Rubio says Maduro capture was ‘trigger-based operation’

Published January 28, 2026 12:11pm ET



Secretary of State Marco Rubio stressed that the raid to capture former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro was a “trigger-based operation.”

When pressed by Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) about why Congress didn’t receive advance notification of the raid, Rubio proposed two explanations: that the operation was contingent on several different factors aligning at an exact moment, and to prevent information leaks. He began by addressing Coons’s point that the operation had been rehearsed for months prior, so the Trump administration should have been able to address Congress.

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