From PBS NewsHour.

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

“The administration was taking strike after strike after strike against drug-trafficking boats,” Coons said, referring to the series of boat strikes near Venezuela that have so far killed at least 126 people over nearly five months.

Senior Trump officials told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the military action to remove Maduro wasn’t on the table, he added.

“Yet it was being rehearsed,” the senator told Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who appeared before the committee to testify about the U.S.’ next steps for Venezuela.

“If there was time to practice, there was time to consult, and consulting with Congress is not just some high-minded principle, not some abstract thing, not a nice-to-have. It’s a got-to-have.”

Rubio said the mission to remove Maduro could not have been briefed to Congress because that possibility didn’t emerge until late in December when all previous efforts to negotiate with the leader had failed. President Donald Trump was then presented with options that required quicker decisions.

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

Trump, who said the U.S. would “run” Venezuela, has ordered the U.S. military to control exports of Venezuela’s oil and seize multiple tankers. The Trump administration has carried out dozens of strikes since last year against a series of alleged drug-trafficking boats near Venezuela. It has offered little evidence that these were "narcoterrorists."

Worried about the Trump administration’s plans for Venezuela, some members of Congress attempted to push a war powers resolution to rein in Trump’s authority to carry out further military action in the country. Those efforts ultimately failed without sufficient Republican support.

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