’s reporting in a Times morning newsletter (1/12/26) more than a week later.

In response to a reader question, Kahn said that, “contrary to some claims,” the Times “did not have verified details about the pending operation to capture Maduro or a story prepared, nor did we withhold publication at the request of the Trump administration.”

But Semafor‘s report—the only claims that have been publicly made about the Times‘ withholding of information—made no mention of details being “verified,” or a story being “prepared.” It’s highly doubtful that the Pentagon would ever verify such information to a news organization prior to an operation—or that a US corporate news organization like the Times would be so bold as to prepare such a story without permission.

Kahn acknowledged that the Times was “aware of the possibility that that planning could result in new operations,” given its previous reporting and “close contact with sources.” And he admitted that the Times “does consult with the military when there are concerns that exposure of specific operational information could risk the lives of American troops,” but he claimed that was “not relevant in this case.”

Kahn added that “we take those concerns seriously, and have at times delayed publication or withheld details if they might lead to direct threats to members of the military.” He said, though, “in all such cases, we make our editorial decisions independently.”

It might be true that reporting a story about the Venezuela invasion before it happened could have endangered US troops. This is a familiar justification, used by US corporate media to suppress the story of the Bay of Pigs invasion and delay reporting on the NSA wiretapping during the Bush administration, as Semafor noted.

But there is a very real possibility that exposing the operation—for which Trump did not seek congressional approval, and which is widely viewed by international law experts as illegal—could have saved the hundred people who were killed by the airstrikes (New York Times, 1/8/26), including an 80-year-old woman (New York Times, 1/3/26; Washington Post, 1/4/26).

ACTION ALERT:

Please ask the New York Times and Washington Post why they failed to report on the Venezuelan invasion and kidnapping when it could have saved lives. Please ask their specific criteria for delaying significant information they receive, and whether the legality of US actions play any role whatsoever in their consideration.

CONTACT:

New York Times: [email protected] and [email protected] (or via Bluesky @NYTimes.com)

Washington Post: [email protected] (or via Bluesky @WashingtonPost.com)

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Source: FAIR

WASHINGTON — Top officials in the White House learned in April that an investigation of the IRS would probably end up showing that the agency targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny, the White House spokesman conceded Monday, contrary to earlier Obama administration statements.

But White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said staffers didn’t tell President Obama the bombshell was coming and that the West Wing did nothing to interfere with the audit or the report before its release.

“The cardinal rule,” Carney said, “is that you do not intervene in an independent investigation, and you do not do anything that would give such an appearance. … And that’s the doctrine we followed.”

PHOTOS: President Obama’s rough week

Since an Inspector General’s report on the matter was released last week, Republicans have been trying to figure out how long the Obama administration has known about the allegations — and, in particular, whether the president was aware of the irregularities while running for reelection in 2012.

The leaders of the Senate Finance Committee sent a bipartisan letter to the IRS on Monday calling on the acting commissioner to disclose a raft of information on the matter, including any signs of communications between the IRS and the White House.

“Targeting applicants for tax-exempt status using political labels threatens to undermine the public’s trust in the IRS,” Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) wrote in a letter co-signed by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), the committee’s ranking Republican. “Lack of candor in advising the Senate of this practice is equally troubling.”

Senators have been hearing complaints from nonprofit civic organizations for two years, Baucus wrote.

DOCUMENT: The Inspector General’s report on the IRS

White House aides had maintained for days that they knew nothing of the matter until the week of April 22, when the Treasury Department informed White House Counsel Kathy Ruemmler that a report was coming, and that they were not informed of what would be in the report.

Carney said last week that Ruemmler’s office was only told that the IG was finishing a review about matters involving the office in Cincinnati. “That’s all they were informed as a normal sort of heads-up,” he said.

Obama political advisor Dan Pfeiffer echoed the assertion during a CBS interview on Sunday, saying the White House was aware of the report but “not the details of what happened, not the results of the investigation, but that an independent investigation was about to conclude.”

Following a report to the contrary in Monday editions of the Wall Street Journal, Carney acknowledged that Ruemmler knew on April 24 that findings probably included evidence that the IRS had targeted conservative groups.

Ruemmler then informed Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and other members of the senior staff, Carney said. He said there were subsequent communications between Ruemmler’s and McDonough’s offices with their counterparts at Treasury to talk about the timing of the release and potential findings of the report.

It was Ruemmler who made the decision that the president didn’t need to know about the report in advance of its release, Carney said.

Her belief was that “this is not the kind of thing that you notify the president of, an investigation that’s not complete, because it wouldn’t be appropriate to do so,” Carney said.

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christi.parsons@latimes.com

Twitter: @cparsons

lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

Twitter: @lisamascaroinDC