Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday the U.S. was in charge of the direction of the situation in Venezuela after U.S. forces arrested and deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro early Saturday morning.
“President Trump was pretty clear yesterday. He said the United States is going to run Venezuela. Under what legal authority?” ABC News’ “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos asked.
“Well, first of all, what’s going to happen here is that we have a quarantine on their oil. That means their economy will not be able to move forward until the conditions that are in the national interest of the United States and the interests of the Venezuelan people are met,” Rubio said.
But pressed on whether the U.S. was in charge of the country right now, Rubio said that what the U.S. was “running” was the direction of the situation.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio listens as President Donald Trump addresses the media during a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago club on Jan. 3, 2026, in Palm Beach, Fla.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
“What we are running is the direction that this is going to move moving forward. And that is we have leverage,” Rubio said.
“The leverage that we have here is the leverage of the quarantine. So that is a Department of War operation conducting, in some cases, law enforcement functions with the Coast Guard on the seizure of these boats,” Rubio said.
Rubio added that Maduro was someone the U.S. “simply couldn’t work with,” and said that the administration was not recognizing Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as the current legitimate leader.
“We don’t believe that this regime in place is legitimate via an election,” Rubio said.
“Ultimately, legitimacy for their system of government will come about through a period of transition and real elections, which they have not had,” he added.
Rubio noted that the administration was keeping “all the options we had before this raid” on the table.
“If you are a sanctioned boat and you are headed towards Venezuela, you will be seized either on the way in or on the way out with a court order that we get from judges in the United States,” he said.
Responding to questions about the legality of the raid against Maduro without authorization from Congress, Rubio said that Congress’ permission wasn’t necessary because “this is not an invasion.”
“Obviously, this was not a friendly territory,” Rubio said. “So in order to arrest [Maduro], we had to ask the Department of War to become involved in this operation.”
Rubio said that concern about leaks also factored into the consideration.
“You can’t congressionally notify something like this for two reasons. Number one, it will leak. It’s as simple as that. And number two, it’s an exigent circumstance. It’s an emergent thing,” he said.
Rubio also said he was not involved in Trump’s pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of drug trafficking in the U.S. — charges similar to those faced by Maduro now.
“Well, the president has the pardon authority. He’s the one that reviewed the file with the folks at the White House to make these pardon decisions,” Rubio said.
“Do you support it?” Stepanopoulos asked.
“I wasn’t involved in those deliberations. I haven’t looked at the case file,” Rubio said. “I’ve got a bunch of other things going on that are within my purview of secretary of state and national security adviser, but pardons aren’t one of them.”