A federal grand jury indicted now-former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and others in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York.
Maduro stands accused of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices. The grand jury first indicted Maduro in 2020 but issued a superseding indictment this morning.
U.S. forces captured Maduro in Caracas. He is traveling to the United States on a ship.
The story has dominated the news all day. Posted below is the indictment. It makes for some interesting reading.

78 comments:
Democrats and RINOs whining and complaining incoming.
Trump could find a cure to cancer and they still would complain
RINOs are worse than democrats. At least democrats are honest where they stand
Average Jo here
How does the US have jurisdiction in Venezuala?
How can we forcefully enter a foreign country, capture its President and prosecute him in a US courtroom?
Has Wicker the RINO started bitching yet?
Mighty Military Machine punching down again. They'll never go after Putin or Xi. A bloody nose would make a mess of their shirtfronts.
It's long overdue to start cleaning up the neighborhood. Maybe Columbia and Mexico will pay attention and take care of theirs internally.
Yep they wanted an opponent without the ability to sink their battle group. You wouldn’t see this happen in Pyongyang. In fact, in 2019 Trump had a failed operation by Seal Team 6 in North Korea that they wanted to keep quiet. I imagine that a similar failure in Caracas would’ve been kept quiet as well. This entire thing is a “Wag The Dog” for the upcoming deposition of Melania in a counter lawsuit over Epstein.
Donald just said, "ASS", on national TV. Love him! Best President since the Founding Fathers. Maybe, even, the BEST PRESIDENT, EVER.
I am generally against doing the homework for Fish's low information posters (few as they are), but I'll make an exception for 4:27. My only request is that you get your three-year-old grandchild to teach you how to use Google.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jan/3/trumps-maduro-capture-supported-precedent-us-constitution-legal/
Oops. That should be 4:57, not 4:27, who needs to be in receipt of the legal interpretation of the Venezuela raid. My apology.
We have a righteous cause against Maduro due to:
1. His killing 100,000+ Ameticans with drugs, especially fentanyl
2. His flooding America with his mental cases and his violent prisoners
3. His violating oil embargo
4. His theft of presidential election
5. His flooding of Tren de Aragua gang and his Cartel de los Soles into our country.
Nicolas Maduro? Meet ham sandwich.
@6:04 PM
Right after you get your grandchild to teach you how to make a basic HTML hyperlink
I left Venezuela when I was 18 years old to Play college soccer at Charleston Southern. Graduated moved to Charlotte to work in construction industry as a project manager and moved to Birmingham later overseeing projects mostly medical for BG construction that builds medical facilities. My family lives outside dade county and I married a girl from Hattiesburg. Venezuela had been liberated finally.
Not the Ameticans, too??!
Strange that ICE can’t find the mental cases or the gangbangers only 8 to 10 thousand Venezuelans have been deported since Trump took office. There are over a million living here without legal status.
@4:43, you're onto something. Trump could bring Fauci out of retirement to head up Operation Warpspeed, The Cancer Edition. A Nobel Prize in medicine would indubitably ensue.
It's not a no-win Middle East war. Promise: KEPT
"Trump could find a cure to cancer and they still would complain"
He actually did preside over the development of COVID vaccines in Operation Warp Speed.
You people haven't stopped bitching about it for the last five years, and somehow manage to blame Joe Biden.
@5:40 PM You need to keep up. The Navy hasn't had "battle" groups since about 2003. They are called "Strike" groups. Oh, there hasn't been SEAL Team 6 since about 2006, and it's spelled SEAL, not "Seal." Seal is a marine mammal. You shouldn't use The View as a source.
Maduro was simply naive not to pursue and obtain nuclear weapons if he wanted to survive American imperialism. In Central and South America it's the only chance he had otherwise you MUST eventually be a puppet regime, especially if you have valuable drugs and oil. That's reality.
Drugs are just an excuse; petroleum is the goal. Sad.
@4:57 We have jurisdiction over any "president" of any country who cannot protect his own ass. That's real LAW.
They nationalized and stole our companies (and oil) in the first place. How do you "steal" what is rightfully yours and was "stolen" from you initially? Sad......
7:12, Democrats and RINO’s hearts bleed for criminals and terrorists but we get their deafening silence when it comes to the 10’s of thousands of American deaths each year due to drugs from punk assed countries like Venezuela. SAD.
FAFO. And if we can get paid back for their damages to our county via their oil, rock on! The illegal drugs they are shipping into our country is much more of an act of war than 911 ever was.
@7:09 You can go update wikipedia and cite your sources.
Also, please tell us if “The View” is in the room with us now?
m
And where did “The View” touch you?
This made me think of Manuel Noriega.
But I guess he too was just a victim of American Imperialism, right 7:12(1)? (I suggest you read the indictment, and consider that maybe at least some of it is true)
This move by President Trump is to secure a major territory in our western hemisphere which is already entertaining the presence of Russian and Chinese envoys. Think Cuba 1962.
President Trump, again, lied to the American Citizens this morning. Said there have been no murders in DC in six months, factually not true. Also, told the American people this was about drug trafficking, apparently not true either. When we have a President, who constantly lies to the American citizens, we have a problem.
Every company was compensated. Chevron and Citgo still operate there.
I don't mourn the arrest of an awful dictator, Nicolás Maduro, who, with Hugo Chávez before him, has plundered and destroyed his country. But however impressively planned the operation was from a military standpoint, it has been disastrously unplanned from a political standpoint. It is ridiculous to argue that the U.S. will now "run the country" when we have no troops on the ground and no apparent strategy…. It was clear from the press conference that all Trump cares about is Venezuela's oil. He never once mentioned the word "democracy" or any concern about a transition to legitimate government. He seems to think that the U.S. can work with the Venezeula's Vice President, now sworn in as president, Delcy Rodriguez, but she is a key player in the same corrupt, criminal, oppressive regime. What kind of fantasy presumes that this will bring political progress for Venezuela?
@7:09 I’m pretty sure I just read that Trump ordered yuge battleships with the world’s biggest and most beautiful guns. So the battle group is back
We should be honored to have a commenter here with the insight of 5:40; I imagine he has spent many hours in the situation room at the White House to post here so knowledgeably. Or maybe he’s just played a lot of Call of Duty.
No American oil companies want to go back into Venezuela. They know it's at least $10 billion out the door for repairs and upgrades before they can pump a single barrel of crude. And it's some of the least usable crude on the planet.
The big bankers can control the money, the big oil companies can control the oil, and the CIA and the rest can control the drugs. The people of that country can return to their carnivals and grinding poverty and a "friendly' regime can be installed. And the beat goes on.
Bennie Thompson has spoken against this! I value Thompson's opinions, since his pronouncements are, unfailingly, mirror-opposites of the truth. If he were FOR it, then I'd be worried. But now, I can rest assured that Donald has done something great.
By the way: are Bennie's statements written for him, here in the US, or are they sent directly from Beijing?
in the early 80s venezuela was the richest country in south America .
now its the poorest, thanks to socialism.
if i gotta hear anymore about the USA colonizing Venezuela , im gonna puke.
england
spain
france
germany
holland
denmark
and a few others had colonies all over the world.
now , name a place that the usa colonized.
This invasion has been brought to you by Chevron.
Now back to your regular programming . . .
Hey Dictator Loving Democrats and RINO’s: was Nicolás Maduro indicted in the Southern District of New York for narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, and other offenses in the year 2020?
If yes, then what do you Crime and Criminal loving Democrats and RINO’s think we should we have done?
Exporting "demoncracy" is the biggest bullshit reason for anything America has ever done. It goes directly against Washington's farewell address/warning to avoid foreign entanglements, as well as a decided return to the Monroe Doctrine (this is our hemisphere).
I love this don’t give a fuck version of DJT, it drives the TDS crowd crazier.
Many jumped up to respond with "it's our oil"; yes, it's all about the oil.
@7:09 PM here...7:45 PM - My source is the fact that I was an active duty Naval Aviator when these changes (Strike Group/SEAL Team) were made.
“It will take tremendous effort to build/rebuild the infrastructure to extract and refine this crude, which means what? We're going to be running the country for the next decade or more?
As much as I hate Maduro for what he did to a once great country, this is nuts.
Even in war it’s against international law to steal another nations natural resources. If Trump doesn’t know this all the oil companies do. Only with agreements in place from a bonafide government, that offers a long term plan will the Oil companies invest the hundreds of billions it would take to make work.
When Chavez took over, the country produced 3 million barrels a day. Now it produces 900,000 per day. The regime shut off foreign investment while it seized the means of production from the oil companies. As the people with expertise fled the country, it had to bring in outsiders from Cuba and other countries to run it. Getting its oil production back to normal will go a long way in providing funds to mitigate any humanitarian crisis as well as stimulating the economy.
Again, we have the same political morons who can't make a statement without calling leaders in the republican party RINOS. There is not enough of you wild-eyed right-wing extremist to ever win a republican office without moderate, common-sense republicans. You make yourself look stupid and very boring. Grow up!
Totally staged . Watch.
trump timed this strike, intervention and the capture of maduro to give himself the maximum amount of time to put an end to maduro and to take care of business before Christmas 2026.
mini wars and military interventions are very politically popular so long as everybody is home for christmas.
The part I find so interesting is we see some of the Americans protesting what our president did and the people actually living in the country are thanking Trump.
1:10 Keep watching. You will also find it very interesting when you see the "thankful" people screaming after we install the next dictator to loot their country.
This is little Marco’s war with the support of Lindsay Graham. They are both trying to destabilize Cuba without pissing Putin off too much.
I don't know where you get your information from, but you should find another source. Every refinery on the Gulf of America was built to run Venezuelan crude.
No oil companies were compensated. The oil companies hold judgments from the World Court that have not been honored.
It’s not the vaccine we are bitching about. It’s the Dictatorial behavior of Democrats in which they FORCED citizens to take shot after shot after shot if they wanted to keep their jobs or travel freely about this country like our Constitution promises we can do.
Two birds with one stone. What’s wrong with that?
Now it’s Greenland. Since he was denied the Nobel Prize. He’s going to show Putin and Xi how it’s done.
Well, we've had 24 hours of total bullshit from the Trump cabal, but let's now talk about what's likely to happen.
And that isn't going to be an oil grab. With the instability that's about to happen, as always happens in situations like this, there is no way big oil is going to risk serious operations there, except what they're paid to do to make Trump's fantasy seem real to the suckers in the cheap seats.
4:39, I actually agree with you on that point.
But there are a lot of people who hate the vaccines and the scientists who created them, and they completely ignore the fact that they were the result of a Trump program. Believe me, I know some of these people.
I'm not a Trump guy, but I give him credit for Operation Warp Speed, which he pretty much disowned due to blow-back from many of his core supporters and propagandists who needed a campaign issue.
1/3 at 6:59 p.m.
I don't think it's a coincidence that Chevron stands to gain the most from regime change in Venezuela, and the director of Project 2025, Paul Dans, was a Chevron lawyer (who is now running for the Senate).
6:59, please refer to 4:39 for reply. You are missing the big picture on all that.
You are going to make the young people in New York angry talking about their sweet socialism.
The flood of cut-and-paste talking points here is telling. They know that kidnapping the leaders of sovereign nations because we want their stuff is wrong. They know that "he's a bad leader" has never been a justification for smash and grab looting, much less suicidal nation building. The smarter ones even know that Venezuela is a bit player in the international drug trade, and that justification was a laughable pretext for an oil grab.
Ultimately, they know there's no reason for us to be doing this shit, other than a president who aspires to be more like Putin trying to dominate a sphere of influence toward the ultimate goal of ... well, they can't really say. But they come here and chant the liturgy from Fox News to reassure themselves that, despite all evidence to the contrary, this is fine. This is good.
An old axiom applies here: "You killed it. You clean it." I hope the President took that into consideration.
Prince George II overlooked that fact when it came to Iraq, and look what it cost us.
10:19, I too thought Venezuela was just a bit player.
Read the indictment. If it's even partially true, Maduro and his regime was no bit player.
12:11 - Literally nothing in the indictment, which is a political document giving the Trump administration's position, says anything to undercut the fact that Venezuela is a second-tier player at best in the international drug trade.
The most charitable version of the argument is that Venezuela (like every other Caribbean nation) is one node in a distribution chain for one drug, cocaine, that encompasses about 20% of the total amount of that drug entering the United States.
For context, what actually happens is that every year, roughly three semi trailers worth of cocaine pass through some stopover point in Venezuela. If that is the standard for kidnapping leaders, we have 25-30 leaders and two red state governors that need kidnapping immediately.
Drug money is real money. Anyone who believes the president of the U.S. would declare war on money is insane. What a joke.
12:50, I know it’s kind of long, but read the damn indictment.
Read it in its entirety. Nothing remotely new. Maduro is a dictator who had his hands in all kinds of very bad activities in Venezuela. As with all Central American despots, the main bad activity was drugs. None of that changes the fact that Venezuela was a run-of-the-mill minor player in the global trade of one drug, cocaine.
Did he do awful things to his people? Sure. But that's obviously not the standard for kidnapping foreign leaders, or we'd have 50-100 to kidnap. Did he enrich himself through crime? Definitely. But that's not the standard either, or most national leaders would be in jail in NYC.
In the end, the net impact of Maduro's despicable behavior on the United States was near zero. If his own people had strung him up, I'd have been glad to hear it. But if we're now using "in bed with and profiting from bad actors who do bad things" as the standard for kidnapping national leaders, we have a long list of leaders we need to start kidnapping.
We could start with Donald Trump, who among many, many other dealings with global criminals accepted a $400M jet as a bribe to send US troops to protect Qatar, a state that funds and harbors Islamic terrorists, and let them build an air base on US soil.
You have to be a grown up here. The question is not whether many leaders are bad. They are. It's not even whether you can draw some link between their badness and some harm to the US. There often is. The question is whether they cross a very high threshold into something that looks like a direct act of war on the US. And if that's the case, admit that it's war and don't hide behind this law enforcement BS. (Bush at least had the dignity to do this.)
But if you decide national leaders are fair game for kidnapping because they're bad, the entire idea of national sovereignty falls apart.
Hard to see how owning machine guns in a foreign country (outside violates US law, when one can have one’s own arsenal under our Militia second amendment — the indictment reads like a political statement, not a charging document for an actual offense under US jurisdiction stating specific US crimes committed under US jurisdiction. Makes about as much sense as suing Putin for invading Ukraine.
It would have been just fine if Biden had caught Maduro, right? It was alright with you when Biden shook down Ukraine for a few million, right?
4:36 shows why MAGA is a cult. No, it obviously would not be fine if Biden did it. You guys are the slavish idolators who worship a man and bring your beliefs in line with whatever he demands, not us.
We are A-OK with Tim Walz getting pushed out of the race because he did bad stuff. We are A-OK with Hunter Biden going to jail if he committed crimes. We are A-OK with Bill Clinton going to prison if he covered up Epstein.
Our principles are not always perfect, but we still have them. You don't. And that's the basic difference between us.
This is 4:36, and dude, or dudett, you just made an ass out of yourself by assuming I'm a Trump supporter. I have never voted for Trump, or a republican, for that matter. What cult am I in now?
Well, 3:06, nice way to skew facts or flat out ignore them.
The indictment charges Maduro was also providing phony passports to drug dealers, foreign agents, and terrorists .
China, Russia, Cuba, and Iran were using it as a base to cause us problems and gain influence in the Southern hemisphere. The military is controlled by 15,000 Cubans. Maduro coveted the oil fields in Guyana so he was preparing to invade them.
Then there is Iran and Hezbollah. Maduro allowed them to operate a drone manufacturing facility there. Don't see a problem with that? I'm sure you like seeing dead Marines and dead Jews, but not all of us do. I'm sure you bitched about bombing Iran as well.
Just sad, Kingfish.
If these justifications are so persuasive, why have they not been mentioned once by the Trump administration in its comments? Or even *the indictment itself*? They’ve said “oil” and “minerals” about 500 times, but not one mention of a Chinese military base or Hezbollah drone manufacturing facility (lol). If those were real, why didn’t we bomb them? Wouldn’t they have been a WAY more defensible basis for grabbing Maduro and bombing Caracas? Why were we instead so concerned about seizing oil tankers and capturing one guy?
I know that on an emotional level you need Trump to be right, and you need to feel vicariously strong and tough, but this is criminal oil grab is absolutely indefensible. And the more you go scrambling for the 23rd and 24th best reason, which are so baseless not even the people who did it bother to mention them, the more pathetic and servile you appear.
The fact you support Hezbollah is sad.
Venezuela produced 3 million barrels a day when Chavez came to power. It now produces less than 900,000 barrels per day. Chavez/Maduro seized the means of production from the oil companies. After running them off as well as their trained employees, he ran them into the ground .
IF you get oil production back up to where it used to be, that will be the best means of relieving the suffering of the people and lifting them out of poverty. Keep in mind some of these oil companies have world court judgements against Venezuela.
As for Trump saying that, shooting his mouth off. This is no campaign of conquest. Oil companies move in, they spend money and invest. Who do you think they will hire, train, and pay? Venezuelans. I'm sure BP and other foreign companies will participate as well.
As for oil, why the hell do you think Russia, China, and Cuba were so interested in the country? Oil. Now those are the cats who were raping the country. Of course, that didn't bother you at all.
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