U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar staved off Democrats’ subpoenas seeking details of dealings with Venezuela over an oil deal. But she also held a lengthy conversation with Secretary of State Marco Rubio urging total transparency over the economic arrangements.
A party-line vote closed an otherwise largely bipartisan hearing of the House Western Hemisphere Subcommittee. There, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat and the panel’s ranking member, moved to issue subpoenas to the State Department and War Department for any agreement between the U.S. and North American Blue Energy Partners, a private oil company run by Venezuelan billionaire Alejandro Betancourt, as well as between that corporate entity and acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez.
“For nine months, we haven’t received any information about funds regarding Venezuela or how oil money is being made or spent,” Castor said after the hearing. “Yesterday was the first time the State Department sent anybody over to even brief Congress about us, and that wasn’t even a hearing. It was an informal briefing, and so I thought it’s important to break through all of that noise and get some answers for people.”
Salazar held an extended recess of the Subcommittee while she called Rubio. “He is my constituent, and he’s Cuban American just like I am,” she said at the hearing.
She offered to send a joint letter with Castro to Rubio and War Secretary Pete Hegseth, officially requesting an audit of the oil business with Venezuela and a detailed explanation of where the money is headed.
“The deal was announced on August 28. It has not even been three weeks. It has to be 30 days before that document, that business arrangement can be revealed,” she said.
Ultimately, Castro’s motion failed on a 6-6 vote. Salazar declined to discuss the disagreement after the hearing.
Of note, Salazar has tread carefully on questioning the oil deal while also expressing reservations about any reservation that leaves Rodriguez, Vice President under deposed President Nicolás Maduro, in power or even strengthened. Shortly after the deal was announced by the Trump administration, she quickly raised concerns about the sustainability of a deal in a social media post she later deleted.
“Any oil ‘deal’ with Venezuela’s interim regime has an expiration date: the day President Trump leaves the White House,” Salazar posted in the since-removed remark. “Venezuela’s acting dictator is just buying time. The regime has stolen American investments before, and it will do it again the moment it can. A lasting deal can only be made with a democratically elected government that respects the rule of law, protects private property and is backed by strong democratic institutions.”
She later released a more detailed statement, supporting the deal while remaining skeptical of Rodríguez.
“I support bringing Venezuelan oil out of China’s hands and bringing American investment and influence back to Venezuela,” she said. “That is good for America, and it can be very good for the Venezuelan people. This administration is the only one capable of doing that,” Salazar said. “But I have said it again and again: Delcy Rodríguez and the remnants of Maduro’s regime cannot be Venezuela’s future. I want this deal to be a success. I want American companies investing in Venezuela. And I want this agreement to last for generations.”
At the hearing, U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, an Atlantic Coast Republican who visited the delegation after Maduro’s arrest this year, told Florida Politics that he viewed the deal as a positive for all parties and believed Rodriguez has an incentive to ensure her own people benefit.
“She understands that the path to her success is to unleash the power of the Venezuelan economy,” he said. “When the socialists ran it, it wasn’t that they didn’t want to get the oil out of the ground. It’s because socialism doesn’t work, and so they couldn’t get it out of the ground. I presume (Rodriguez) wants to stay in charge. And for her, the plan, I presume, is to make the country rich.”
The controversy over Venezuela capped off a meeting focused chiefly on Nicaragua. There, Democrats and Republicans largely agreed on the threat President Daniel Ortega poses to democracy.
Salazar raised a national security concern that could pose a threat to Florida. She brought with her renderings, published in China, of a dual-purpose air facility that could serve as a commercial airport and also host military aircraft. She pressed Ana Quintana-Lovett, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Central America and Migration Affairs, on what intelligence has been gathered.
“Managua is closer to Miami, the city that I represent, than to Los Angeles,” Salazar said. “I remember Ronald Reagan, when he would do something similar from the Oval Office, saying that where Nicaragua was and how close it was to Texas, that we needed to pay attention. What information do we have about this project, and what is the Trump administration doing about it?”
Quintana-Lovett, for her part, said the renderings from China appeared more aspirational than anything on the ground. While officials have announced some $500 million in investment in the facility, nothing on the ground suggests anything of that scale will be coming online any time soon.
“The infrastructure for an airport is frankly not what is lining up with the terms of the contract,” she said. She declined to discuss the matter in detail in a public hearing but said she could provide members of Congress with more information in a closed hearing.
Another Florida lawmaker also engaged in a tense conversation with Quintana-Lovett. U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Weston Democrat, pressed Quintana-Lovett, who was raised in Hialeah, about the administration’s treatment of Central American immigrants.
“When President Trump says that immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country, you and I both know that’s not true, correct?” she said.
Quintana-Lovett said the administration’s immigration policies are clear and declined to speak to the incendiary rhetoric. Wasserman Schultz said that saddened her, and Quintana-Lovett circled back to the matter, calling it a “gotcha question.”
“To be very clear, I am deeply proud of the fact that I work for President Trump,” she said.
