By MATTHEW LEE and STEPHEN GROVES, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio has begun his much-anticipated congressional testimony about Venezuela, defending the Trump administration’s military operation to oust and arrest then-President Nicolas Maduro as Republican and Democratic lawmakers offered starkly different readings of the current situation.
Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday that President Donald Trump had acted to take out a major U.S. national security threat in its own hemisphere with the Jan. 3 operation to depose Maduro. Trump’s top diplomat said America was safer and more secure as a result and that the Republican administration would work with interim authorities to stabilize the South American country.
“We’re not going to have this thing turn around overnight, but I think we’re making good and decent progress,” Rubio said. “We are certainly better off today in Venezuela than we were four weeks ago and I think and hope and expect that we’ll be better off in three months and six months and nine months than we would have been had Maduro still been there.”
The former Florida senator said that Venezuela’s interim leaders are cooperating and would soon begin to see benefits. Venezuela will be allowed to sell oil that is now subject to U.S. sanctions, with the revenue set aside to pay for basic government services such as policing and health care, Rubio said. He said money from oil sales will be deposited in an account controlled by the U.S. Treasury and will be released after Washington approves monthly budgets to be submitted by Venezuelan authorities.
“The funds from that will be deposited into an account that we will have oversight over,” Rubio said. Venezuela, he said, “will spend that money for the benefit of the Venezuelan people.”
The committee chairman, Idaho Sen. Jim Risch, praised Trump’s decisions to remove Maduro, continue deadly military strikes on boats suspected of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean and seize sanctioned tankers.
Risch also offered new details on the operation in Caracas, saying it involved “only about 200 troops” and a “firefight that lasted less than 27 minutes.”
“This military action was incredibly brief, targeted and successful,” Risch said, adding that the U.S. and other nations may have to assist Venezuela when it seeks to restore democratic elections. ”Venezuela may require U.S. and international oversight to ensure these elections are indeed free and fair,” he said.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the committee’s top Democrat, questioned whether that operation was worth it, considering most of Maduro’s top aides and lieutenants still run the Venezuela and the economic situation there remains bleak.
“We’ve traded one dictator for another, so it’s no wonder that so many of my constituents are asking, why is the president spending so much time focused on Venezuela instead of the cost of living and their kitchen table economic concerns?” she asked. “From Venezuela to Europe, the United States is spending more, risking more and achieving less.”
As he has often been called to do, Rubio was aiming to sell one of Trump’s more contentious priorities to ex-colleagues in Congress. With the administration’s foreign policy gyrating among the Western Hemisphere, Europe and the Middle East, Rubio was also aiming to address the alarm that has emerged in his own party lately about efforts such as Trump’s demand to annex Greenland.
Maduro, who has pleaded not guilty to federal drug trafficking charges in a U.S. court, has declared himself “the president of my country” and protested his capture.
Congress hasn’t curtailed Trump on Venezuela
Congressional Democrats have condemned Trump’s moves as exceeding the authority of the executive branch, while most Republicans have supported them as a legitimate exercise of presidential power.
The House narrowly defeated a war powers act resolution that would have directed Trump to remove U.S. troops from Venezuela. As Rubio argued, the administration says there are no U.S. troops on the ground in Venezuela despite a large military buildup in the region.
Democrats had argued that the resolution was necessary after the U.S. raid to capture Maduro and because Trump has stated plans to control the country’s oil industry for years to come.
The pushback has already begun in courts, too. Families of two Trinidadian nationals killed in an administration boat strike filed what is thought to be the first wrongful-death case arising from the that campaign. Three dozen strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean have killed at least 126 people since September.
US acts to normalize ties while issuing warnings
While keeping pressure on those that the U.S. calls “narcotraffickers” without providing evidence, officials also are working to normalize ties with Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez.
Rubio, in remarks prepared for the hearing that he did not use verbatim, said she has little choice but to comply with Trump’s demands.
“Rodríguez is well aware of the fate of Maduro; it is our belief that her own self-interest aligns with advancing our key objectives,” according to the remarks.
The administration has said its demands for Rodriguez include opening Venezuela’s energy sector to U.S. companies, providing preferential access to production, using oil revenue to purchase American goods, and ending subsidized oil exports to Cuba.
Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice president, said Tuesday that her government and the U.S. “have established respectful and courteous channels of communication.” During televised remarks, Rodríguez said that she, Trump and Rubio were aiming to set “a working agenda.”
So far, she has appeared to acquiesce to Trump’s demands and to release prisoners jailed by the government under Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez. On Monday, the head of a Venezuelan human rights group said 266 political prisoners had been freed since Jan. 8.
Trump had praised the releases, saying on social media that he would “like to thank the leadership of Venezuela for agreeing to this powerful humanitarian gesture!”
In a key step to the restoration of diplomatic relations between the two countries, the State Department notified Congress this week that it intends to begin sending additional diplomatic and support personnel to Caracas to prepare for the possible reopening of the U.S. Embassy, which shuttered in 2019. Fully normalizing ties, however, would require the U.S. to revoke its decision recognizing the Venezuelan parliament elected in 2015 as the country’s legitimate government.
Later Wednesday, Rubio planned to meet Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado at the State Department.
Machado went into hiding after Maduro was declared the winner of the 2024 presidential election despite ample credible evidence to the contrary. She reemerged in December to pick up her Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. After Maduro was ousted, she traveled to Washington. In a meeting with Trump, she presented him with her Peace Prize medal, an extraordinary gesture given that Trump has effectively sidelined her.
Associated Press writer Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.
