Ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro pled not guilty to drug trafficking charges in a federal district courthouse in Manhattan on January 5. It was the first appearance in court for Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, two days after a shocking United States military operation extracted the pair from their home in Caracas. Maduro stated in court that he had been “kidnapped.”
“I’m innocent,” he said when asked for his plea. “I’m not guilty. I am a decent man.”
The morning of January 3, shortly after the raid was carried out, US Attorney General Pam Bondi shared a federal indictment filed in the Southern District of New York. The now-unsealed document charges Maduro with one count each of “narco-terrorism conspiracy,” “cocaine importation conspiracy,” “possession of machineguns and destructive devices” and “conspiracy to possess machineguns and destructive devices.” Flores, Maduro’s son Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra and three others were also indicted on some or all of the same charges. Only Maduro and Flores appear to have been captured.
Both were transported to the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn ahead of the arraignment. They are expected to plead not guilty, and to be remanded back to the federal detention center while they await trial. They could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.
Court documents filed January 5 show that Maduro’s legal counsel is Barry Pollack, the attorney who recently secured Julian Assange’s release from prison. Flores is being represented by former federal prosecutor Mark E. Donnelly.
Maduro was previously indicted on drug-trafficking charges in 2020, also in the Southern District of New York.
At a January 3 press conference President Donald Trump described the extraction as “an assault like people have not seen since World War II,” before claiming that both Maduro and Flores had been indicted “for their campaign of deadly narco-terrorism against the United States.” Flores, however, has not been indicted for narco-terrorism; only the cocaine and weapons charges.
“As alleged in the indictment [Maduro] personally oversaw the vicious cartel known as Cartel de los Soles, which flooded our nation with lethal poison responsible for the deaths of countless Americans,” Trump continued; “many, many Americans—hundreds of thousands over the years—of Americans died because of him.”
Despite repeated mischaracterization by the Trump administration, there is no single organization known as Cartel de los Soles; the name is a catch-all referring to the loose network of trafficking cells in Venezuela.
The indictment does not mention the overdose crisis, nor any drug-related harms at all.
Bondi, in a statement posted to social media January 4, also described the alleged trafficking activity as having “contributed directly to the drug crisis claiming American lives.”
Yet the indictment does not mention the overdose crisis, nor any drug-related harms at all. Overdose deaths in the US are primarily attributed not to cocaine but to fentanyl, a separate trade that is is not meaningfully associated with Venezuela or any South American country. Venezuela is involved in transport of cocaine from Colombia and other countries that produce it, but no moreso than half a dozen other countries in Central and South America.
In December 2025, Trump pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez from a drug-trafficking conviction for which he was serving a 45-year sentence in a federal prison in West Virginia.
“We’ve knocked out 97 percent of the drugs coming in by sea,” Trump claimed, referring to the series of Caribbean and Pacific airstrikes his administration began carrying out in September 2025. “Each boat kills on average 25,000 people … and those drugs mostly come from a place called Venezuela.”
Trump stated that is “going to run” Venezuela until such time as a peaceful transition of power can take place, to leadership that the US has approved. He claimed that Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, who was sworn in as acting president following Maduro’s capture, had told Secretary of State Marco Rubio that she prepared to cooperate with the US. Rubio will apparently play a prominent role in overseeing government operations in Venezuela, along with “various people” including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
“President Donald Trump, our peoples and our region deserve peace and dialogue, not war,” Rodríguez subsequently posted to social media. “This has always been President Nicolás Maduro’s message, and it is the message of all of Venezuela right now … Venezuela has the right to peace, development, sovereignty and a future.”
Trump described an occupation that could potentially last for years, as “the money coming out of the ground is very substantial.” Plans to take over, revitalize and profit from Venezuela’s oil infrastructure dominated much of the press conference.
Image (cropped) via United States Department of State
