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Early Saturday morning, the world awoke to the news that the United States had bombed Venezuela and captured dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in an overnight military action. Hours later, an unsealed U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) superseding indictment accused Maduro of running a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fueled by an extensive drug-trafficking operation that flooded the U.S. with thousands of tons of cocaine.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi vowed in a social media post that Maduro would “soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.” He and his wife made their first appearance at a federal arraignment in Manhattan on Monday afternoon, where they pleaded not guilty.
Late Monday, after Maduro and his wife appeared in court, the Justice Department quietly retreated from its dubious claim that Maduro led a drug cartel called Cartel de los Soles. The department released a revised indictment that still accuses Maduro of participating in a drug trafficking conspiracy but abandons the assertion that Cartel de los Soles was an actual organization. Instead, the rewritten indictment (which replaced the one the DOJ initially released) states that the term refers to a “patronage system” and a “culture of corruption” fueled by drug money.
However, it’s not just Maduro and Flores who are named in the indictment.
Maduro’s son, Nicolás Maduro (Jr.) Guerra — a 35-year-old member of Venezuela’s National Assembly known as “Nicolasito” or “The Prince” — is also named and accused of assisting in the drug operation starting in 2014.
Notably, the indictment alleges that Maduro Guerra “worked to ship hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Venezuela to Miami, Florida” years later, around 2017.
“During this time, [Maduro Guerra] spoke with his drug trafficking partners about, among other things, shipping low-quality cocaine to New York because it could not be sold in Miami, arranging a 500-kilogram shipment of cocaine to be unloaded from the cargo container near Miami, and using scrap metal containers to smuggle cocaine into the ports of New York,” the indictment reads.
Neither a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) spokesperson nor a U.S. Coast Guard spokesperson responded to New Times‘ requests for comment.
More than 2,000 miles away, while the couple appeared in court in Manhattan, Maduro Guerra spoke before Venezuela’s parliament and demanded that the U.S. return his parents to the Latin American country.
“If we normalize the kidnapping of a head of state, no country is safe,” Maduro Guerra said. “Today it’s Venezuela. Tomorrow, it could be any nation that refuses to submit.”
The U.S. seized Maduro and his wife in a military operation Saturday, capturing them in their home on a military base in Caracas and bringing them to New York via the USS Iwo Jima, a large warship. While Trump said in a press conference early Saturday morning that the U.S. would “run” Venezuela temporarily, Secretary of State Marco Rubio clarified on Sunday that it would not govern the country’s day-to-day operations aside from enforcing an existing “oil quarantine.”
Late Monday afternoon, Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s vice president and oil minister, was sworn in as interim president.
Earlier that day, while appearing in court, Maduro declared himself the “president of my country” and maintained his innocence.
“I was captured,” Maduro said in Spanish before being cut off by the judge. When asked for his plea to the charges, he said: “I’m innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the president of my country.”
This is a breaking story and will be updated as events warrant.
