Trump officials give nearly two-hour briefing to top lawmakers on Venezuela

“I think those are all questions I think will be more sufficiently answered,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., about whether the Trump administration gave a timeline for reaching operational control of Venezuela.

Thune added that the prospect of American troops in Venezuela was raised during the briefing but that he did not “have any sense that that is going to happen.”

Rep. Brian Mast, chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee, said the administration intended for acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez to be in place until potential free and fair elections could be held.

“That’s why she’s in place, to work to maintain stability in there. And there’s an expectation that stability will be maintained,” Mast said.

He declined to say if the administration had shared any timeline.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said the briefing “posed far more questions than it answered.”

Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Mark Warner echoed those concerns, saying the meeting lacked clarity. Shaheen said that “there are a significant number of questions that still need to be answered.”

Rep. Gregory Meeks, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the briefing was “not good” and offered little clarity about the administration’s next steps in Venezuela. Meeks added his takeaway was that Trump “has the option of putting troops on the ground” and is “not going to take anything off the table.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson said that he does not expect the United States to deploy troops to Venezuela, emphasizing that U.S. actions there are “not a regime change” operation.

Johnson made the remarks after emerging from a nearly two-hour briefing with top congressional leaders, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other senior Trump administration officials.

“We don’t expect direct involvement in any other way beyond just coercing the new interim government to get that going,” Johnson said.

Trump told NBC News in an interview that María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader who was recognized last year with the Nobel Peace Prize, should not have won the award, which he long has coveted and has openly campaigned for since he returned to office.

But Trump denied basing his decision about Machado’s ability to lead Venezuela on the prize as had been reported by the Washington Post.

“She should not have won it,” the president told NBC News. “But no, that has nothing to do with my decision.”

A top adviser to Trump, Stephen Miller, spoke about Machado in a separate interview with CNN and said, “All Venezuelan experts agree that it would be absurd and preposterous for us to suddenly fly her into the country and put her in a charge, and then the military would follow her and the security forces would follow her. ... It’s not even a serious question.”

Trump told NBC News in an interview that the U.S. government could reimburse oil companies making investments in Venezuela to maintain and increase oil production in that country.

He suggested that the necessary rebuilding of the country’s neglected infrastructure for extracting and shipping oil could happen in less than 18 months.

“I think we can do it in less time than that, but it’ll be a lot of money,” Trump said. “A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.”

It still remains unclear how quickly the investment could occur given the uncertainties about Venezuela’s political stability and the billions of dollars needed to be spent.

Venezuela produces on average about 1.1 million barrels of oil a day, down from the 3.5 million barrels a day produced in 1999 before a government takeover of the majority of oil interests and a mix of corruption, mismanagement and U.S. economic sanctions led output to fall.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said there are probably a dozen leaders around the world that the U.S. could say is a violation of an international law or human rights law.

“And we have never gone in and plucked them out the country. So it sets a very bad precedent for doing this and it’s unconstitutional,” Paul told reporters. “There’s no way you can say bombing a capital and removing the president of a foreign country is not an initiation of war.”

Paul was a rare Republican critic of the administration’s actions in Venezuela as lawmakers returned to the Capitol on Monday.

The top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee say they should have been included in a classified briefing Monday evening on the Maduro operation.

The briefing Monday, led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is for members of the “gang of eight,” which include the four congressional leaders and the heads of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. It also will include leaders from the various national security committees.

But the Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Justice Department, is not among those committees, said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the committee. That is not OK, they say, because the administration has said this was a law enforcement operation involving key DOJ entities.

“There is no legitimate basis for excluding the Senate Judiciary Committee from this briefing,” Grassley and Durbin said in the joint statement. “The administration’s refusal to acknowledge our Committee’s indisputable jurisdiction in this matter is unacceptable and we are following up to ensure the Committee receives warranted information regarding Maduro’s arrest.”

One complication to getting U.S. oil companies to invest in Venezuela: China has first dibs on much of what comes out of the ground.

China has lent tens of billions of dollars to Venezuela in recent years under contracts that require cash proceeds from oil sales to go to Beijing first.

It’s unclear how much China is still owed because Venezuela stopped reporting figures years ago, but the IOU could be as much as $10 billion, says Brad Parks, head of William and Mary’s research group AidData.

Chinese lending could frustrate Trump elsewhere in Latin America, too, as he seeks to shape the region’s politics under a new Monroe Doctrine. Parks says every dollar donated or lent by Washington to the region in the ten years through 2023 has been matched by three dollars from Beijing.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen says an American takeover of Greenland would amount to the end of the NATO military alliance. Her comments came in response to Trump’s renewed call for the strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island to come under U.S. control in the aftermath of the weekend military operation in Venezuela.

The dead-of-night operation by U.S. forces in Caracas left the world stunned, and heightened concerns in Denmark and Greenland, which is a semiautonomous territory of the Danish kingdom and thus part of NATO.

Frederiksen and her Greenlandic counterpart, Jens Frederik Nielsen, blasted the president’s comments and warned of catastrophic consequences. Numerous European leaders expressed solidarity with them.

“If the United States chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops,” Frederiksen told Danish broadcaster TV2 on Monday. “That is, including our NATO and thus the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune says he expects to “find out more” about what Trump means by saying his administration will run Venezuela.

Thune says he and other lawmakers overseeing national security will be briefed later today by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others.

The South Dakota Republican said he was comfortable with the notification he received about the U.S. operation to capture Maduro, even though he was not informed in advance.

“But I think there’s a reason why, like I said before, notification of Congress in advance of really critical and hyper-sensitive missions, to me, it seems ill-advised,” Thune said. “I felt the notification considering the scope of the mission was sufficient.”

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer warned that Trump’s action in Venezuela is only the beginning of a dangerous approach to foreign policy as the president publicly signals U.S. interests in Greenland and other countries.

Whenever the U.S. gets involved in regime change efforts, Schumer said, “American families pay the price in blood and treasure.”

Schumer said, “The American people did not sign up for another round of endless wars.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested that forces that participated in the raid on Venezuela’s capital city on Saturday morning numbered less than 200.

Hegseth told a crowd of sailors and shipbuilders in Newport News, Virginia, that “nearly 200 of our greatest Americans went downtown in Caracas” and they “grabbed an indicted individual wanted by American Justice in support of law enforcement without a single American killed.”

It was not immediately clear whether this figure was for just the forces who set foot on the ground in Caracas or if it also included others who worked to support those troops.

As the U.N. Security Council discussed the implications of the U.S. raid, the world body also spotlighted the profound humanitarian needs in Venezuela. Its people have endured a yearslong, complex economic crisis.

Nearly 8 million Venezuelans — about a quarter of the population — urgently need help, U.N. chief spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said at a news briefing. Resources are slim: The U.N. appealed to member countries last year for $606 million for humanitarian aid to Venezuela but got about $102 million.

Dujarric said the organization is continuing to provide food, health care and other things to needy Venezuelans but needs more support quickly.

Rodríguez was sworn in by her brother, National Assembly leader Jorge Rodríguez.

“I come with sorrow for the suffering inflicted upon the Venezuelan people following an illegitimate military aggression against our homeland,” she said with her right hand up. “I come with sorrow for the kidnapping of two heroes.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he told Trump during a telephone call Monday that Venezuela must not be dragged into instability.

In a televised address, Erdogan also stressed that Turkey does not condone any action violating political legitimacy or international law, warning that such steps “are risky steps that can lead to serious complications on a global level.”

Turkey has cultivated close ties with Venezuela, and Maduro has visited Turkey several times.

Erdogan continued: “Turkey and the Turkish people will continue to stand by the friendly Venezuelan people in their struggle for prosperity, peace, and development.”

Writing on a yellow legal pad placed next to a copy of the indictment in his spot on the defense table, Maduro asked that his notes “be respected” and that he be allowed to keep them.

Hellerstein directed prosecutors to work with the U.S. Marshals to abide by that request.

Wearing jail-issued khaki pants and a blue, short-sleeved shirt over an orange shirt, Maduro issued the greeting several times as he looked at reporters sitting in the jury box, before turning to the packed courtroom gallery.

Respectful of court decorum throughout the proceeding, Maduro took copious notes and repeatedly pressed his case that he had been unlawfully abducted.

Among the spectators in the courtroom were agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration and the special agent in charge of the agency’s New York Division, Frank Tarentino.

The Trump administration is making preliminary plans to reopen the U.S. embassy in Venezuela following Maduro’s ouster, a State Department official said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations, said early preparations “to allow for a reopening” of the embassy in Caracas had begun in the event President Donald Trump decides to return American diplomats to the country.

The official cautioned, however, that no decision had yet been made to resume operations at the facility, which was shuttered in 2019 during Trump’s first term in office. Re-opening a closed embassy requires a great deal of logistics, security and staffing preparation that can take months to complete.

Mark E. Donnelly, her lawyer, said that Cilia Flores had suffered “significant injuries” during her capture and that he believes she has a fracture or severe bruising on her ribs.

The judge directed prosecutors to ensure that she gets the proper care.

As Maduro stood to leave with federal officers, a man in the audience stood and began speaking forcefully at him in Spanish, calling him an “illegitimate” president.

The man, 33-year-old Pedro Rojas, said later that he had been imprisoned by the Venezuelan regime.

As deputy U.S. Marshals led Maduro from the courtroom, the deposed leader looked directly at the man and shot back in Spanish: “I am a kidnapped president. I am a prisoner of war.”

As the hearing came to an end, Maduro and his wife were escorted from the courtroom.

At one point near the end of the hearing, attorney Barry J. Pollack said that his client “is head of a sovereign state and entitled to the privilege” that the status ensures.

Pollack said there were “questions about the legality of his military abduction” and that there would be “voluminous” pretrial filings to address those legal challenges.

Court proceedings ended at 12:31 p.m. after attorney Mark Donnelly, on behalf of Cilia Flores, said that his client sustained “health and medical issues that will require attention.”

Donnelly said that Flores, 69, may have a fracture or severe bruising on her ribs and may need a full X-ray.

Both Maduro and Flores agreed to remain detained for now. Their attorneys could revisit a bail application at a later date.

In court, a government attorney said Maduro and Flores were officially taken into law enforcement custody at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday and that their plane landed in New York at 4:31 p.m. that day.

Following Maduro’s plea, Hellerstein turned to Maduro’s wife and asked her to confirm her identity.

After confirming her name, Cilia Flores said in Spanish, through an interpreter: “I am first lady of the Republic of Venezuela.”

Asked to enter a plea, she responded: “Not guilty. Completely innocent.”

At one point, Maduro said he had not yet read the indictment against him and had not been informed of his rights.

“I did not know of these rights,” he said through the interpreter. “Your honor is informing me of them now.”

The judge responded to Maduro: “A plea of not guilty will be entered on behalf of Mr. Maduro.”

A second time, Maduro was asked for his plea and he said: “I am innocent. I am not guilty of anything that is mentioned here.”

The allegations Hellerstein listed included a “narco-terrorism conspiracy.”

The judge referred to Maduro’s wife, Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro, as “Mrs. Flores.”

Defense attorneys and prosecutors announced their appearances.

The judge, who could not be seen on courtroom monitors shown in overflow rooms, quipped: “Modern electronic equipment hides the judge.”

Once the proceeding began, Hellerstein, a Clinton appointee, announced that he had been assigned to the case.

“It’s my job to assure this is a fair trial,” Hellerstein said, “That’s my job, and that’s what I intend.”

No television cameras or recording devices are allowed inside the courtroom itself, but reporters and members of the public are allowed to watch in overflow rooms.

Maduro was led into the courtroom at 12:01 p.m. He shook hands with his lawyer and sat down. He wore his prison blue uniform.

Maduro’s wife was led to her seat immediately afterward. Both put on headsets to hear the proceeding as it is translated.

Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein took the bench at 12:03 p.m.

Maduro’s son and Venezuelan congressman Nicolás Maduro Guerra railed on the Trump administration on Monday and warned that the capture of his father in an American operation could set a dangerous precedent globally.

The speech in front of Venezuela’s parliament, his first appearance since the Saturday escalation, comes as the Trump administration has pushed Venezuela’s government to fall in line with its vision for the oil-rich nation.

Maduro Guerra, also known as “Nicolasito,” demanded that his parents be returned by American authorities and called on international support.

Maduro Guerra also denounced his name appearing in the New York indictment of his parents, in which he was named as a co-conspirator.

“If we normalize the kidnapping of a head of state, no country is safe. Today it’s Venezuela. Tomorrow it could be any nation that refuses to submit. This is not a regional problem. It is a direct threat to global political stability,” Maduro Guerra said.

Christina Markus Lassen, Danish ambassador to the U.N., carefully denounced U.S. prospects for taking over Greenland without mentioning the fellow NATO ally by name. “The inviolability of borders is not up for negotiation,” she said during a Security Council meeting on Venezuela.

The U.S. operation in Venezuela to seize Maduro, as well as Trump’s repeated threats to annex Greenland heightened concerns in Denmark, which has jurisdiction over the vast mineral-rich island of Greenland.

Lassen also defended Venezuela’s sovereignty, saying “no state should seek to influence political outcomes in Venezuela through the use of threat of force or through other means inconsistent with international law.”

Security was as tight as it has ever been outside the Manhattan federal courthouse in the hours before Nicolás Maduro was to be arraigned.

But inside the courthouse, it was relaxed and orderly and seemingly a day like any other.

There were nearly twice as many journalists as the three-dozen members of the public who were kept in a line in the hallway prior to the opening of the courtroom where Maduro and his wife were to make their initial appearance.

Five “overflow” courtrooms where spectators would be able to watch the proceedings on large screens were set up to be filled as needed after the actual courtroom was filled.

Speaking for Panama — where strongman Manuel Noriega was ousted by a U.S. invasion and drug trafficking arrest in 1989 — U.N. Ambassador Eloy Alfaro de Alba expressed “concern” about the events in Venezuela.

But the envoy focused on criticizing Maduro’s government, which Panama doesn’t recognize as legitimate. Maduro was widely accused of stealing last year’s election.

“As a country that recovered its democracy and sovereignty, Panama can state clearly that there can be no peace without legitimacy,” the ambassador told the Security Council.

And Petro said he firmly rejects any plans by the U.S. to launch strikes against drug traffickers in the South American country.

In a message on X, Petro said his government has conducted record amounts of cocaine seizures and warned the Trump administration that it would kill children if it conducts strikes against drug trafficking groups and rebels in Colombia.

Petro, who was a member of a left wing guerrilla group in his youth, said he will “return to arms” if the U.S. government stages attacks in Colombian territory. The Colombian leader said he recently fired Colombian intelligence officers who are feeding the U.S. administration with “false information” on his government.

As U.N. officials and U.S. adversaries criticized America’s intervention in Venezuela, U.S. ambassador Mike Waltz defended the military action as a justified “surgical law enforcement operation.”

“If the United Nations in this body confers legitimacy on an illegitimate narco-terrorist with the same treatment in this charter of a democratically elected president or head of state, what kind of organization is this?” Waltz said.

The son of deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro appeared in Venezuela’s National Assembly on Monday where the country’s lawmakers elected in parliamentary elections last May are set to be sworn in.

His son and congressman Nicolás Maduro Guerra, also known as “Nicolasito”, had not been seen publicly since his father was captured Saturday in an American military operation.

At the emergency U.N. Security Council meeting, Colombian Ambassador Leonor Zalabata said the raid in Venezuela was reminiscent of “the worst interference in our area in the past.”

“Democracy cannot be defended or promoted through violence and coercion, and it cannot be superseded, either, by economic interests,” said Zalabata, whose country requested the meeting.

But her carefully calibrated remarks mentioned the U.S. only obliquely and shied from the type of fiery criticism Colombian President Gustavo Petro lobbed at the U.S. last fall during the U.N.'s biggest annual meeting.

Vasily Nebenzya, the Russian ambassador to the U.N., blasted the U.S. military action in Venezuela, saying the intervention and capture of Maduro is “a turn back to the era of lawlessness” by America. During the U.N. Security Council’s emergency meeting, he called on the 15-member panel to “unite and to definitively reject the methods and tools of U.S. military foreign policy.”

“We cannot allow the United States to proclaim itself as some kind of a supreme judge, which alone bears the right to invade any country, to label culprits, to hand down and to enforce punishments irrespective of notions of international law, sovereignty and nonintervention,” Nebenzya said.

Maduro has retained Barry J. Pollack, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer known for securing Assange’s release from prison and winning an acquittal for former Enron accountant Michael Krautz.

Pollack, a partner at the law firm Harris, St. Laurent & Wechsler, negotiated Assange’s 2024 plea agreement — allowing him to go free immediately after he pleaded guilty to an Espionage Act charge for obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets.

Krautz, acquitted of federal fraud charges in 2006 after a hung jury the year before, was one of the only Enron executives whose case ended in a not guilty verdict. Nearly two-dozen other executives were convicted of wrongdoing in connection with the energy trading giant’s collapse.

Pollack also helped secure the exoneration of Martin Tankleff, a Long Island man who spent 17 years in prison for the murders of his parents before his conviction was overturned.

The top United Nations official warns America may have violated international law with its unilateral action.

In a statement, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he remains “deeply concerned that rules of international law have not been respected with regard to the 3 January military action.”

He added that the “grave” action by the U.S. could set a precedent for how future relations between and among states are conducted.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Monday said he believes the U.S. military operation in Venezuela would lead to the country’s vast oil reserves becoming available on global energy markets, something he said was “good news” for Hungary.

Speaking at a news conference in Hungary’s capital Budapest, Orbán, a close Trump ally, said he sees “a serious chance that as a result of Venezuela being brought under (U.S.) control, a more favorable position for Hungary will be created on the world energy market.”

“We think the Americans will be able to bring Venezuelan oil wealth into world trade,” he continued. “That means that supply will increase, and the increase in supply will lead to cheaper prices.”

When asked about the implications of the U.S. action for international legal frameworks, Orbán spoke disparagingly about the role international law plays in regulating countries’ behavior, saying such rules “do not govern the decisions of many great powers, this is completely obvious.”

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People protest outside Manhattan Federal Court before the arraignment of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Monday, Jan. 5, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)

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People protest outside Manhattan Federal Court before the arraignment of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Monday, Jan. 5, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)

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People protest outside Manhattan Federal Court before the arraignment of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Monday, Jan. 5, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)

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The small but growing group of about 50 protesters across the street from Manhattan federal court were separated by New York Police Department community service officers from about a dozen pro-intervention demonstrators.

The officers used bicycle rack-style metal barricades to separate the two groups.

“No War For Venezuelan Oil,” “No To Criminal Trump Invasion” and “No Blood For Oil” were among the signs. One man among a small group of about a dozen pro-intervention individuals pulled a Venezuelan flag away from those protesting the U.S. action.

Demonstrators were observed, recorded and interviewed by some of the more than 100 members of the media who had reserved their places outside hours earlier.