Summary:
Main Points
Superseding DoJ indictment implicates the two abductees (Maduro and his wife) as well as their son, Nicolasito Maduro, and two close political allies: former Minister of Justice Ramon Chacin and ex-Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace Diosdado Cabello.
Consists of 25 pages of a charge they conspired to traffic “thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States”
The DoJ fails to demonstrate that Maduro is an illegitimate President under Venezuelan law and that the DoJ has any right to bypass established international legal precedent granting immunity to heads of state
Real purpose of the Show Trial is to claim the US has a right to “law enforcement” outside the USA that provides Trump a pretext to abduct or kill heads of state.
The Indictment Relies heavily on testimony from coerced witnesses about alleged shipments that largely took place outside US jurisdiction
Many of the supposed crimes for which Maduro is charged took place outside the borders and jurisdiction of the United States, some having no connection with Venezuela or, if they did, no connection to Maduro and sometimes involving arrests by the Maduro authorities.
The indictment accuses Maduro of “having partnered with narco-terrorists” like Tren de Agua, ignoring a recent report of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence) that concluded Maduro had no control over the Venezuelan gang. In fact, Maduro dismantled this organization through a 2023 military-police raid on Tocoron prison.
Besides, what few crimes have been attributed to Tren de Agua in the US appear to have no connection with the larger group or its leadership in Venezuela.
The DEA National Drug Threat Assessment issued under Trump’s watch this year scarcely mentioned Venezuela.
Elaborations on the above.
The indictment is stacked by charging Maduro is in “possession of machine guns,” a laughable offense which could easily be applied to hundreds of thousands of gun-loving Americans under an antiquated 1934 law.
Avoids precise data on Venezuelan cocaine exports to the USA. Is it “tons” or “thousands of tons?”
Uses vague, deliberately expansive language larded with subjective terms
Relies on transparently unreliable, coerced witnesses like Hugo “Pollo” Carvajal, a former Venezuelan general who has cut a secret plea deal to reduce his sentence for drug trafficking by supplying dirt on Maduro.
Carvajal is a key figure in the “Cartel of the Suns” which the DoJ claims was run by Maduro, but was actually founded by the CIA to traffic drugs into US cities, using the planes that the CIA had used illegally to ship arms to the Nicaraguan “contras”. The informal network of corrupt military officials it implicated was in fact established, therefore, by the CIA under pro-US Venezuelan governments during the 1980’s and ‘90’s.
The organization does not have a structure as such.
Although the DoJ claims Maduro conspired with Tren de Agua, and in Mexico sthe Sinaloa and Los Zetas cartels to traffic drugs 2003-2011, these cartels were not designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations until February 2025.
The indictment alleges that Maduro “facilitated the movement of private planes under diplomatic cover” to avoid law enforcement scrutiny as they landed in Mexico. Citing coerced testimony from a Venezuelan government defector, it accuses Diosdado Cabello of coordinating a shipment of 5.5 tons of cocaine on a DC-9 jet to Mexico. No such claim should hold water in a US court.
“Flights that occur wholly within Venezuela do not cross U.S. airspace, do not implicate U.S. customs territory, do not, standing alone, violate U.S. law. The indictment tries to establish a connection to US law by by asserting that the cocaine involved was ultimately destined for the United States. Intent is not enough.
Because most of the specific incidents cited in the indictment occurred within Mexico under Presidents Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderón and Enrique Pena Nieto, the DOJ inadvertently implicates these three pro-US administrations, who shaped their drug policies in coordination with Washington. In fact, the top cop during the first two of these governments, former Federal Intelligence Agency chief Genaro García Luna, was convicted in a US federal court in 2023 for presiding over a multi-million dollar conspiracy with the Sinaloa cartel. Former US ambassador to Mexico Robert Jacobson acknowledged that the US knew all about Garcia Luna’s cartel ties, but insisted, “we had to work with him.”
The DOJ also implicates the pro-US government of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, referring to Honduras as a “transshipment” point “in which cocaine traffickers operating in those countries paid a portion of their own profits to politicians who protected and aided them.” Hernandez was convicted in a US federal court in 2023 of trafficking over 400 tons of drugs to the US, but received a pardon this December from President Donald Trump following a lobbying campaign by top Trump donors seeking business in the deregulated crypto haven of Próspera off the coast of Honduras.
Hernandez was actually guilty, Maduro isn’t.
When Carvajal, under the run from the US for drugs offences, sought asylum in Spain in 2019, the US formally demanded that Madrid him over. Facing extradition, he delivered a series of tell-all interviews to legacy outlets like the New York Times, doing his best to legitimize virtually every charge that Trump was trying to lodge against Maduro.
In 2023 Carvajal was finally extradited and placed on trial in the Southern District court of New York. After he pleaded guilty to “narco-terrorism” this June, the Miami Herald reported that he had struck a plea deal which would grant him “a considerable sentence reduction if he provides ‘substantial assistance’ to US investigations” that the administration sought to weaponize against Maduro.
All his allegations against Maduro had been delivered under duress, all designed to satisfy his would-be jailers in the US (and including the outrageous charge that Maduro manipulated Venezuela’s Smartmatic voting systems to rig the 2020 US presidential election in favor of Biden)
The DOJ claims Carvajal and Diosdado Cabello “worked with other members of the Venezuelan regime” to “coordinate the shipment” of 5.5 tons of cocaine from Simon Bolivar International Airport to Campeche, Mexico in a private jet in 2006. This incident remains the source of intense intrigue, as the ownership of the DC-9 jet by two shadowy American companies points in the direction of US intelligence.
It is an established fact that the CIA founded and operated the “Cartel of the Suns” which the DOJ now accuses Maduro, Cabello and other top Venezuelan officials of controlling.
Great to read such a detailed dissection of this issue, even though we all knew it was BS as soon as we saw the first headlines on Saturday morning. Thanks, Oliver!