WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday warned that the Trump administration has no plans to let Venezuela’s corrupt ruling elite cling to power indefinitely — as critics blast Washington for engaging with top officials from Nicolás Maduro’s regime.
Speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio acknowledged that current work with Maduro’s deputy and interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez is temporary — and not what Washington sees as a long-term solution for Caracas.
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“We’re not even four weeks into this thing, and if it continues to look like this in six months, nine months, a year from now — if progress isn’t being made — we’ll have very different feelings about it,” he said.
“I think we’ve made substantial progress in a very short period of time, but I acknowledge we want to make a lot more progress; this is not the end state that we want,” Rubio added.
His comments came as senators on both sides of the political aisle expressed support for Maduro’s removal — and concern over why the US is engaging with the remnants of Maduro’s illegitimate government despite the regime’s record of human rights abuses and political crackdowns.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) said Maduro’s continued oppression should be “unacceptable to both sides,” arguing the US is funding and legitimizing a government that continues to terrorize its own people.
“I just want to know what is the plan to address in a much more aggressive manner these severe human rights violations and to try to stop these armed militias,” Booker said. “It is very frustrating to me that we still have a repressive regime in power in Venezuela, suppressing human rights, yet we are cooperating with them.”
Venezuela’s armed militia known as “colectivos” continue to terrorize opponents to the remaining Maduro regime. Earlier this month, Rodriguez encouraged the armed group to stop and search cars and residents’ cellphones for evidence of support for Trump’s Jan. 3 mission to capture Maduro.
Rubio explained that the statecraft involved in helping a country transition from autocracy is not a simple task. Time is needed to oversee lasting and peaceful change.
“I get it, we all want like something immediately, but this is not a frozen dinner you put in a microwave and in two and a half minutes it comes out ready to eat and these are complex things,” he told the senators.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) supported Maduro’s ouster and welcomed news that the US would soon open an embassy in Caracas to have a diplomatic presence on the ground, but worried the profiteers behind the dictator’s narcoterrorism and oil sales would keep benefitting until a full regime change.
“I’m concerned that we haven’t really changed the regime enough and that America’s dollars are still going to drug runners and to significant organizations who we don’t want to have benefit from the funding that we’re selling now of oil and providing to Venezuelans,” she said.
Rodríguez has been on the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s radar for years, and in 2022 was even labeled a “priority target” — a designation DEA reserves for suspects believed to have a “significant impact” on the drug trade, the Associated Press reported this month.
Questioned by Shaheen about whether Rodríguez was involved in the drug trade, Rubio declined to speculate on law enforcement matters but acknowledged the corruption that has long defined the country’s government.
“In the long term, by no means is our policy to leave in place something permanent that’s as corrupt as you’ve described,” Rubio said. “… What we’re cooperating on is not the continuation of what’s happening; it’s a movement away from all this and transitioning, ultimately, to something that looks nothing like this.”
Rubio said Venezuelan money from US-controlled oil sales is going into a Qatari bank account.
“Part of the proceeds will go to fund an audit process to make sure that that’s how the money is being spent,” Rubio said.
Questioned why the Qataris are currently holding the funds, Rubio said it was a “creative” way to work around the legal problems that would arise if an American bank held funds frozen by US sanctions. The arrangement is only temporary while officials worked out a way to bring them under a US structure that allows access to the money without conferring legitimacy to the leftover Maduro regime.
“We don’t recognize this government, we recognize the 2015 [Venezuelan] National Assembly, so we have to find some creative way legally to meet that standard,” he said.
There’s another problem: if the funds were held in an American bank, creditors with outstanding claims against Venezuela could instantly take the money. That risk, Rubio said, would cripple the chance of Caracas getting the funds they need to function.
“Frankly if any of that money touched a US bank, even if it was an account in the name of the Venezuelans, it would immediately be seized upon by a number of creditors — who eventually we will have to take care of,” he said. “But in the short term, that would impede the ability of the Venezuelan authorities to receive the funds they need to operate.”
While most senators of the committee were largely supportive of Maduro’s removal, some Democrats raised alarms that US involvement could morph into another prolonged overseas quagmire.
Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) warned the Venezuela situation risks becoming a new “forever war.”
But Rubio dismissed the allegation outright, arguing that keeping the current regime in place — if only temporarily — helped avoid a full-blown conflict.
“How is it a forever war if we are engaging with Delcy Rodríguez?” he charged.
“You are playing fast and loose with our nation,” said Hirono, who further pressed Rubio to say whether the US was “at war” with Venezuela.
Rubio said Washington is at war not with Caracas, but with “narco trafficking groups and criminal gangs that are targeting the United States.”
Still, he said the US would “absolutely” take further action if required.
“Every president retains the right to defend the United States against an imminent threat,” he said. “Just to give you an example, Iranian drones deployed in Venezuela that could threaten the United States — we most certainly will address that, even if it’s located in Venezuela.
“But we hope we don’t get to that point. We don’t expect to get there, we’re not trending in that direction. That’s a fact,” he added.
Following the hearing, Rubio headed back to the Department of State for a meeting with Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for her efforts to promote democracy in her country.
