From Drug Boats To Oil Theft: Did Trump And Rubio Tell The Truth About Venezuela?

A detailed fact-check of President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s claims on Maduro’s arrest, drug trafficking and Venezuela’s oil history.

New Delhi: US President Donald Trump has claimed that a US military operation successfully captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, both of whom face US charges linked to cocaine trafficking under recently unsealed indictments.

Speaking at a January 3 press conference at Mar-a-Lago, he said the United States would “run the country” for now. He added that this control would last only until a “safe, proper and judicious transition” could be carried out in the oil-rich South American nation.

Trump also announced that Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez had been sworn in as interim president. He told reporters that she had spoken with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and was “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again”.

Rodríguez later appeared on Venezuelan state television, where she described the US military action as “brutal aggression” and demanded Maduro’s immediate release, rejecting Trump’s version of events.

Maduro has ruled Venezuela since 2013, taking over from Hugo Chavez, his ideological ally who governed the country from 1999. During the years both leaders were in power, relations between Washington and Caracas worsened. Disagreements over foreign policy, control of oil resources and human rights are in the centre of the growing rift.

In July 2024, Maduro declared himself the winner of a presidential election that international observers labelled fraudulent. Reports indicated that opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia secured around 70 percent of the vote.

Strains between Trump and Maduro deepened further in September, after the US government began striking vessels off Venezuela’s coast. Those attacks killed over 100 people and were described by the US president as efforts to stop drug smuggling operations.

When asked at the Mar-a-Lago event whether he had spoken to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado following Maduro’s arrest, Trump dismissed her influence, saying she “does not have the support or the respect within the country”.

Machado, who recently received the Nobel Peace Prize for her pro-democracy activism in Venezuela, recorded a 72 percent approval rating in a March 2025 poll conducted by ClearPath Strategies.

Without presenting evidence, Trump also claimed that US involvement in governing Venezuela “won’t cost us anything”, arguing that American oil companies would invest heavily in new infrastructure. “It’s going to make a lot of money,” he said.

Were the claims Trump and Rubio made during the press conference about congressional oversight, drug trafficking and Venezuela’s oil history actually correct? Let’s examine.

Rubio defended the lack of advance notice to Congress by saying, “It is just not the kind of mission that you can pre-notify because it endangers the mission.”

The administration confirmed that lawmakers were not informed ahead of the operation, with Trump citing fears of leaks.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, praised the move as a “decisive action”. Democratic lawmakers responded with alarm, arguing that Congress should have been briefed in advance.

Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia said, “Maduro is terrible. But Trump put American servicemembers at risk with this unauthorised attack.”

Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire said Trump and his cabinet had not been transparent about their plans for regime change in Venezuela. She warned that lawmakers were left without clarity on how risks would be managed or what long-term strategy would follow what she described as an “extraordinary escalation”.

Under the US Constitution, Congress holds the power to declare war, a step last taken during World War II. Since then, presidents have typically launched military operations using their authority as commander-in-chief, without formal war declarations.

The 1973 War Powers Resolution requires presidents to notify Congress within 48 hours of introducing US forces into hostilities and to end military action within 60 days unless lawmakers approve an extension. An additional 30 days may be granted if the president cites an emergency.

In recent decades, congressional approval has usually come through authorisations for the use of military force. No such authorisation exists for military operations in Venezuela.

Kaine and other lawmakers have pushed legislation to block federal funding for any military action in or against Venezuela without congressional consent.

The Trump administration has steadily reduced prior notification practices. Federal law requires advance notice to eight senior bipartisan members of Congress for especially sensitive covert actions.

In June 2025, Republicans were informed ahead of a planned US strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, while Democrats were not. For the Venezuela operation, available information indicates that no lawmakers received advance notice.

Trump also claimed that each US boat strike off Venezuela’s coast saves 25,000 lives. Since September, the administration has struck at least 32 vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific, killing roughly 115 people.

The US president said the boats were transporting drugs bound for the United States and told reporters that the drugs on each vessel would kill “on average, 25,000 people”.

The reality is Venezuela plays a limited role in supplying drugs to the US market. The administration has not released evidence detailing the type or quantity of drugs allegedly found on the boats, making it impossible to calculate how many lethal doses were destroyed.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 73,000 Americans died of drug overdoses between May 2024 and April 2025. Based on Trump’s claim, the drugs on 32 boats would have accounted for 800,000 potential deaths, a figure nearly 11 times the annual US overdose toll.

Trump further stated that “Maduro sent savage and murderous gangs, including the bloodthirsty prison gang Tren de Aragua (TDA), to terrorise American communities nationwide”. No evidence supports the claim that Maduro directed members of Tren de Aragua to the United States.

The US Justice Department indictment against Maduro does not reference any such activity. An April report by the US National Intelligence Council also challenged the claim, stating that while Venezuela’s environment allows the TDA to operate, the Maduro government “probably does not have a policy of cooperating with the TDA and is not directing the TDA movement to and operations in the United States”.

Trump has also argued that Venezuela “stole” oil from the United States in the past. In the early 20th century, Venezuela’s long-time ruler Juan Vicente Gomez granted foreign companies broad access to the country’s oil reserves. In 1975, after years of political pressure, Venezuela nationalised its oil industry.

Francisco Rodríguez, a Venezuelan economist at the University of Denver, told The Washington Post that claims of Venezuela stealing US oil and land lack any factual basis. He said Washington prioritised stable access to affordable Venezuelan oil rather than opposing nationalisation, which he described as “relatively uncontroversial” at the time.

US oil companies such as Exxon, Mobil and Gulf, now Chevron, lost assets worth about $5 billion each and received compensation of roughly $1 billion apiece, according to news reports cited by The Washington Post.

Rodríguez said the companies did not seek further compensation, partly because no legal forum existed to pursue such claims.

Invading a country to seize its oil would violate international law and ethical norms. In 2016, Trump publicly suggested that the United States should have taken Iraq’s oil after invading the country to remove Saddam Hussein.

Legal scholars point to the 1907 Hague Convention, which states that private property must be respected during war and cannot be confiscated and that pillage is explicitly forbidden.

Terrorism analyst Daveed Gartenstein-Ross previously explained that accepting “to the victors go the spoils” would have meant legitimising Iraq’s 1990 invasion and occupation of Kuwait, an act widely condemned under the UN Charter.