Trump officials told lawmakers that Maduro and his wife hit their heads as they attempted to flee US forces

(CNN) — Trump administration officials told lawmakers on Monday that then Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were injured after hitting their heads as they were fleeing US forces trying to arrest them, sources familiar with the briefing told CNN.

Maduro and Flores ran and attempted to hide behind a heavy steel door inside their compound, but the door frame was low and they hit their heads as they tried to escape, the officials said, according to the sources. Delta Force operators apprehended them and gave them first aid after they were extracted from the compound, the sources said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, Attorney General Pam Bondi and CIA Director John Ratcliffe briefed top lawmakers for more than two hours on Monday evening.

Maduro and his wife appeared in court on Monday with visible injuries, and Flores’ attorney told the judge that she “sustained significant injuries” during her abduction. “Additionally, there’s belief that she may have a fracture or a severe bruising on her ribs.” Her attorney requested an X-ray and full physical evaluation to ensure her health moving forward.

Flores swayed and dipped her head at times during the hearing and Maduro struggled to sit down and stand up at points, according to reporters in court. Courtroom sketches of Flores showed her with bandages on her head.

The administration officials who briefed lawmakers on Monday described Flores’ head injury as minor, sources told CNN.

CNN has asked Maduro and Flores’ lawyers for comment on the latest details about their injuries.

Some Delta Force operators themselves sustained injuries during the operation as a result of a large firefight that erupted with a Cuban quick reaction force that was stationed nearby Maduro’s compound, the administration officials said. The troops were hit with bullets and shrapnel but their injuries are not life threatening, and they are expected to fully recover, the officials reiterated.

There were nearly 200 US personnel on the ground in Caracas during the operation, Hegseth said on Monday at a shipyard in Newport News, Virginia.

The briefers did not have a good estimate of how many Venezuelans or Cubans were killed during the operation, but Cuba’s government said on Monday that 32 of its military and police officers were killed. Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday that the number was likely higher than that, describing what unfolded as a “raging gunfire battle.”

“The overwhelming share of casualties and fatalities that were inflicted were against the Cuban guard that had exerted control over the people of Venezuela,” Miller said.

The officials insisted during the briefing that Maduro’s capture was not a regime change operation, since the Venezuelan government remains largely intact and is now led by his deputy Delcy Rodriguez, sources familiar with the briefing said. Rubio said the administration views her as more pragmatic than Maduro and as someone the US can work with, while the opposition leader Maria Corina Machado would be unable to exert control over the regime’s security forces, the sources said.

The administration’s policy decision regarding Rodriguez was informed by a classified CIA analysis on the impact of Maduro no longer being president and near-term implications of his potential removal, according to a source familiar with the matter. It was not a recommendation based on an expectation of regime change in Venezuela, the source added.

The tightly held intelligence product was commissioned by senior policy-makers and the CIA is expected to continue providing similar recommendations on the leadership situation in Venezuela going forward, according to multiple sources.

Rubio has been the administration’s main point of contact with Rodriguez. President Donald Trump told NBC News Monday that Rubio “speaks to her fluently in Spanish” and that their “relationship has been very strong.”

Briefers said they’d been in touch with Delcy Rodriguez as well as her brother Jorge Rodriguez, who is president of Venezuela’s national assembly, for months, but they described it as discussions with the regime to try to prompt behavior change, not as asking them to help oust Maduro.

Rodriguez is also the country’s oil minister, and the administration expects her to work with the US on rebuilding Venezuela’s oil infrastructure and allowing American companies to operate there in the future. But there is no formal agreement in place with Rodriguez, either, the sources said — just an expectation that the US pressure campaign, which includes an armada of warships in the Caribbean, will be sufficient leverage to influence her decisions.

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