Republicans Are Pushing Back on Trump’s Venezuela Plans Behind Closed Doors

Republican lawmakers have been reluctant to criticize the Trump administration publicly over the operation in Venezuela to oust Nicolás Maduro — but behind closed doors, it’s a different story.

Last week’s classified briefing on the Venezuela strike from Trump officials marked a rare instance where House Republicans, who typically defend President Donald Trump’s decisions, expressed wariness and concern over the executive branch’s approach in the South American country.

Rep. Bill Huizenga, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who has repeatedly supported Venezuelan opposition leaders María Corina Machado and Edmundo González, expressed concern regarding the Trump administration’s trust in Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s interim president, and her brother Jorge Rodríguez, the head of the country’s national assembly, according to four lawmakers.

When asked about the interaction, Huizenga told NOTUS that the Rodríguez siblings were “instrumental in helping the Maduro regime with being a drug state, and so, I have no confidence.” He said that he also asked, “When are we going to get to either recognizing González or an actual free, fair election that the results will be recognized?” (Huizenga said Secretary of State Marco Rubio told him what he has expressed publicly, that “we need some time with transition.”)

Huizenga said he also pushed back on Trump’s plan to control Venezuela’s oil. The president told NOTUS last week that his administration was “devising a formula” to divide Venezuela’s oil revenues between the United States, oil companies and the Venezuelan people, though he did not lay out a clear plan to do so.

At the classified briefing, administration officials also did not have a specific response as to what the plan was.

“I haven’t gotten full, detailed, satisfactory answers yet,” Huizenga told NOTUS. He added that the oil question “wasn’t intended to be hostile so much as it was inquisitive about, OK, have we thought through this?”

The briefing is the latest example of Republican lawmakers slowly — and subtly — breaking with Trump. Last week’s Senate vote to advance a war powers resolution that would curb Trump’s ability to expand military actions in Venezuela, and a House vote to extend the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced tax credits for three years, which Trump has opposed, are early signs of how the president’s grip on congressional Republicans is fraying.

NOTUS spoke with over a dozen lawmakers about the private briefing, most of whom were granted anonymity to speak candidly about the details from inside the room.

“There was bipartisan concern, very balanced bipartisan concern, over the lack of a plan to transition to democracy, allowing the remaining regime leaders” to remain in power, one senior House Democrat told NOTUS. “That was expressed by Republicans, as well as Democrats.”

“It was good to see some of my Republican colleagues actually being members of Congress,” the lawmaker continued.

Rubio, along with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Dan Caine, Attorney General Pam Bondi and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, briefed lawmakers and broke down the specifics of the military operation itself, which was the main focus of the briefing, two lawmakers told NOTUS.

For that reason, most of the questions asked by members after the presentations were focused on what comes next for Venezuela.

“And if they [administration officials] hadn’t thought through all the details, let’s get them talking about those kinds of details, because those details are very important with the goal and objective that those proceeds are used properly,” Huizenga said, adding that oil proceeds should “not support the Maduro leftover regime.” (Over the weekend, Trump signed an executive order that appears to give Rubio the authority to distribute Venezuelan oil revenue on behalf of the Venezuelan government.)

A second House Democrat, recalling Huizenga’s line of questioning, told NOTUS, “I was proud of Bill for asking a sensible question, rather than getting up to suck the teat of the Trump administration, which is what most Republicans did.”

Rep. Michael Baumgartner, another Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also spoke up to question the administration’s plans, other lawmakers said. According to two lawmakers, the Washington state lawmaker asked for a specific timeline as to when elections would take place in Venezuela and when the administration would start working with opposition leaders, who Trump has so far sidelined.

Baumgartner, who has publicly praised Rubio’s presentation at the briefing, declined to comment on the specific details of the classified briefing, telling NOTUS that “people should not be talking about what happened” at the meeting. But he did speak about the administration’s goals in Venezuela more broadly, optimistically calling it “a clear-eyed plan to not make some of the mistakes that we made in Iraq.”

“The Bush administration decided that … it was really important to have democracy as a means to drain the fury of Islamic extremism, and that would be a pathway. And it really didn’t work very well,” Baumgartner said.

The Trump administration is “trying this strategy of coercion through oil, through the oil embargo … to try to see if they can change the behavior of the people there as then kind of a glide path to a process that we would rather see of, eventually, free and fair elections.”

The administration, he added, is “being very prudent in what they’re doing and cautious, and so we’ll see.”

One House Republican told NOTUS that Rep. Dan Meuser was another GOP lawmaker who questioned administration officials at the briefing. Meuser, the House Republican said, asked about the legality of seizing Venezuelan oil tankers.

Meuser, however, disputed the account, telling NOTUS via text that he “did not show concern about seizing tankers” and that he was “very pleased with the response” to his other questions.

Rep. Gregory Meeks, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told NOTUS he has heard concerns from both Democrats and Republicans about how they “haven’t heard the president talk about democracy at all in Venezuela,” about “working with individuals who have been part of the Maduro regime” and about “the taking of the oil.”

“All of those are problematic,” Meeks continued.

Though most Republican lawmakers emerged from the classified briefing expressing confidence, some have said their questions remain largely unanswered.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told NOTUS that following the briefing, he still has concerns regarding congressional oversight. He said that there needs to be conversations regarding the Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, resolutions, which administrations have interpreted as bases to go after terrorist groups in different countries without the need for congressional approval.

“We need to revisit the AUMF to agree on what we want it to be or not to be because it’s very ambiguous,” Fitzpatrick said. “We need to renew this whole conversation about Article 1 versus Article 2 authority.”

“We have to have strict oversight,” the Republican from Pennsylvania added.