Vice President JD Vance has given new details on exactly where he was while his Trump administration colleagues were monitoring the US special forces operation to capture Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro last month.
“I was in a van, in a mobile Situation Room about 20 miles away from Mar-a-Lago,” Vance told the Daily Mail during an interview Tuesday. “I was actually with some friends, and [Secretary of State] Marco [Rubio] called me, probably around 10:30 p.m. [Jan. 2] and said, ‘This is going to happen tonight.’”
Vance added that he and Rubio, who have variously been mooted as rivals or GOP ticketmates in the 2028 election, then discussed whether it “made sense” for the veep to head back to Mar-a-Lago.
“I travel with a very large Secret Service detail, and would it be a problem for the vice president to show up with 30 siren cars at Mar-a-Lago an hour before this operation goes live?” he recalled. “And we decided, yes [it would be].”
Speculation swirled about Vance’s standing in the administration after images released by the White House following Maduro’s arrest showed President Trump keeping an eye on developments alongside Rubio; War Secretary Pete Hegseth; CIA Director John Ratcliffe; White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller; and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
However, the VP insisted that he was looped in the whole time.
“I expected it was going to happen that night,” he said, adding that “the plan was originally for me to go in.”
“[We decided that] I would just watch it remotely and ensure that we preserved operational security, which, by the way, we were able to do. One of the critical reasons that mission was ultimately successful is because no one found out about it.”
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were apprehended at their fortified compound in Caracas and flown to New York to face federal drug trafficking and weapons charges.
Asked if Trump was annoyed that his second-in-command was not present, Vance insisted: “No, not at all. I was [on] the phone, with the president and the entire team for about six hours for the entire course of that operation.”
“I think it’s funny,” he said of the whispers. “The media tries to create something out of nothing.”
