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When asked who would temporarily run Venezuela, President Trump referred to the officials standing behind him at the podium. One of them, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, joins “CBS Evening News” to discuss.
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth joins “CBS Evening News” to discuss why the U.S. captured former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
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Minnesota leaders are sounding off following President Trump’s announcement Saturday that the United States will temporarily “run” Venezuela after launching airstrikes on the country and capturing President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
Trump administration officials tell CBS News the operation was carried out by the U.S. Army’s elite Delta Force on Saturday morning, targeting military facilities inside the South American country.
The operation comes after weeks of deadly, U.S.-led boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea and the seizures of two oil tankers off Venezuela’s coast. About 15,000 U.S. troops are now positioned in the Caribbean, along with the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford.
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, arrived early Saturday evening at Stewart Air National Guard Base, just north of New York City, to face federal drug trafficking and weapons charges.
Alfredo Lasry R / Getty Images
Mr. Trump has long accused Maduro’s regime of narcoterrorism, stating last week Maduro has “sent billions of dollars of drugs” into the U.S., as well as “hundreds of thousands of people in from jails, from prisons, from mental institutions and insane asylums.”
In a Saturday morning press conference, Mr. Trump also noted the U.S. is set to sell Venezuelan oil.
“In terms of other countries that want oil, we’re in the oil business. We’re going to sell it to them. We’re not going to say we’re not going to give it to them. In other words, we’ll be selling oil, probably in much larger doses, because they couldn’t produce very much because their infrastructure was so bad,” Trump said.
The Trump administration’s move has drawn outrage from home and abroad, with some U.S. lawmakers alleging the strikes and regime change were carried out without congressional approval. Those claims have already been refuted by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who called the operation “largely a law enforcement function.”
Reaction from Minnesota’s Congressional Delegation fall predictably along party lines. Republican House Majority Whip Tom Emmer praised the Trump administration’s move.
“The President of Peace, Donald J. Trump, has just made the United States, the region, and the world a safer place through his decisive action,” Emmer said.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar said she “strongly opposed sending American forces into harm’s way” without Congress’ authorization.
“We should not put Americans at risk in this way without careful deliberation among the people’s elected representatives. Wars for regime change can lead to unintended consequences,” Klobuchar said. “Right now we need a full briefing on how to avoid spiraling instability, and a vote to stop this unauthorized action from continuing.”
Republican Congressman Brad Finstad said the Trump administration’s actions give Venezuelans “a chance to reclaim their democracy.”
“Maduro’s narco drug trafficking networks that have fueled violence across our hemisphere and are responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans,” Finstad said. “Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, Maduro will now face justice for his crimes against the American people. Thank you to the brave service members who carried out this decisive mission, sending a clear message of why the American military is the best in the world.”
Democratic U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, a ranking member of the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, called on Mr. Trump to halt airstrikes immediately.
“The actions taken today by the Trump administration are blatantly illegal. Venezuela poses no imminent national security threat to the United States and Congress has not voted to authorize any use of force in the region,” McCollum said. “Speaker Johnson must call the House of Representatives back into session immediately to reign in this out-of-control President.”
WCCO 
Protesters gathered at East Lake Street and Minnehaha Avenue in Minneapolis on Saturday, calling the president’s actions unconstitutional.
They say the U.S. kidnapped the leader of a sovereign nation, and called for Maduro’s release.
They also point to polls that say these actions are unpopular and called for people across the country to voice their concerns.
This story will be updated.
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A woman displays a Venezuelan flag during a celebration by the Venezuelan exiles living in South Florida outside of El Arepazo in Doral, Florida, after the United States attacked Venezuela and captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, on Jan. 3, 2026.
pportal@miamiherald.com
What to know about the U.S. military action in Venezuela and the removal of leader Nicolas Maduro.
Seven years ago, Lucy Mimo left behind the instability that had marred her family’s comfortable life in Caracas. She hoped the United States would offer her daughter a better future.
In the years since, Mimo, 47, has become a U.S. citizen. Her child, now 12 years old, has spent most of her life in the United States. But the American-orchestrated capture of Venezuelan Nicolás Maduro on Saturday morning is a moment, she said, for which she’s been waiting for years
Now, she’s watching how things unfold over. But she’s ready to figure out a plan that returns her family to their home and loved ones in Venezuela’s capital as soon as possible.
“Many families have been separated, divided, and scattered across the world,” she said. “It’s time to fight for our country and move it forward.”
Since 2014, nearly 8 million Venezuelans have fled a raging humanitarian crisis. They have suffered inconsistent water and electricity services, fuel shortages, food insecurity, crumbling infrastructure, inadequate healthcare under a government that violates human rights, stifles political opposition and restricts civil liberties.
As plumes of smoke from U.S. military attacks dissipated in the night sky of Caracas, the news of Maduro’s capture reached American shores. How the forced ousting of Maduro will play out is unclear, as is what President Donald Trump means when he said Saturday afternoon that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela for now. Many Venezuelans feel like they are now standing on a precipice with no idea what lays below.
But despite the questions looming over the country and its people, the strongman’s expulsion has left many immigrants who found sanctuary in South Florida wondering whether, sooner rather than later, they will be able to go home. To help their country prosper, to reunite with their loved ones, to live and die on the land in the land they were born.
Irasel Carpavirez, 50, a former lawyer, celebrated on Saturday at El Arepazo, the Venezuelan restaurant in Doral, alongside hundreds of her countrymen. Nearly everyone was draped in Venezuelan flags or wearing hats and jerseys in the national colors, turning the crowd into a sea of red, blue and yellow.
She told the Miami Herald she is ready to return and hopes doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers and other professionals will too.
“I think this is the moment to return to Venezuela and rebuild,” she said. “Everyone has to come back because Venezuela has to rise from the ashes.”
During a press conference on Sunday, Trump said the United States would “run the country” until a “proper” transition of power can occur and that American companies would build out the oil infrastructure.
“We want peace, liberty, and justice for the great people of Venezuela. And that includes many from Venezuela that are now living in the United States and want to go back home,” he said.
But later during the same press conference, he accused Maduro, without evidence, of sending mental asylum patients and prisoners to the United States, what he described as their “worst and most violent monsters.” He also sidelined Maria Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize winner at the helm of Venezuela’s opposition movement, calling her a “very nice woman” but dismissing that she has what it takes to lead Venezuela.
Trump’s comments about Venezuelan immigrants in the United States highlight the contradictions of how his administration has largely targeted Venezuelan immigrants while also calling the country a narcostate run by a dictator.
Only days after returning to the White House in 2025, Trump began his efforts to strip over 600,000 Venezuelans from deportation protections and work permits under Temporary Protected Status. His administration said Venezuela was safe enough for their return, even as the State Department issued “do not travel” advisories for American citizens. His government also invoked a wartime act to deport Venezuelan men, mostly without criminal records in the United States, to a notorious Salvadorean prison and accused them of being gang members.
“I don’t know what other directions this could take, but they certainly are not going to start accepting Venezuelan refugees or restarting Temporary Protected Status. They’ve made clear that regardless of the facts on the ground they are going to pursue their deportation agenda,” said Dave Bier, the director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute.
Between February and November 2025, the U.S. conducted 73 deportation flights to Venezuela and sent back 13,656 of its nationals, according to Human Rights First, which tracks removal flights. But as tensions with Venezuela escalated, the Venezuelan government announced that the U.S. had suspended the flights in mid-December.
That could soon change as part of any negotiations between Washington and Caracas, where former Vice President Delcy Rodriguez is now in charge.
“Expect an increase in deportation flights to Venezuela as a condition that the U.S. will require Delcy Rodriguez to meet. These regular deportation flights have been one of the few points of cooperation with Venezuela over the course of the last year,” said Jason Marczak, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council.
Some Venezuelans in South Florida echoed the uncertainty. In the aftermath of the U.S. operations in Caracas, Venezuelans in South Florida are now weighing what comes next for themselves and their country. What does going home look like? Is it still the same place that I left? Do I stay in the United States, the home I have adopted? Will we be able to take the reins of our homeland’s future?
American immigration policy and ongoing relations between the two countries they call home looms large in their lives.
The first thing Ross Basmadji thought when she heard about the U.S. attack on Venezuela’s capital and the capture of Nicolás Maduro was that she might finally be able to hug her sisters again after eight long years of separation.
Basmadji never wanted to leave Venezuela. But she was targeted for her work in opposition politics and journalism, she told the Herald while speaking El Arepazo, her young daughter in tow. She fled to the United States in 2017.
She’s unsure of when going back might be possible, or how, especially as her own immigration process plays out in the United States.
“We have to wait and see what situation everything ends up in and how things turn out for all of us—the people who are seeking asylum,” she said.
Beyond the doubts and confusion, many Venezuelans also felt deep relief at the news of the ousting of Maduro — whose government watchdog groups and independent monitors manipulated the 2024 presidential election to secure victory.
The multitude of emotions and opinions that Venezuelans are living through was on full display at El Arepazo. Venezuelans came together to laugh, cry, dream, and talk about the homeland and heritage they share.
By 3:30 PM, the party had raged for over 12 hours, showing no signs of slowing down. Loud music blared as hundreds of people sang and danced under a heavy police presence. The festivities shut down the surrounding roads.
Among the people celebrating was Rosario Garcia, a 43-year-old lawyer who used to handle domestic violence cases and crimes related to the military justice system. Practicing law in Venezuela was fraught with fear, she said.
“You could be persecuted if you didn’t deliver the kind of justice that a tribunal or a court wanted, you could go to jail if you didn’t applaud a corrupt government,” she said.
In 2016, García moved to the United States. She’s since gotten her green card. For now, she hopes to stay here to earn her American citizenship and contribute to the nation that has given her family safety and opportunity. “I feel I am already part of this country” she said.
But one day, she hopes to return and help rebuild the country’s legal institutions. She said her goal is to teach at a police academy, helping train officers to uphold the law with integrity. “I want to bring the example of this country to Venezuela,” she said, “and help form public servants who truly respect the law.”
Her daughter, a sonography student at Miami-Dade College, hadn’t stopped crying since the morning.
“This means being able to reunite with her grandparents in Venezuela,” García said.
This story was originally published January 3, 2026 at 6:12 PM.
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Milena Malaver,Syra Ortiz Blanes
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Washington — Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges stemming from what prosecutors said was his role in a scheme to import “thousands of tons” of cocaine into the United States and enrich himself, his family and senior members of the Venezuelan government.
The indictment was unsealed Saturday after Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were taken into military custody in an overnight operation and brought to the U.S. to face criminal charges. Maduro, Flores and four others are named as defendants in the indictment, including Maduro’s son, Nicolás Ernesto Maduro; Venezuela’s interior minister, Diosdado Cabello; its former interior minister, Ramón Rodríguez Chacín; and a leader of the gang Tren de Aragua, Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores.
Alfredo Lasry R / Getty Images
It’s unclear whether the U.S. has arrested Maduro’s son. The other three defendants were not taken into custody.
“Maduro and his wife will soon face the full might of American justice and stand trial on American soil,” Mr. Trump said in a press conference from his South Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, earlier Saturday.
The case was brought in the Southern District of New York, where Maduro and 14 others were first indicted in March 2020, during the first Trump administration. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein is overseeing the case.
The plane carrying Maduro landed at an airport in the Hudson Valley on Saturday afternoon. The Venezuelan leader was expected to be turned over to federal authorities and arraigned at the U.S. district court in the Southern District of New York next week, two sources told CBS News.
Secured by U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, the superseding indictment alleges that for more than 25 years, “leaders of Venezuela have abused their positions of public trust and corrupted once-legitimate institutions to import tons of cocaine into the United States.”
Prosecutors place Maduro at the “forefront of the corruption,” and say that he and his associates worked with drug traffickers and narco-terrorists to flood the U.S. with “thousands of tons of cocaine.” This drug trafficking, according to the indictment, enriched Maduro, his family and members of Venezuela’s political and military elite.
“This cycle of narcotics-based corruption lines the pockets of Venezuelan officials and their families while also benefiting violent narco-terrorists who operate with impunity on Venezuelan soil and who help produce, protect and transport tons of cocaine into the United States,” the indictment states.
Maduro faces four charges: narco-terrorism conspiracy; cocaine importation conspiracy; possession of machineguns and destructive devices; and conspiracy to possess machineguns and destructive devices.
The indictment alleges that Maduro has used his various positions in the Venezuelan government to transport cocaine. Prosecutors said that as minister of foreign affairs, Maduro sold diplomatic passports to known drug traffickers to help them move drug proceeds from Mexico back to Venezuela under diplomatic cover and facilitated the movement of private planes under diplomatic cover to evade law enforcement scrutiny.
Maduro and his wife also allegedly worked together between 2004 and 2015, with the help of military escorts, to traffic cocaine seized by Venezuelan law enforcement. Prosecutors said the two maintained their own groups of state-sponsored gangs to facilitate and protect their drug-trafficking operation. They are accused of ordering kidnappings, beatings and murders against people who owed them money or who undermined their drug-trafficking operation.
Prosecutors said that after Maduro became president in 2013, he and others authorized the arrest of certain Venezuelan military officials to divert scrutiny away from them after French authorities seized 1.3 tons of cocaine that had been dispatched on a commercial flight from Venezuela to Paris.
Maduro’s wife is accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to broker a meeting between a large-scale drug trafficker and the head of Venezuela’s National Anti-Drug Office, Nestor Reverol Torres, according to the indictment. The trafficker then arranged to pay a monthly bribe to Reverol Torres to ship cocaine, and Flores received a portion of it, prosecutors said.
Reverol Torres was charged with narcotics offenses in 2015 and is a fugitive.
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President Donald Trump said a U.S. military assault succeeded in capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, both facing U.S. charges related to cocaine trafficking under newly unsealed indictments.
In a Jan. 3 press conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said the U.S. would “run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.”
Trump also said Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as interim president. Trump said Rodríguez had talked to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and was “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.”
However, Rodríguez criticized the U.S. military action as “brutal aggression” on state television and called for Maduro’s immediate release.
Maduro, an authoritarian, has led Venezuela since 2013, succeeding an ideological ally, Hugo Chávez, who had been in office since 1999. Under both men, U.S. relations with Venezuela frayed over foreign policy, oil and human rights.
In July 2024, Maduro declared victory following an election that international observers described as fraudulent. The country’s opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, received about 70% of the vote.
Tensions between Trump and Maduro escalated in September after the U.S. government began attacking vessels off the coast of Venezuela, killing more than 100 people, in what Trump described as an effort to thwart drug smuggling.
When a reporter asked Trump during the Mar-a-Lago press event whether he’d spoken to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado following Maduro’s arrest, Trump said Machado “doesn’t have the support or the respect within the country.”
Machado, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize for her fight for democracy in Venezuela, had a 72% approval rating from Venezuelans according to a March poll by ClearPath Strategies.
Trump said without evidence that the United States’ role in governing Venezuela “won’t cost us anything” because U.S. oil companies would invest in new infrastructure in the oil-rich country. “It’s going to make a lot of money,” Trump said.
Here, we fact-checked Trump’s and Rubio’s statements from the press conference.
The administration’s lack of warning to Congress bucks laws and precedents.
Rubio said members of Congress were not notified in advance. Trump said the administration was concerned about Congress potentially leaking news of the administration’s decision to capture Maduro.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., praised the operation as a “decisive action.”
But Congressional Democrats said Congress should have been notified in advance. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said, “Maduro is terrible. But Trump put American servicemembers at risk with this unauthorized attack.”
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said Trump and his cabinet were not forthcoming about their intentions for regime change, so “we are left with no understanding of how the administration is preparing to mitigate risks to the U.S. and we have no information regarding a long-term strategy following today’s extraordinary escalation.”
The U.S. Constitution assigns Congress the right to declare war. The last time that happened was for World War II.
Since then, presidents have generally initiated military action using their constitutionally granted powers as commander in chief without an official declaration of war.
Since Congress passed the 1973 War Powers Resolution, the president has had to report to Congress within 48 hours of introducing the U.S. military into hostilities and terminate the use of the military within 60 days unless Congress approves. If approval is not granted and the president deems it an emergency, an additional 30 days are granted for ending operations.
In recent decades, congressional consent has usually been granted through an authorization for the use of military force. But an authorization has not been passed for operations in Venezuela. Kaine and other lawmakers have pursued legislation — so far fruitlessly — to prohibit the use of federal funds for any use of military force in or against Venezuela without Congressional authorization.
The Trump administration has whittled away at prior notification requirements. Under federal law, eight bipartisan, senior members of Congress must receive prior notice of particularly sensitive covert actions. In June 2025, the administration told Republicans, but not Democrats, about the forthcoming U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. For the Venezuela operation, it appears no lawmakers were notified in advance.
President Nicolás Maduro, accompanied by first lady Cilia Flores, greets supporters during an event marking the anniversary of a 1958 coup ousting dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez, in Caracas, Venezuela, on Jan. 23, 2024. (AP)
The Trump administration has struck at least 32 vessels killing about 115 people in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean since September. Trump said previously that the boats were carrying drugs en route to the U.S. and during the press conference he said the drugs on each boat would kill “on average, 25,000 people.”
However, experts on drugs and Venezuela told PolitiFact the country plays a minor role in trafficking drugs that reach the U.S. And the administration has provided no evidence about the type or quantity of drugs it says were on the boats. This lack of information makes it impossible to know how many lethal doses of the drugs could have been destroyed.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 73,000 U.S. drug overdose deaths from May 2024 to April 2025. That means the drugs on 32 boats would have been responsible for 800,000 deaths, nearly 11 times the number of U.S. overdose deaths in one year.
There is no evidence Maduro sent members of Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua to the U.S.
The U.S. Justice Department indictment against Maduro does not mention Trump’s statement.
An April report from the federal National Intelligence Council contradicted Trump’s statements about links between Maduro and Tren de Aragua.
“While Venezuela’s permissive environment enables (Tren de Aragua) to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States,” the report said.
This needs context.
In the early 20th century, Venezuela’s long-serving dictator, Juan Vicente Gómez, allowed foreign companies almost exclusive access to the country’s oil resources.
In 1975, after decades of seeking greater control of its oil resources, Venezuela nationalized its oil industry.
“Trump’s claim that Venezuela has stolen oil and land from the U.S. is baseless,” Francisco Rodríguez, a Venezuelan economist at the University of Denver, told the Washington Post. “The U.S. was much more interested in having Venezuela be a provider of oil — relatively cheap oil — than to have a production collapse in Venezuela,” Rodríguez said. As a result, the change was “relatively uncontroversial” at the time.
U.S. oil companies, including Exxon and Mobil and Gulf, now Chevron, lost about $5 billion each in assets and were compensated $1 billion each, according to news reports, the Post reported.
But Rodríguez said the companies didn’t push for additional compensation at the time, in part because no forum existed to do so.
In general, experts have told PolitiFact that invading a country to take its oil would be both illegal and unethical. In 2016, Trump mused about how the U.S. should have taken Iraq’s oil when it invaded to oust Saddam Hussein.
Experts pointed to the Annex to the Hague Convention of 1907 on the Laws and Customs of War, which says that “private property … must be respected (and) cannot be confiscated.” It also says that “pillage is formally forbidden.”
“If ‘to the victors go the spoils’ was legal doctrine, then we would have believed that (then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein) should have been able to keep Kuwait City after he invaded” in 1990, terrorism analyst Daveed Gartenstein-Ross told PolitiFact in 2016. “But we viewed that — quite rightly — as an act of aggression under the U.N. Charter.”
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On Saturday morning, President Donald Trump announced that the United States military, working with American law-enforcement officials, had carried out a strike in Venezuela, capturing the country’s President, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores. Maduro was indicted in a federal court in New York for his role in what the Administration claims is a narco-terrorism conspiracy. At a press conference later on Saturday, Trump said, “We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.” He also said that he was not concerned about “boots on the ground,” referring to an American military presence.
I spoke by phone on Saturday morning with Oona Hathaway, a professor at Yale Law School and the director of its Center for Global Legal Challenges. She is also the president-elect of the American Society of International Law. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed whether Maduro can legally be tried in American courts, the long history of U.S. meddling in Latin America, and what makes Trump’s decision so uniquely dangerous.
What is the legal basis, such as it is, for this action?
Unfortunately, I don’t think there is a legal basis for what we’re seeing in Venezuela. There are certainly legal arguments that the Administration is going to make, but all the arguments that I’ve heard so far don’t hold water. None of them really justify what the President seems to have ordered to take place in Venezuela.
What are the arguments that you’ve heard from either people in the Administration or from their supporters?
We’re still in the early hours, but the arguments that have been made in the run-up to this full-scale effort have largely focussed on self-defense against drug traffickers, who they claim are being supported or maybe even directed by Maduro and his administration. The problem is that that really doesn’t work under international law. There is a right of self-defense under the United Nations charter, which allows states to use force in self-defense against an armed attack. But it’s never been used for something like drug trafficking. And so all of these boat strikes that have been taking place over the past couple of months, which have been justified as self-defense, don’t fall within anything that anyone would recognize as self-defense under international law. Self-defense generally requires that there’s actually an armed attack. And it seems like they’re making a similar argument here to justify the capture of Maduro and the use of force on land in Venezuela.
What do you think of the argument that lots of people in America die from drug overdoses and so this is a form of self-defense?
Look, when the U.N. charter was written, eighty years ago, it included a critical prohibition on the use of force by states. States are not allowed to decide on their own that they want to use force against other states. It was meant to reinforce this relatively new idea at the time that states couldn’t just go to war whenever they wanted to. In the old world, the pre-U.N. charter world, it would have been fine to use force if you felt like drug trafficking was hurting you, and you could come up with legal justification that that was the case. But the whole point of the U.N. charter was basically to say, “We’re not going to go to war for those reasons anymore.”
The charter included a very narrow exception, which was an exception for the use of self-defense. The idea there was that surely we shouldn’t have to wait for the Security Council to authorize a use of force in order to defend ourselves if we’re attacked. But that was meant to be a narrow exception.
If drug trafficking is a reasonable justification, then a whole range of possible arguments can be made that basically mean that self-defense is no longer a real exception. It’s the new rule. Why couldn’t you make the same argument about communicable diseases? There’s bird flu coming from a country, and therefore we have a legal justification for the use of military force. Once we start going down that road, the idea that there’s any limit evaporates. I mean, yes, drugs are horrific. Do they cause loss of life in the United States? Absolutely. There’s no doubt about that. It’s a terrible scourge, but the idea that because drugs are coming from a country it justifies an invasion and a change of administration in that country basically gets rid of any kind of limits on the use of force.
What other arguments have you heard from the Administration?
One of the claims is that Maduro is not, in fact, the leader of Venezuela. This is something that they’ve been saying for a while now—that he’s not the legitimate leader of the country, that they don’t recognize him as the head of state. And that might justify his seizure and indictment, although using military force to do that would not be justified. I don’t know how they get from there to an argument that they can use military force in Venezuela.
What do you mean, exactly, about his “seizure and indictment”? Venezuela had an election. It was not a free election. He declared himself President, and he’s broadly recognized as the President of Venezuela, but, again, he was not freely elected by the people of Venezuela. That could justify his indictment in an American court?
I should back up. As part of this military operation, at least one of the key goals seems to have been the capture of Maduro and his wife, who have been indicted for criminal charges in the Southern District of New York. The only way they can do that is if they’re claiming that he’s not a head of state, because heads of state get immunity and heads of state are not subject to criminal prosecution in the domestic courts of other states. That’s just a basic rule of international law. The United States has long recognized it.
So you were not saying that the fact that he stole an election per se means you can grab him and try him in an American court but, rather, that if he were not a head of state, that would at least allow for trying him in an American court, which normally would not be the case?
Right. So if he’s not actually a head of state, then head-of-state immunity doesn’t apply. And it’s connected to this broader question of the use of military force in that it may be that they would make a claim—although I haven’t yet seen this—that because he’s not the legitimate head of state that somehow they have a legal authority to use force to grab him. But, again, the two don’t connect. So the problem is that merely saying that he’s not head of state doesn’t then justify the use of military force in Venezuela.
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Isaac Chotiner
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Washington — President Trump said Saturday the U.S. would “run the country” of Venezuela “until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition” after President Nicolás Maduro was captured in an overnight military operation.
Mr. Trump said in remarks from Mar-a-Lago that the U.S. carried out an “assault like people have not seen since World War II” in Venezuela. While Mr. Trump said “we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so,” he said he did not believe a “second wave” would be necessary. He added that no U.S. service members were killed.
“We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” Mr. Trump said. “But we’re going to make sure that country is run properly. We’re not doing this in vain.” He added, “We’re going to be running it with a group and we’re going to make sure it’s run properly.”
Mr. Trump said running Venezuela “won’t cost us anything” because the U.S. would be reimbursed in oil money.
“We’re going to be taking a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground,” he said.
Venezuela has one of the world’s largest known oil reserves and was a founding member of OPEC, though its industry has suffered under years of mismanagement, corruption and sanctions. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says that despite its vast reserves, Venezuela produced just 0.8% of total global crude oil in 2023.
“We’re going to rebuild the oil infrastructure, which will cost billions of dollars, it will be paid for by the oil companies directly,” Mr. Trump said. “And we’re going to get the oil flowing the way it should be.”
Mr. Trump said the oil embargo on Venezuela currently remains in effect, and the American naval armada remains in position. He said the U.S. will retain all military options until all demands are met.
Mr. Trump said the vice president who had been appointed by Maduro has been sworn in, but the U.S. would have a presence in Venezuela.
However, Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, speaking on state media on Saturday, affirmed that Maduro is Venezuela’s “only president” and demanded his immediate release.
When asked to clarify if this meant the U.S. military would have a presence in Venezuela, Mr. Trump said there would be a military presence “because of oil.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the overnight operation a “massive joint military and law enforcement raid that was flawlessly executed.”
Mr. Trump had said Maduro and his wife were flown out of Venezuela after the U.S. carried out a “large scale strike.” Calling into “Fox and Friends” on Saturday morning, he said Maduro had been “in a very highly guarded, like a fortress actually.”
The president also confirmed that Maduro was being taken to New York, after Attorney General Pam Bondi said earlier in the day that Maduro had been indicted in the Southern District of New York on narco-terrorism charges. Bondi said Maduro and his wife “will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”
“They’ll be heading to New York,” Mr. Trump said. “They were indicted in New York.”
Shortly before addressing reporters at Mar-a-Lago late Saturday morning, Mr. Trump shared a photo he said was of Maduro on board the USS Iowa Jima.
In an indictment filed against the Venezuelan leader in 2020, federal prosecutors alleged that Maduro and other senior Venezuelan government officials collaborated with the Colombian guerrilla group Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC, to traffic cocaine and weapons to the United States. Later Saturday morning, Bondi shared a superseding indictment.
The indictment, prepared by U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, accuses Maduro of conspiracy to commit narcoterrorism and to import cocaine, and of possessing and conspiring to possess “Machineguns and Destructive Devices.” The charges appear to be the same as a 2020 indictment of Maduro and several key aides.
Mr. Trump said Maduro was in a house when he was captured, saying it was “more like a fortress than a house.”
“It had steel doors, it had, what they call a safety space where it’s, you know, solid steel all around,” he said. “He didn’t get that space closed. He was trying to get into it but he got bum-rushed so fast that he didn’t get into that. We were prepared, we had, you know, massive blow torches and everything else that you need to get through that steel, but we didn’t need it. He didn’t make it to that area of the house.”
Mr. Trump praised the operation in Venezuela, saying he thinks no U.S. troops were killed.
“You know that we had nobody killed was amazing,” he said. “I think we had nobody killed, I have to say, because a couple of guys were hit, but they came back and they’re supposed to be in pretty good shape.”
The president said the U.S. was prepared to carry out the Venezuela operation days ago, but waited for the weather conditions to improve.
“We were going to do this four days ago but the weather was not perfect,” Mr. Trump said. “And then all of a sudden it opened up and we said go.”
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The operation to remove Maduro came precisely thirty-six years after President George H. W. Bush sent the U.S. military to invade Panama and depose General Manuel Noriega. A former American proxy, Noriega had begun criticizing the United States in rallies and machete-waving speeches; he was taken into custody and, like Maduro, accused of drug trafficking. When I met Noriega in prison, in 2015, two years before his death, he largely insisted on his innocence but expressed regret at having taken on the Americans. If he had the chance to do things over, he said, he wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
Trump insisted in Saturday’s press conference that, by deposing Maduro, he had removed the “kingpin of a vast criminal network” that trafficked huge amounts of cocaine into the U.S. Ironically, just weeks before, he had extended a full pardon to the former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who in 2024 was convicted in the Southern District of New York of cocaine trafficking and sentenced to forty-five years in prison. Trump’s reasoning was that, like him, Hernández had been “treated very harshly and unfairly” by political opponents.
When I met with Maduro in 2017, he spoke bluffly about the limits of the effort to remove him from office. “They want me out, but, if I leave this chair, whom shall we put in it?” he said. “Who can be the President?” Many Venezuelans support Edmundo González and María Corina Machado, the apparent winners of the Presidential election that Maduro stole in 2024. González was the Presidential candidate, but the real power is Machado, a conservative Catholic from a wealthy family who built a following as an ardent critic of the Maduro regime. Both have been in hiding, though Machado appeared in Oslo last month to collect the Nobel Peace Prize. Cannily, she dedicated the award “to the suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump.”
In the press conference, Trump called Machado “a very nice woman” but said that she doesn’t have the “respect within the country” to lead. Instead, he said, the U.S. would “run” Venezuela in the immediate term, as part of a “group” that also apparently included U.S. oil companies. They will have to contend with Maduro’s senior officials, who remain largely in place. They include the hard-line military chief General Vladimir Padrino López; Diosdado Cabello, the equally hard-line interior minister; and Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez, a tough-minded operator. All have denounced Maduro’s abduction. Padrino, in a press conference of his own, condemned “the most criminal military aggression” and declared the activation of a national-defense plan, including widespread mobilization of Venezuelan forces on land, sea, and air. Reportedly, in response, Trump said that the U.S. was prepared to mount a second military intervention. Yet many questions remain unanswered. Why take out Maduro and leave his supporters in place? Can his loyalists still carry the timeworn Bolivarian revolution forward? Will Trump offer Maduro refuge in another country—perhaps Turkey—in exchange for his asking his comrades in Caracas to stand down? Or will the remaining officials find a way to hold on to power? (In the press conference, Trump praised Delcy Rodríguez, saying that she had been exceptionally coöperative.)
It remains to be seen how Venezuelans, both in government and in the street, will respond to the increased presence of U.S. power in their country. Twenty-four years ago, I spoke with Hugo Chávez in Fuerte Tiuna, a military headquarters in Caracas that was bombed in last night’s raid. He told me that he would never let the Americans take him alive, to parade him around like a trophy. Chávez, who died of cancer in 2013, avoided such a humiliation. Maduro did not have the insight, or the instincts, to forge a different destiny for himself. ♦
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Washington — After months of preparation that included building a replica of Nicolás Maduro’s compound and studying his daily habits, U.S. forces arrived at the Venezuelan president’s residence in downtown Caracas just after 2 a.m. local time Saturday.
President Trump and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, detailed the stunning operation that ended with Maduro’s capture to bring him to the U.S. to face narcoterrorism charges.
Mr. Trump gave final approval of the mission Friday at 10:46 p.m. ET, telling military leaders, “Good luck and godspeed,” Caine told reporters Saturday afternoon during a news conference at the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Throughout the night, aircraft launched from 20 bases across the Western Hemisphere toward Venezuela. Caine said the mission, named Operation Absolute Resolve, involved more than 150 aircraft.
“As the night began, the helicopters took off with the extraction force, which included law enforcement officers, and began their flight into Venezuela at 100 feet above the water,” Caine said.
As the helicopters approached shore, they were protected by other aircraft, including drones, bombers and fighter jets. The U.S. dismantled and disabled Venezuela’s air defense systems as the helicopters neared Caracas, according to Caine, who also said they deployed weapons “to ensure the safe passage of the helicopters into the target area.”
Mr. Trump said the lights in Caracas had largely gone dark “due to a certain experience that we have.”
“As the force crossed the last point of high terrain where they’d been hiding in the clutter, we assessed that we had maintained totally the element of surprise,” Caine said.
Once at the compound, the helicopters came under fire but remained operable, Caine said.
“It was a lot of gunfire,” Mr. Trump said.
U.S. forces and the FBI eventually entered the compound, where Maduro and his wife “gave up” and were taken into custody, Caine said.
Mr. Trump said that Maduro tried to escape during his capture.
“He was trying to get into a safe place,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “The safe place is all steel, and he wasn’t able to make it to the door because our guys were so fast.”
“It was a very thick door, a very heavy door,” Mr. Trump said. “He made it to the door. He was unable to close it.”
But even if Maduro had made it to the safe room, Mr. Trump said the military forces could have blown up the door in about “47 seconds.”
After Maduro and his wife were apprehended, the helicopters swooped back in to exfiltrate them. Fighter aircraft and drones also provided protection during their journey out of the country. Caine said there were “multiple self-defense engagements” during the withdrawal.
“The force successfully exfiltrated and returned to their afloat launch bases, and the force was over the water at 3:29 a.m. Eastern Standard Time with indicted persons onboard,” Caine said.
The U.S. began planning the operation months ago, with U.S. intelligence agencies working to “find Maduro and understand how he moved, where he lived, where he traveled, what he ate, what he wore, what were his pets,” Caine said.
The operation had been ready to go since early December, but the U.S. was waiting for the right time to minimize civilian harm and maximize the surprise, Caine said, adding that it was also weather-dependent.
“Last night, the weather broke just enough, clearing a path that only the most skilled aviators in the world could maneuver through — ocean, mountain, low clouds, ceilings,” Caine said.
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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Saturday accused Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of sending violent gangs — including the Trende Aragua (TdA) prison gang — to terrorize U.S. communities, specifically naming Colorado.
Maduro was captured by the United States during a “large-scale strike” early Saturday in Venezuela. The president stated that Maduro and his wife were flown to the US to stand trial.
During Saturday’s speech, the president claimed that members of TdA took over apartment complexes, likely referring to a series of kidnappings and home invasions in 2024 at the Edge of Lowry apartments in Aurora, which was shut down last year by the city after it was deemed a “criminal nuisance.”
“Maduro sent savage and murderous gangs, including the bloodthirsty prison gang Trende Aragua, to terrorize American communities nationwide, and he did, indeed. They were in Colorado,” President Trump said.
Sixteen Venezuelan nationals, all suspected members of TdA, were taken into custody at the Edge of Lowry apartments in 2024 shortly after a viral video showing armed men entering one of the units in the complex.
The president and other Republicans claimed that TdA’s presence in Aurora was a result of Denver’s lax policies toward thousands of South American migrants who began arriving in Denver by bus earlier that year.
In response to such criticism, during a Congressional hearing last year, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston defended Denver’s policies.
“Denver made a choice as a city — not to hate each other, but to help each other,” Johnston said. “It wasn’t perfect, and it required sacrifice from all of us, but in the end, Denver came out stronger and closer than we were before.”
These issues are not new; President Trump has attacked Aurora and Colorado multiple times in the past.
During his campaign, President Trump used Aurora as an example of bad immigration policies, saying the city was taken over by illegal immigration and gangs.
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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump had long threatened that he could order military strikes on targets on Venezuelan territory after months of attacks on boats accused of carrying drugs from the South American country. President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela said the U.S. military operations were a thinly veiled effort to oust him from power.
On Saturday, the U.S. conducted a “large-scale strike” against Venezuela. Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were taken from their home on a military base and were aboard a U.S. warship on their way to New York, where they were to face criminal charges. An indictment accused them of a role in narco-terrorism conspiracy.
The Venezuelan government called it an “imperialist attack” and urged citizens to take to the streets.
Before the escalation, there had been 35 known strikes against alleged drug smuggling boats in South American waters since early September that killed at least 115 people, according to announcements from the Republican administration.
The U.S. had sent a fleet of warships to the region, the largest buildup of forces in generations.
The White House said Washington was in “armed conflict” with drug cartels to halt the flow of narcotics into the United States, while U.S. officials alleged that Maduro supported the international drug trade.
Here is a timeline of the U.S. military actions and related developments:
Trump signs an executive order that paved the way for criminal organizations and drug cartels to be named “foreign terrorist organizations.” They included Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan street gang.
U.S. intelligence agencies have disputed Trump’s central claim that Maduro’s administration was working with Tren de Aragua and orchestrating drug trafficking and illegal immigration into the U.S.
The Trump administration formally designated eight Latin American crime organizations as foreign terrorist organizations.
The label is normally reserved for groups such as a-Qaida or the Islamic State that use violence for political ends, and not for profit-focused crime rings.
The U.S. military deployed three guided-missile destroyers to the waters off Venezuela.
The naval force in the Caribbean grew within weeks to include three amphibious assault ships and other vessels, carrying about 6,000 sailors and Marines and a variety of aircraft.
The U.S. sent F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico in September, while a Navy submarine carrying cruise missiles operated off South America.
The U.S. carried out its first strike against what Trump said was a drug-carrying vessel that departed from Venezuela and was operated by Tren de Aragua.
Trump said all 11 people on the boat were killed. He posted a short video clip of a small vessel appearing to explode in flames.
In a letter to the White House, Democratic senators said the administration had provided “no legitimate legal justification” for the strike.
Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the U.S. military was not “empowered to hunt down suspected criminals and kill them without trial.”
The U.S. military carried out its second strike against an alleged drug boat, killing three people.
Asked what proof the U.S. had that the vessel was carrying drugs, Trump told reporters that big bags of cocaine and fentanyl were spattered all over the ocean. Images of what Trump described were not released by the military or the White House.
Trump said the U.S. military carried out its third fatal strike against an alleged drug-smuggling vessel. Several senators and human rights groups continued to question the legality of the strikes, describing them as a potential overreach of executive authority.
Trump declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants and said the U.S. was now in an “armed conflict” with them, according to an administration memo obtained by The Associated Press.
The memo appeared to represent an extraordinary assertion of presidential war powers and drew criticism from some lawmakers, including Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he ordered a fourth strike on a small boat he accused of carrying drugs.
Senate Republicans voted down legislation that would have required the president to seek authorization from Congress before further military strikes.
Trump announced the fifth strike against a small boat accused of carrying drugs, saying it killed six people.
Trump confirmed he has authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela and said he was weighing carrying out land operations in the country.
He declined to say whether the CIA has authority to take action against Maduro.
The Navy admiral who oversaw military operations in the region said he will retire in December.
Adm. Alvin Holsey became leader of U.S. Southern Command only the previous November, overseeing an area that encompasses the Caribbean and waters off South America. Such postings typically last three years to four years.
Trump said the U.S. struck a sixth suspected drug-carrying vessel in the Caribbean, killing two people and leaving two survivors who were on the semisubmersible craft.
The president later said the survivors would be sent to Ecuador and Colombia, their home countries, “for detention and prosecution.” Repatriation avoided questions about what their legal status would have been in the U.S. justice system.
The U.S. military attacked a seventh vessel that Hegseth said was carrying “substantial amounts of narcotics” and associated with a Colombian rebel group, the National Liberation Army, or ELN. Three people are killed.
Washington Rep. Adam Smith, top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, called for a hearing on the boat strikes.
“Never before in my over 20 years on the committee can I recall seeing a combatant commander leave their post this early and amid such turmoil,” Smith said in a statement of Holsey’s impending departure. “I have also never seen such a staggering lack of transparency on behalf of an Administration and the Department to meaningfully inform Congress on the use of lethal military force.”
Hegseth said the U.S. military launched its eighth strike against an alleged drug-carrying vessel, killing two people in the eastern Pacific.
The attack was an expansion of the military’s targeting area to the waters off South America where much of the cocaine from the world’s largest producers is smuggled.
Hegseth announced the ninth strike, another in the eastern Pacific, saying three men are killed.
Hegseth ordered the U.S. military’s most advanced aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, to the region in a significant escalation of military firepower.
Hegseth said the military conducted the 10th strike on a suspected drug-running boat, leaving six people dead.
Hegseth said three more strikes were carried out in the eastern Pacific, killing 14 people and leaving one survivor.
Hegseth said Mexican authorities “assumed responsibility for coordinating the rescue” of the sole survivor, who was presumed dead after Mexico suspended its search.
Hegseth said the U.S. military carried out another strike on a boat he said was carrying drugs in the eastern Pacific, killing all four people aboard in the 14th attack.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the administration briefed Republicans, but not Democrats, on the boat strikes.
The Senate at the time was facing a potential vote on a war powers resolution that would have prohibited strikes in or near Venezuela without congressional approval.
U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk called for an investigation into the strikes, in what appeared to be the first such condemnation of its kind from a U.N. organization.
Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for Türk’s office, relayed his message at a briefing: “The U.S. must halt such attacks and take all measures necessary to prevent the extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats.”
Hegseth announced the 15th known strike, saying three people were killed.
In the 16th known strike, Hegseth posted on social media that two people were killed aboard a vessel in the eastern Pacific.
Hegseth announced the 17th known strike, which killed three people.
Senate Republicans voted to reject legislation that would have limited Trump’s ability to order an attack on Venezuelan soil without congressional authorization. Lawmakers from both parties had demanded more information on the strikes, but Republicans appeared more willing to give Trump leeway to continue his buildup of naval forces.
The U.S. military struck two vessels in the eastern Pacific, killing six people, according to an announcement from Hegseth the following day.
The 20th known strike on a boat accused of transporting drugs killed four people in the Caribbean, according to a social media post from the U.S. military’s Southern Command.
Venezuela’s government launched what it said was a “massive” mobilization of troops and volunteers for two days of exercises prompted by the U.S. military buildup.
Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López asserted that Venezuela’s military was “stronger than ever in its unity, morale and equipment.”
Three people were killed after the U.S. military conducted its 21st strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the eastern Pacific, according to a post from Southern Command a day later.
The Ford arrived in the Caribbean, a major moment in the Trump administration’s show of force.
The aircraft carrier’s arrival brought the total number of troops in the region to around 12,000 on nearly a dozen Navy ships in what Hegseth said was “Operation Southern Spear.”
Trump said the U.S. ” may be having some discussions ” with Maduro and “Venezuela would like to talk,” without offering details.
“I’ll talk to anybody,” Trump said. “We’ll see what happens.”
Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley appeared for closed-door classified briefings at the Capitol as lawmakers began investigating the strikes. The investigation started after reports that Bradley ordered a follow-on attack that killed the survivors of the first strike on Sept. 2 to comply with Hegseth’s demands.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., later told reporters that “Bradley was very clear that he was given no such order, to give no quarter or to kill them all.”
Democrats said they found the video of the entire attack disturbing.
Smith said the survivors were “basically two shirtless people clinging to the bow of a capsized and inoperable boat, drifting in the water – until the missiles come and kill them.”
Four people were killed in the 22nd strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the eastern Pacific, according to a post from Southern Command.
The U.S. seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela after the ship left that country with about 2 million barrels of heavy crude.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the tanker was involved in “an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations.” Venezuela’s government said the seizure was “a blatant theft and an act of international piracy.”
The U.S. military struck three alleged drug-smuggling boats, killing eight people, in the eastern Pacific Ocean, Southern Command announced.
Hegseth said the Pentagon will not publicly release unedited video of the Sept. 2 strike that killed two survivors, even as questions mounted in Congress about the attack and the overall campaign near Venezuela.
Trump said he was ordering a blockade of all “sanctioned oil tankers” going into and out of Venezuela, a move that seemed designed to put a tighter chokehold on the South American country’s oil-dependent economy.
Trump alleged that Venezuela was using oil to fund drug trafficking, terrorism and other crimes. He pledged to continue the military buildup until Venezuela returned to the U.S. oil, land and assets, though it was unclear why Trump felt the U.S. had a claim.
The U.S. military said it attacked a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing four people.
House Republicans rejected a pair of Democratic-backed resolutions that would have put a check on Trump’s power to use military force against drug cartels and Venezuela. They were the first votes in the House after Senate Republicans previously voted down similar war powers resolutions.
The U.S. military said it conducted two more strikes against boats that were allegedly smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific, killing five people.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the U.S. Coast Guard, with help from the Defense Department, stopped a second oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.
Trump confirmed that the U.S. Coast Guard was chasing another oil tanker that the administration described as part of the “dark fleet.”
The U.S. military said it attacked a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing four people.
Trump told reporters that the U.S. struck a facility where boats accused of carrying drugs “load up.” He declined to say whether the U.S. military or the CIA carried out the strike on the dock or where it occurred. He did not confirm it happened in Venezuela.
The U.S. military said it attacked a boat accused of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two people.
The CIA was behind the drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels, according to two people familiar with details of the classified operation who requested anonymity to discuss it.
It was the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. began strikes in September. Venezuelan officials have not acknowledged the strike.
The U.S. military struck three more boats that were allegedly smuggling drugs, killing three people in the first boat while people from the other two boats jumped overboard and may have survived, Southern Command announced the following day.
The U.S. imposed sanctions on four companies operating in Venezuela’s oil sector and designated four additional oil tankers as blocked property and part of the larger shadow fleet that was evading U.S. sanctions on Venezuela.
The U.S. military said it attacked two more boats, killing five people who were allegedly smuggling drugs along known trafficking routes.
Maduro, in an interview on state television that aired on New Year’s Day, said Venezuela was open to negotiating an agreement with the United States to combat drug trafficking. He declined to comment on the CIA-led strike and reiterated that the U.S. wanted to force a government change in Venezuela and gain access to its vast oil reserves.
The U.S. conducted a “large-scale strike” across Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, captured Maduro and Flores and flew them out of the country. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Maduro and Flores had been indicted in the Southern District of New York. Maduro was accused of leading a “a corrupt, illegitimate government that, for decades, has leveraged government power to protect and promote illegal activity, including drug trafficking.”
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Garcia Cano reported from Caracas, Venezuela.
Copyright © 2026 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
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(CNN) — President Donald Trump on Saturday said the US would take control of Venezuela’s massive oil reserves and recruit American companies to invest billions of dollars to refurbish the country’s gutted oil industry.
Venezuela is sitting on a massive 303 billion barrels worth of crude — about a fifth of the world’s global reserves, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). That trove of crude will play a central role in the country’s future.
Oil futures don’t trade on the weekend, so the near-term impact on the price of oil is a bit of a guessing game, but Trump said the US would operate the Venezuelan government for the time being.
“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies — the biggest anywhere in the world — go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure,” Trump said at a news conference at Mar-a-Lago.
A US-led revamp could eventually make Venezuela a much bigger supplier of oil and could create opportunities for Western oil companies and could serve as a new source of production. It could also keep broader prices in check, although lower prices might disincentivize some US companies from producing oil.
Even if international access were fully restored tomorrow, it could take years and incredible expense to bring Venezuelan oil production fully back online. Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company PDVSA says its pipelines haven’t been updated in 50 years, and the cost to update the infrastructure to return to peak production levels would cost $58 billion.
“For oil, this has the potential for a historic event,” said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at the Price Futures Group. “The Maduro regime and (former Venezuelan President) Hugo Chavez basically ransacked the Venezuelan oil industry.”
Venezuela is home to the largest proven oil reserve on Earth, but its potential far outweighs its actual output: Venezuela produces only about 1 million barrels of oil per day — about 0.8% of global crude production.
That’s less than half of what it produced before Maduro took control of the country in 2013 and less than a third of the 3.5 million barrels it was pumping before the Socialist regime took over.
International sanctions on the Venezuelan government and a deep economic crisis contributed to the decline of the country’s oil industry — but so did a lack of investment and maintenance, according to the EIA. Venezuela’s energy infrastructure is deteriorating, and its capacity to produce oil has been greatly diminished over the years.
Venezuela simply doesn’t produce enough oil to make that big a difference.
Oil prices have been in check this year because of oversupply fears. OPEC has ramped up production, but demand has fallen off a bit as the global economy continues to struggle with inflation and affordability after the post-pandemic price shock.
US oil briefly rose above $60 a barrel when the Trump administration began seizing oil from Venezuelan vessels, but it has since fallen to $57 a barrel again. So the market’s reaction — if investors believe the strike is bad news for oil supply — will almost certainly be muted.
“Psychologically it might give it a bit of a boost, but Venezuela has oil that can be easily replaced by a combination of global producers,” Flynn said.
The kind of oil Venezuela is sitting on — heavy, sour crude — requires special equipment and a high level of technical prowess to produce. International oil companies have the capability to extract and refine it, but they’ve been restricted from doing business in the country.
The United States, the world’s largest oil producer, has light, sweet crude, which is good for making gasoline but not much else. Heavy, sour crude like the oil from Venezuela is crucial for certain products made in the refining process, including diesel, asphalt and fuels for factories and other heavy equipment. Diesel is in tight supply around the world — in large part because of sanctions on Venezuelan oil.
Unlocking Venezuelan oil could be particularly beneficial to the United States: Venezuela is nearby and its oil is relatively cheap — a result of its sticky, sludgy texture that requires significant refining. Most US refineries were constructed to process Venezuela’s heavy oil, and they’re significantly more efficient when they’re using Venezuelan oil compared to American oil, according to Flynn.
“If indeed this continues to go smoothly — and it looks like a masterful operation so far — and US companies are allowed to go back and rebuild the Venezuelan oil industry, it could be a game-changer for the global oil market,” Flynn said.
Trump called Venezuela’s oil business “a total bust.”
“They were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been pumping and what could have taken place,” Trump said.
“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies — the biggest anywhere in the world — go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” he added.
It is unclear how energy prices will be impacted by the US intervention in Venezuela.
Bob McNally, president of Washington, DC-based consulting firm Rapidan Energy Group, told CNN that he thinks the impact on prices would be “modest,” but he doesn’t expect much of an impact “unless we see signs of widespread social unrest and things look messy. More likely if this looks ‘stable.’”
“The prospect is then how quickly could a Venezuela that is pro-US increase its production. That will be the parlor game. Perception may race ahead of reality. People will assume Venezuela can add oil faster than they actually can,” he said.
“Venezuela can be a huge deal but not for 5 to 10 years,” McNally said.
Oil markets open on Sunday night. Prices will depend on whether Trump “can manifest the turnaround” of Venezuela’s oil sector, according to Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets.
“It all hinges on whether Venezuela defies the recent history of US-led regime change efforts,” Croft told CNN. “President Trump signaled the US is back in ‘nation-building mode,’ and that US companies will make the requisite investments to ensure the revival of the oil sector. I think we need far more details before we declare ‘Mission Accomplished.’”
CNN’s Matt Egan contributed to this report.
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Above: Venezuelans in Florida react to U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.In the overnight hours on January 2 into January 3, 2026, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was captured in a strike by U.S. forces in the South American country.The capture of the foreign leader comes after months of escalation from President Donald Trump against the nation, including more than a dozen strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats and a blockade on all “sanctioned oil tankers” going into and out of the country.U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, would face charges after an indictment in New York. Maduro was also indicted on “narco-terrorism” charges in 2020.In October, Trump said the U.S. was in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels after several strikes on boats in the Caribbean.Floridian lawmakers reacted to the overnight strikes in Venezuela and the capture of Maduro.U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-25), co-chair of the Congressional Venezuela Democracy Caucus, released a statement on President Maduro’s capture: “The capture of the brutal, illegitimate ruler of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, who oppressed Venezuela’s people is welcome news for my friends and neighbors who fled his violent, lawless, and disastrous rule. However, cutting off the head of a snake is fruitless if it just regrows. Venezuelans deserve the promise of democracy and the rule of law, not a state of endless violence and spiraling disorder. My hope is it offers a passage to true democracy and liberation. This action offers beleaguered Venezuelans a chance to seat their true, democratically elected president, Edmundo González. I’ll demand answers as to why Congress and the American people were bypassed in this effort. The absence of congressional involvement prior to this action risks the continuation of the illegitimate Venezuelan regime.”Bondi shared the below indictment of Maduro and other Venezuelan officials on social media.
Above: Venezuelans in Florida react to U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
In the overnight hours on January 2 into January 3, 2026, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was captured in a strike by U.S. forces in the South American country.
The capture of the foreign leader comes after months of escalation from President Donald Trump against the nation, including more than a dozen strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats and a blockade on all “sanctioned oil tankers” going into and out of the country.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, would face charges after an indictment in New York. Maduro was also indicted on “narco-terrorism” charges in 2020.
In October, Trump said the U.S. was in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels after several strikes on boats in the Caribbean.
Floridian lawmakers reacted to the overnight strikes in Venezuela and the capture of Maduro.
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You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
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You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
This content is imported from Twitter.
You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-25), co-chair of the Congressional Venezuela Democracy Caucus, released a statement on President Maduro’s capture: “The capture of the brutal, illegitimate ruler of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, who oppressed Venezuela’s people is welcome news for my friends and neighbors who fled his violent, lawless, and disastrous rule. However, cutting off the head of a snake is fruitless if it just regrows. Venezuelans deserve the promise of democracy and the rule of law, not a state of endless violence and spiraling disorder. My hope is it offers a passage to true democracy and liberation. This action offers beleaguered Venezuelans a chance to seat their true, democratically elected president, Edmundo González. I’ll demand answers as to why Congress and the American people were bypassed in this effort. The absence of congressional involvement prior to this action risks the continuation of the illegitimate Venezuelan regime.”
Bondi shared the below indictment of Maduro and other Venezuelan officials on social media.
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María Corina Machado released a letter addressing the Venezuelan people after leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife were captured in a U.S. operation overnight Saturday.
Machado, an opposition leader who has mostly been in hiding over the last year, said Maduro will “face international justice for the atrocious crimes committed against Venezuelans and against citizens of many other nations.”
“The time for freedom has come!” Machado, who was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, wrote in the letter posted on X.
It was not clear on Saturday if Machado, who escaped to Norway in a secret mission last month, was in Venezuela. She told CBS News in mid-December that she was “absolutely” supportive of President Trump’s increasing military pressure on the Maduro regime and said she would welcome “more and more pressure so that Maduro understands that he has to go.”
Read the full text of her letter, translated by CBS News, below.
Venezuelans, The time for freedom has come!
Nicolás Maduro from today will face international justice for the atrocious crimes committed against Venezuelans and against citizens of many other nations. Given his refusal to accept a negotiated solution, the United States government has fulfilled its promise to enforce the law.
The time has come for popular sovereignty and national sovereignty to prevail in our country. We are going to restore order, release the political prisoners, build an exceptional country, and bring our children back home.
We have fought for years, we have given it our all, and it has been worth it. What was meant to happen is happening.
This is the hour of the citizens. Those of us who risked everything for democracy on June 28th. Those of us who elected Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia as the legitimate President of Venezuela, who must immediately assume his constitutional mandate and be recognized as Commander-in-Chief of the National Armed Forces by all the officers and soldiers who comprise it.
Today we are ready to assert our mandate and take power. Let us remain vigilant, active, and organized until the democratic transition is complete. A transition that needs ALL of us.
To the Venezuelans who are currently in our country, be ready to put into action what we will be communicating to you very soon through our official channels.
To Venezuelans abroad, we need you to be mobilized, engaging the governments and citizens of the world and committing them from now on to the great operation of building the new Venezuela.
In these crucial hours, receive all my strength, my confidence, and my affection. We remain vigilant and in contact.
VENEZUELA WILL BE FREE! We go hand in hand with God, until the end.
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