President Trump’s envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell, is causing tensions within the State Department as critics say his “freelancing” is damaging U.S. diplomatic negotiations and threatening national security.

The most recent controversy includes a botched effort to secure the release of Americans unjustly detained in Venezuela that fell apart because Grenell and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were negotiating separate deals, The New York Times reported.

Grenell’s deal reportedly included an extension for Chevron to export oil from Venezuela, a policy option that Rubio has shot down in the past.

The reported episode is shining a light on dysfunction within Trump’s inner circle, coinciding with confusion surrounding the Pentagon’s halting weapons shipments to Ukraine and ever-changing goal posts on tariffs.

“It just says that the administration, part of it doesn't know what the other's doing, and that can put Americans at risk,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) told The Hill of the Venezuela discord.

Last month, Van Hollen joined a group of 20 bipartisan senators asking Rubio to continue efforts to free at least eight unjustly detained Americans in Venezuela.

Grenell is a divisive character in Trump world. He is lauded by supporters for being one of the president’s most ardent defenders, and for his willingness to buck conventional foreign policy thinking. But his critics within the administration succeeded in boxing him out of the top-level positions he coveted most,........

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