As he emerged on Wednesday from a classified briefing on the military operation that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, Speaker Mike Johnson sought to defend the Trump administration with an exceedingly narrow description of its objectives in the country.
The mission, he said, was “to bring justice to a criminal” who was “duly indicted under American law.”
“That’s what this is about,” the Louisiana Republican told reporters gathered outside the session.
As he was speaking, Representative Veronica Escobar, Democrat of Texas, bluntly offered up a different explanation.
“It’s about oil,” she said as she walked behind the speaker exiting the secure room where top Trump administration officials had just briefed House members.
The exchange captured the partisan divide over the raid that toppled Mr. Maduro, and a deeper sense of confusion and concern on Capitol Hill about what the Trump administration planned to do next.
It came on a day when Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed lawmakers on a three-phase plan for Venezuela that went far beyond a simple law enforcement matter and included stabilizing and rebuilding Venezuela, taking and selling its oil, and installing a new government there. That suggested a far longer-term and more elaborate strategy than the Trump administration had previously laid out.
Republicans emerged from the classified briefings largely praising the military action and embracing the administration’s approach, while Democrats warned that the United States was drifting into an open-ended intervention without clear legal authority or a plan for how and when a democratic transition could take place.
Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota, said the objective was “to see a peaceful country and one that is a democracy, the way it used to be.”
He added that the transition should lead to a stronger economy and a close alliance with the United States.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said key questions had gone unanswered about next steps in the region.
“What the hell is going on? We need answers as to how long this is going to last. We need answers to how many troops, how much money, are there guardrails, things we don’t do?” Mr. Schumer said. The Trump administration’s plan, he added, was “fraught with peril.”
Mr. Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top administration officials briefed lawmakers on Capitol Hill one day before the Senate was set to vote on whether to curtail Mr. Trump’s power to continue using military force against Venezuela without explicit authorization by Congress.
A majority of Republicans last year banded together to block similar attempts to curb the president’s power to strike Venezuela, with some calling the measures premature. It was not clear whether the weekend raid, which the administration carried out without briefing key members of Congress, would change enough minds to allow the resolution to pass.
Representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said there were still questions about Mr. Trump’s legal authority to carry out a monthslong, escalating campaign against the government of Venezuela.
“I have not seen the justification,” Mr. Meeks said on his way out of the briefing. “We went from drugs to regime change to oil.”
Mr. Rubio said that the blockade of oil tankers in and out of Venezuela had given the administration leverage over the interim government. He pointed to the early-morning seizure of two oil tankers on Wednesday as proof that the administration’s plans to control the South American nation’s vast oil resources for economic gain and influence were working.
“This is tremendous leverage. We are exercising it in a positive way,” he said between the two briefings on Capitol Hill.
But Democrats raised alarm about Mr. Trump’s assertion, repeated by Mr. Rubio on Capitol Hill, that the United States would control the revenues from the sale of seized Venezuelan oil.
“The president cannot grab Venezuela’s oil for his own slush fund,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the Appropriations Committee, said on Wednesday.
Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, applauded the operation that led to Mr. Maduro’s capture and expressed confidence that the United States would be able to exert substantial control over Delcy Rodríguez, who has been tapped as interim president.
“Secretary Rubio is obviously working on that,” Mr. Cornyn said. “The U.S. has a lot of levers to persuade her compliance.”
Democrats complained that they were given little detail about how soon the transition to an independent democratic government would take place.
Representative Jared Moskowitz, Democrat of Florida, said that “there has to be a timeline for elections,” but that “everyone understands that it’s not going to happen immediately.” He said that administration officials had not provided specifics about when Venezuelans would go to the polls to elect a new leader.
When pressed on how long U.S. involvement would last, Mr. Rubio cautioned that it had been only “four days since this happened,” adding that Venezuela’s long-term transformation would ultimately rest with its people. He said that the first priority would be “the stabilization of the country.”
“We don’t want it descending into chaos,” Mr. Rubio said, adding that he had been working with the interim president, Ms. Rodríguez, with whom he had spoken several times since the weekend raid.
Mr. Rubio outlined the three-phase plan, which would seek to first stabilize the country, then ensure that “American, Western and other companies have access” to Venezuela’s oil market and a final political transition, which he did not detail.
Carl Hulse contributed reporting.
Robert Jimison covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on defense issues and foreign policy.
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