WATCH: Coons and Rubio disagree on whether Congress should be consulted before ousting Maduro

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said the Trump administration failed to properly consult with Congress in the months before the dramatic U.S. military raid that ousted President Nicolas Maduro.

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“The administration has been launching strike after strike against drug smuggling boats,” Coons said, referring to a series of boat strikes near Venezuela that have so far killed at least 126 people over the course of nearly five months.

He added that senior Trump officials told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that military action to oust Maduro was not on the table.

“However, it has been rehearsed,” the senator told Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who appeared before the committee to testify about the next steps the United States will take regarding Venezuela.

“If there has ever been a time for practice, there has been a time for consultation, and consultation with Congress is not just a lofty principle, not an abstract thing, not a nice thing. It is a must.”

Rubio said the task of removing Maduro could not have been briefed by Congress because that possibility only emerged in late December when all previous efforts to negotiate with the leader failed. President Donald Trump was then presented with options that required faster decisions.

“It was also a trigger-happy operation,” Rubio said of Maduro’s ouster. “It took a number of factors to all align in the right place at the right time and a very limited window, and it wasn’t even clear if that was even possible at all.”

Trump, who said the United States would “run” Venezuela, ordered the US military to take control of Venezuelan oil exports and seize multiple tankers. The Trump administration has carried out dozens of strikes since last year against a series of alleged drug smuggling boats near Venezuela. Little evidence was provided that these were “narco-terrorists.”

Concerned about the Trump administration’s plans for Venezuela, some members of Congress have tried to push a war powers resolution to curb Trump’s authority to take further military action in the country. These efforts ultimately failed without sufficient Republican support.