Fact-checking Trump’s claims after the US strike on Venezuela and the arrest of Maduro

This article originally appeared on Politifact.

President Donald Trump said the US military offensive succeeded in capturing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Celia Flores, both of whom face US charges related to cocaine smuggling under newly unsealed indictments.

At a January 3 news conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said the United States would “run the country until such time as we can make a safe, sound, and wise transition.”

He watches: Trump says US will run Venezuela after Maduro captured in surprise military strike

Trump also said Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez was sworn in as interim president. Trump said Rodriguez spoke with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and was “basically willing to do what we believe is necessary to make Venezuela great again.”

However, Rodriguez criticized the US military action as “brutal aggression” on state television and called for Maduro’s immediate release.

Maduro, an authoritarian, has led Venezuela since 2013, succeeding his ideological ally Hugo Chavez, who has been in office since 1999. Under both men, US relations with Venezuela have been strained over foreign policy, oil and human rights.

In July 2024, Maduro declared victory following elections that international observers described as fraudulent. The country’s opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, received about 70% of the votes.

Tensions between Trump and Maduro escalated in September after the US government began attacking ships off the coast of Venezuela, killing more than 100 people, in what Trump described as an attempt to thwart drug smuggling.

When a reporter asked Trump during the press event at Mar-a-Lago whether he had spoken to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado after Maduro’s arrest, Trump said Machado “does not have support or respect within the country.”

Machado, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize for her fight for democracy in Venezuela, has a 72% approval rating among Venezuelans according to a ClearPath Strategies poll conducted in March.

Trump said without evidence that the United States’ role in governing Venezuela “will cost us nothing” because American oil companies will invest in new infrastructure in the oil-rich country. “It’s going to make a lot of money,” Trump said.

Here, we fact-checked Trump and Rubio’s statements from the press conference.

Rubio: “It’s not the kind of mission that you can notify (Congress) about in advance because it jeopardizes the mission.”

The administration’s lack of warning Congress violates law and precedent.

Rubio said members of Congress were not notified in advance. Trump said that his administration is concerned that Congress may leak news of the administration’s decision to arrest Maduro.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune praised the operation as “decisive action.”

But congressional Democrats said Congress should have been notified earlier. “Maduro is terrible,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia. “But Trump put American service members at risk with this unauthorized attack.”

Read more: Maduro’s arrest and Trump’s claim that the United States will run Venezuela raise new legal questions

Senator Jeanne Shaheen said that Trump and his government have not been frank about their intentions for regime change, so “we are left with no understanding of how the administration is prepared to mitigate risks to the United States and no information regarding a long-term strategy after today’s extraordinary escalation.”

The US Constitution gives Congress the right to declare war. The last time this happened was in World War II.

Since then, presidents have generally initiated military action using their constitutionally granted powers as commander-in-chief without a formal declaration of war.

Since Congress passed the War Powers Resolution of 1973, the president has been required to report to Congress within 48 hours of bringing the U.S. military into hostilities and terminate the use of the military within 60 days unless Congress approves. If approval is not granted and the matter is deemed urgent by the President, an additional 30 days are given to terminate operations.

In recent decades, congressional approval has typically been granted through authorization for the use of military force. But no license has been issued for operations in Venezuela. Kaine and other lawmakers have sought legislation — so far unsuccessfully — to prohibit the use of federal funds for any use of military force in or against Venezuela without authorization from Congress.

The Trump administration has scaled back advance notification requirements. Under federal law, eight senior members of Congress from both parties must receive advance notice of particularly sensitive secret proceedings. In June 2025, the administration informed Republicans, but not Democrats, about the upcoming US strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. As for the Venezuela process, no lawmakers appear to have been notified in advance.

Trump: Every strike on an American boat off the coast of Venezuela saves 25,000 people.

Pants on fire!

The Trump administration has struck at least 32 ships, killing about 115 people, in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific since September. Trump previously said that the boats were carrying drugs on their way to the United States, and said during the press conference that the drugs on each boat would kill “on average 25,000 people.”

However, experts on drugs and Venezuela told PolitiFact that the country plays a minor role in drug trafficking that reaches the U.S., and the administration has provided no evidence about the type or quantity of drugs it says were on the boats. This lack of information makes it impossible to know how many lethal doses of drugs would have been destroyed.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 73,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States from May 2024 to April 2025. That means drugs on 32 boats were responsible for 800,000 deaths, nearly 11 times the number of overdose deaths in the United States in one year.

Trump: “Maduro has sent brutal and murderous gangs, including the bloodthirsty Tren de Aragua prison gang, to terrorize American communities across the country.”

There is no evidence that Maduro sent members of the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua to the United States.

The indictment brought by the US Department of Justice against Maduro did not mention Trump’s statement.

An April report by the federal National Intelligence Council contradicted Trump’s statements about links between Maduro and Trinh de Aragua.

“While the permissive environment in Venezuela enables Tren de Aragua to operate, the Maduro regime likely does not have a policy of cooperation with TDA and does not direct TDA movement and operations in the United States,” the report said.

Trump: Venezuela “stole” American oil in the past.

This needs context.

In the early 20th century, Venezuelan dictator Juan Vicente Gomez, who ruled the country for a long time, allowed foreign companies almost exclusive access to the country’s oil resources.

In 1975, after decades of seeking greater control over its oil resources, Venezuela nationalized its oil industry.

“Trump’s claims that Venezuela stole oil and territory from the United States are baseless,” Francisco Rodriguez, a Venezuelan economist at the University of Denver, told The Washington Post. “The United States was much more interested in Venezuela being a supplier of oil — relatively cheap oil — than in the collapse of production in Venezuela,” Rodriguez said. As a result, the change was “relatively uncontroversial” at the time.

The Washington Post reported that US oil companies, including Exxon, Mobil and Gulf, now Chevron, lost about $5 billion in assets and were each compensated with $1 billion.

He watches: ‘We want it back’: Trump demands Venezuela return ‘land and oil rights’ to US

But the companies did not seek additional damages at the time, partly because there was no forum to do so, Rodriguez said.

In general, experts told PolitiFact, invading a country to get its oil would be illegal and unethical. In 2016, Trump reflected on how the United States should have seized Iraq’s oil when it invaded Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein.

The experts pointed to the Annex to the 1907 Hague Convention on the Laws and Customs of War, which states that “private property… shall be respected (and) shall not be confiscated.” It also states that “looting is officially prohibited.”

“If ‘the spoils go to the victors’ had been a legal principle,[then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein]should have been able to hold on to Kuwait City after his invasion” in 1990, terrorism analyst David Gartenstein Ross told PolitiFact in 2016. “But we viewed that — quite rightly — as an act of aggression under the UN Charter.”