Trafficking

NEW YORK — A defiant Nicolás Maduro declared himself the “president of my country” as he protested his capture and pleaded not guilty on Monday to the federal drug trafficking charges that the Trump administration used to justify removing him from power.

“I was captured,” Maduro said in Spanish as translated by a courtroom reporter before being cut off by the judge. Asked later for his plea to the charges, he stated: “I’m innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the president of my country.”

The courtroom appearance, Maduro’s first since he and his wife were seized from their home in a stunning middle-of-the-night military operation, kick-starts the U.S. government’s most consequential prosecution in decades of a foreign head of state. The criminal case in Manhattan is unfolding against the diplomatic backdrop of an audacious U.S.-engineered regime change that President Trump has said will enable his administration to “run” the South American country.

Maduro, wearing a blue jail uniform, was led into court along with his co-defendant wife just before noon for the brief, but required, legal proceeding. Both put on headsets to hear the English-language proceeding as it was translated into Spanish.

The couple were transported to the Manhattan courthouse under armed guard early Monday from the Brooklyn jail where they’ve been detained since arriving in the U.S. on Saturday.

The trip was swift. A motorcade carrying Maduro left jail around 7:15 a.m. and made its way to a nearby athletic field, where Maduro slowly made his way to a waiting helicopter. The chopper flew across New York Harbor and landed at a Manhattan heliport, where Maduro, limping, was loaded into an armored vehicle.

A few minutes later, the law enforcement caravan was inside a garage at the courthouse complex, just around the corner from the one where Trump was convicted in 2024 of falsifying business records. Across the street from the courthouse, the police separated a small but growing group of protesters from about a dozen pro-intervention demonstrators, including one man who pulled a Venezuelan flag away from those protesting the U.S. action.

As a criminal defendant in the U.S. legal system, Maduro will have the same rights as any other person accused of a crime — including the right to a trial by a jury of regular New Yorkers. But he’ll also be nearly — but not quite — unique.

Maduro’s lawyers are expected to contest the legality of his arrest, arguing that he is immune from prosecution as a sovereign head of state.

Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega unsuccessfully tried the same defense after the U.S. captured him in a similar military invasion in 1990. But the U.S. doesn’t recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state — particularly after a disputed 2024 reelection.

Venezuela’s new interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has demanded that the U.S. return Maduro, who long denied any involvement in drug trafficking — although late Sunday she also struck a more conciliatory tone in a social media post, inviting collaboration with Trump and “respectful relations” with the U.S.

Before his capture, Maduro and his allies claimed U.S. hostility was motivated by lust for Venezuela’s rich oil and mineral resources.

The U.S. seized Maduro and his wife in a military operation early Saturday, capturing them in their home on a military base. Trump said the U.S. would “run” Venezuela temporarily, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that it would not govern the country day-to-day other than enforcing an existing “ oil quarantine.”

Trump suggested Sunday that he wants to extend American power further in the Western Hemisphere.

Speaking aboard Air Force One, he called Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, “a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States. And he’s not going to be doing it very long.”

He called on Venezuela’s Rodriguez to provide “total access” to her country, or else face consequences.

Trump has suggested that removing Maduro would enable more oil to flow out of Venezuela, but oil prices rose a bit more than 1% in Monday morning trading to roughly $58 a barrel. There are uncertainties about how fast oil production can be ramped up in Venezuela after years of neglect and needed investments, as well as questions about governance and oversight of the sector.

A 25-page indictment made public Saturday accuses Maduro and others of working with drug cartels to facilitate the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S. They could face life in prison if convicted.

He and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been under U.S. sanctions for years, making it illegal for any American to take money from them without first securing a license from the Treasury Department.

While the indictment against Maduro says Venezuelan officials worked directly with the Tren de Aragua gang, a U.S. intelligence assessment published in April, drawing on input from the intelligence community’s 18 agencies, found no coordination between Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan government.

Maduro, his wife and his son — who remains free — are charged along with Venezuela’s interior and justice minister, a former interior and justice minister and Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, an alleged Tren de Aragua leader who has been criminally charged in another case and remains at large.

Among other things, the indictment accuses Maduro and his wife of ordering kidnappings, beatings and murders of those who owed them drug money or undermined their drug trafficking operation. That included a local drug boss’ killing in Caracas, the indictment said.

Flores, Maduro’s wife, is also accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in 2007 to arrange a meeting between “a large-scale drug trafficker” and the director of Venezuela’s National Anti-Drug Office, resulting in additional monthly bribes, with some of the money going to Flores, according to the indictment.

Sisak, Neumeister and Tucker write for the Associated Press. Tucker reported from Washington. AP writers John Hanna in Topeka, Kan., Josh Boak in Washington, Darlene Superville aboard Air Force One and Joshua Goodman in Miami contributed to this report.

Jan. 2 (UPI) — Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said claims that his government engages in drug trafficking are lies, and he is willing to meet with President Donald Trump amid rising tensions.

Maduro on Thursday accused the Trump administration of knowingly making false claims of drug trafficking, including recent comments by Trump saying Venezuela’s alleged drug trafficking is akin to using weapons of mass destruction

“Since they cannot accuse me, since they cannot accuse Venezuela of having weapons of mass destruction, since they cannot accuse us of having nuclear rockets, of preparing a nuclear weapon, of having chemical weapons, they invented an accusation that the United States knows is as false as that accusation of weapons of mass destruction, which led them to an eternal war,” Maduro said while referencing the Iraq War.

The Venezuelan president offered to work with U.S. officials to oppose drug trafficking and repeated his prior offers to meet with Trump to discuss the U.S. military targeting alleged drug vessels, seizing oil tankers and blockading Venezuelan ports.

“The U.S. government knows, because we’ve told many of their spokespeople that, if they want to seriously discuss an agreement to combat drug trafficking, we’re ready,” he said in a taped interview on Venezuela’s state-owned channel teleSUR.

The Venezuelan president also suggested his country and the United States could work together to enable U.S. firms to invest in Venezuela’s oil industry “whenever they want it, wherever they want it and however they want it.”

Maduro refused to comment on a recently reported U.S. strike on an alleged drug-processing facility located among docks on Venezuela’s Caribbean coastline.

The CIA also has refused to comment on the strike, which Trump announced on Monday and said “knocked out” a drug facility on Saturday night.

The president in October announced he authorized the CIA to undertake operations in Venezuela but did not say what kind.

The Defense Department also sent a carrier strike group to the Caribbean to stop alleged drug-trafficking fast boats from transporting drugs intended for the United States and Europe and more recently to blockade Venezuelan ports amid seizures of sanctioned vessels.

The White House has said the strikes on the alleged drug boats are intended to stop South American drug cartels from sending drugs to the United States, which has some U.S. officials questioning the legality of such strikes.

The U.S. Southern Command announced two more boat strikes that killed five in international waters on New Year’s Eve.

The United States began striking the alleged drug boats in September and has sunk at least 36 and killed at least 115.

Most of the drug boat strikes, 23, have occurred in the eastern Pacific Ocean and away from Venezuela, while 11 others occurred in the Caribbean Sea, with another two in undisclosed locations.

The United States also has placed a $50 million bounty on Maduro and recently sanctioned some of his family members for their alleged roles in drug trafficking.

Trump also has accused Maduro of intentionally sending criminals and others to the United States during the Biden administration, including members of the Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua gang that he has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.