Secretary of State Marco Rubio has a deputy he can’t seem to rein in, seven senior officials told Axios.
According to the report, Chris Landau, Rubio’s second at the State Department, is secretly working to undermine President Donald Trump in Venezuela, where his father once served as the ambassador.
“There’s a widespread belief that Landau went rogue,” said one Axios source. “And the evidence supports that belief.” Another staffer added: “Marco isn’t happy” with the deputy over the move.
After two earthquakes hit the Venezuelan capital Caracas on June 24, killing over 3,500 people and injuring thousands, exiled opposition leader María Corina Machado tried to get back to Venezuela to help. The Trump administration stopped her both times, despite her loyalty to Trump.
Machado was once an ally of Trump world, but Axios described her relationship with the White House as strained. It could come from the fact that she won the Nobel Peace Prize last year instead of Trump. She donated the medal to him after he complained so relentlessly that Norway was fearful Trump would come after their country.
After he staged a kidnapping mission in Venezuela to seize President Nicolás Maduro, Trump handed the top spot to Maduro’s VP, Delcy Rodriguez, instead of giving it to the opposition leader.
The Rubio aide has a close relationship with Machado’s team.
“He’s eerily incapable of saying anything positive” about Rodriguez’s interim government and certainly there’s nothing “negative about Machado.”
Machado called Landau and other officials in the administration after the earthquake, requesting help with getting her back to the country.
One person described it as “forum-shopped,” a reference to those who search for the perfect person to give them what they want. And “Landau was happy to help.”
Landau spoke with the Netherlands ambassador, who said he would help get her to Venezuela by going through the Dutch island of Curaçao. The ambassador then checked with other officials and found she hadn’t been cleared to travel and lacked a Venezuelan passport. Her plane was forced to return on June 25, as she learned mid-flight that she couldn’t enter the country.
Axios said that she eventually spoke to Rubio who mentioned the existing U.S. policy. Instead of that being the end, Landau also “then miscommunicated the same sentiment a second time to a second foreign official,” the report said.
So, on June 26, Landau told Panama’s foreign minister that he was arranging Machado’s return through their country. Machado was able to land and a few days later tried to make her way to Curaçao, but she was blocked again. Her next option may be to fly into Colombia and cross the Venezuelan border via roads or trains.
Landau swore that at no point did he misrepresent U.S. policy on Venezuela in any of the conversations he had with international leaders.
The State Department gave a statement to Axios, saying they all remain “in lockstep behind President Trump and Secretary Rubio in advancing the president’s foreign policy agenda.”