WATCH: Rubio says Maduro an ‘impediment to progress’ who turned down US attempts to get him to leave

Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified before the Senate on Wednesday that the U.S. made multiple attempts to get Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro to leave voluntarily before he was captured in a dramatic military operation at the start of the year.

Rubio, testifying before the Senate committee for the first time since Maduro was removed, said Maduro was an “impediment to progress” and could not be trusted to honor a deal.

"What he wanted to do was tap us along and buy three years of time until he could deal with a new administration that he thought may be more favorable," Rubio said.

Maduro’s ouster was “one option that was available to the president after exhausting every other option to remove this individual from the scene,” he added.

President Donald 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, killing at least 126 people. 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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