Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeatedly told “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos that court orders to seize ships subjected to sanctions backed American military operations against Venezuela during a contentious exchange Sunday.
President Donald Trump announced early Saturday morning that U.S. military forces, including the Army’s elite Delta Force unit, captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and removed him and his wife from the country. ABC News’ Stephanopoulos kept pressing Rubio about the justification for the operations, even after he had already cited the court orders as legal authority.
“President Trump was pretty clear yesterday, he said the United States is ‘going to run Venezuela,’” Stephanopoulos asked, referring to remarks the president made at a press conference the previous day. “Under what legal authority?”
“Well, first of all, what’s gonna 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 to the United States and the interests of the Venezuelan people are met. And that’s what we intend to do. So that leverage remains, that leverage is ongoing, and we expect that it’s going to lead to results here,” Rubio said.
“We’re hopeful that it does positive results for the people of Venezuela, but ultimately, most importantly for us in the national interest of the United States. We will no longer have— hopefully, as we move forward here — will set the condition so that we no longer have in our hemisphere a Venezuela that’s the crossroads for many of our adversaries around the world, including Iran and Hezbollah, is no longer sending us drug gangs, is no longer sending us drug boats, is no longer a narcotrafficking paradise for all those drugs coming out of Colombia to go in through the Caribbean and towards the United States,” he continued.
“And obviously, we want a better future for the people of Venezuela. We want them to have an oil industry where the wealth goes to the people, not to a handful of corrupt individuals, and stolen by, you know, pirates all over the world. That’s what we’re working towards, and we intend to use the leverage we have to help achieve that,” Rubio added.
“Let me ask the question again,” the host responded. “What is the legal authority for the United States to be running Venezuela?”
“As far as what our legal authority is on the quarantine, very simple, we have court orders. These are sanctioned boats, and we get orders from courts to go after and seize these sanctions … so, I don’t know, is a court not a legal authority?” the Secretary of State asked.
This prompted Stephanopoulos to respond, “So is the United States running Venezuela right now?”
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“Well, I’ve explained once again, I’ll do it one more time. What we are running is the direction that this is gonna move moving forward. And that is, we have leverage. This leverage we are using and intend to use, we started using already, you can see where they are running out of storage capacity. In a few weeks, they’re gonna have to start pumping oil unless they make changes,” Rubio replied. “And that leverage that we have with the armada of boats that are currently positioned allows us to seize any sanctioned boats coming into or out of Venezuela loaded with oil or on its way in to pick up oil, and we can pick and choose which ones we can go after. We have court orders for each one.”
Trump declared during a Saturday press conference on the operation that captured Maduro that the United States was “running” Venezuela, saying Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would be in charge.
“That will continue to be in place until the people who have control over the levers of power in that country make changes that are not just in the interest of the people of Venezuela, but are in the interest of the United States and the things that we care about. That’s what we intend to do,” Rubio said.
“The legal authority is the court orders that we have,” Rubio added.
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