Venezuela ‘untenable situation’ that had to be addressed, Rubio says about Maduro capture

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a U.S. Senate committee on Wednesday that Venezuela’s new leaders were moving toward closer ties with Washington without the immediate need for further U.S. military action, as he publicly faced questions from many of his former colleagues for the first time.

Since the U.S. raid ​to seize then-president Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3, President Donald Trump has ordered his administration to work with Delcy Rodriguez, a Maduro ally who was sworn in as interim president after his arrest. Trump previously warned of further military action if her government does not comply with U.S. demands.

Rubio — who was a senator for 14 years representing Florida, as well as a member of the Senate’s foreign relations committee — said that while Trump would not rule out any options, “we are not postured to, nor do we intend or expect to, have to take any military action in Venezuela,” signalling the administration’s satisfaction with Rodriguez.

Communications with Venezuela’s leaders were “very respectful and productive,” he said.

The U.S. had set up a mechanism ‍to sell Venezuelan oil in the short term but aimed to facilitate a transition to “a friendly, stable, prosperous Venezuela” that ultimately chooses its leaders through free and fair elections, Rubio said, without being able to commit to a time frame on when that might occur.

Rubio praised Maria Corina Machado, the opposition leader and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, but deftly avoided questions as to why Trump dismissed her as not having the popular support of Venezuelans, instead pointing to the promise of elections at some point.

He told the committee that Maduro had to be removed from power because Venezuela had become a base of operations for U.S. adversaries, including China, Russia and Iran, and his alleged co-operation with drug traffickers was affecting the region and the United States.

“It was an untenable situation and it had to be addressed,” Rubio said.

‘Taking their oil at gunpoint’

Several members of Congress, some Republicans as well as Democrats, have expressed frustration with what they say is a lack of communication from Trump officials about the major operations, including the capture of Maduro and the elimination of many foreign aid programs supported by Congress.

However, efforts by the Senate to pass a resolution that would have barred Trump from further military action in Venezuela without Congress’s authorization have failed.

“The scope of the project that you are undertaking in Venezuela is without precedent,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said. “You are taking their oil at gunpoint. You are holding and selling that oil, putting for now the receipts in an offshore Middle Eastern account. You’re deciding how and for what purposes that money is going to be used in a country of 30 million people.

“I think a lot of us believe that that is destined for failure.”

The public signs of the Trump administration’s aggressive posture toward Venezuela began last summer when the FBI doubled a reward leading to the capture of Maduro. Then in September, a series of controversial, deadly strikes on alleged drug-carrying boats the U.S. linked to Maduro’s administration commenced.

As of Tuesday, the death toll from those strikes was up to 126, including 10 who were believed to be dead after searches were suspended, a U.S. defence official told Reuters.

The administration has framed the attacks carried out under U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s direction as a war with drug cartels, alleging they were armed groups. It has said its attacks comply with international rules known as the law of war or the law of armed conflict.

But the administration’s actions have drawn scrutiny from Democrats and some Republicans in Congress, which has not authorized attacks on the drug cartels, as well as condemnation from human rights groups. The attack on two men who clung to a boat after surviving a first strike on Sept. 2 came under particular scrutiny.

Legal experts have previously said the drug cartels do not fit the accepted international definition of an armed group, and drug trade experts have pointed out that Venezuela is a porous transit point for cocaine — not the fentanyl that has been the source of the large majority of drug toxicity deaths the past decade in the U.S.

Family members of two Trinidadian men killed in a U.S. missile strike on Oct. 14 against a suspected drug boat filed a wrongful death lawsuit on Tuesday, alleging the pair were manual labourers in Venezuela who were murdered in a “manifestly unlawful” military campaign targeting civilian vessels.

Democrats blast pardon for ex-Honduran president

Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland questioned the sincere concern over drug trafficking, given that Trump pardoned the former president of Honduras, convicted and imprisoned in the U.S. for drug trafficking.

Rubio and some Republicans on the panel hoped the efficiency of the capture of Maduro would give other socialist autocrats in the Americas pause. Rubio, the son of a Cuban emigré, said he hoped “regime change” would eventually occur there, quickly taking pains to state that the U.S. wasn’t planning to bring about that change.

While the session offered senators on the panel a chance to substantively question Rubio on the Venezuelan operations for the first time, other topics arose.

Van Hollen suggested that the current U.S. government could be “the most corrupt administration in history,” pointing to a New York Times report last week alleging that Trump and his family have earned hundreds of millions of dollars since he took office in 2025, including through dealings with foreign individuals and entities.

Several Democrats expressed disappointment at the White House’s threats to annex Greenland, as well as Trump’s downplaying of the contributions of other NATO members, with the president seemingly ignorant of the deaths suffered by alliance service members after the U.S. was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.

Rubio said the U.S. now has in place a process on Greenland and ​that there will be technical-level meetings ⁠with officials from Greenland ‍and ⁠Denmark ​on the issue. He said ⁠he thought this process was going to bring ‍everyone “a good outcome.”