Here is the full transcript of journalist Max Blumenthal’s interview on Great Eurasia Podcast with host Glenn Diesen, on “Operation Absolute Resolve, the Kidnapping of Maduro, and the End of International Law”, January 9, 2026.
Brief Notes: In this investigative interview, award-winning journalist Max Blumenthal joins Glenn Diesen to unpack the shocking details of “Operation Absolute Resolve,” the January 2026 U.S. military kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. Blumenthal deconstructs the legal fallout, arguing that the subsequent trial in New York marks the “nail in the coffin” for international law and exposes a sophisticated “mafia operation” involving CIA-linked shell companies and coerced witnesses.
The discussion also explores the broader geopolitical stakes, framing the intervention as a raw “Monroe Doctrine” plunder designed to sever Venezuela’s ties with Russia and China while securing its vast oil reserves. From the “terrorist assault” on Caracas to the potential for a similar strike against Iran, this conversation offers a searing critique of the new era of American “gangsterism”.
The Assault on Caracas
GLENN DIESEN: Welcome back. We are very privileged today to be joined by Max Blumenthal, an award-winning journalist and editor of The Grayzone. Thank you for coming back on. We’re hoping you can shed some light on what is happening now with this U.S. push into Latin America.
As we know, Washington outlined a lot of reasons why they had to attack Venezuela. They moved in, they killed a lot of people, kidnapped the President and his wife. Now there’s a trial in New York. What is actually happening at the moment? It’s very difficult for outsiders to get a clear overview of this massive mess.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, it’s difficult for—and it’s hard to call myself an insider—but it’s difficult for me to get an understanding of just what the hell happened on January 3rd, which I happened to be up late enough to virtually observe. It was in many ways a terrorist assault on Caracas. It was the kidnapping of the head of state and his wife, who, according to Diosdado Cabello, one of the most important power brokers in the Chavista movement, demanded to go with her husband as he was being kidnapped.
In an address last night, Cabello said that Cilia Flores, First Lady of Venezuela, may have saved Maduro’s life in the process. Their presidential guard was mostly massacred. Thirty-two Cuban officers were killed. Many civilians were killed as well, but apparently no U.S. loss of life. No helicopters were taken down. They were flying at 100 feet.
Military Collapse or Betrayal?
My first initial reaction was either a stunning military collapse on the Venezuelan side for an invasion that they’d been preparing for since 2005—and the CIA had been preparing for this as well, so much so that they telegraphed their plan for a HALO, or high-altitude lowering operation, into Miraflores Palace in the Jack Ryan series and explained exactly what they intended to do, which is what the Delta Force did where Nicolás Maduro was staying. And it just proceeded almost unimpeded.
So I thought this is probably some kind of military collapse, or Maduro was betrayed. And I think the first explanation is probably true. I asked the former Foreign Minister of Venezuela, Jorge Arreaza, who is a confidant of the new acting president, Delcy Rodríguez—who I’ve interviewed in the past and who worked for Nicolás Maduro, knew him very well, and also knew Hugo Chávez, the intellectual architect of the Bolivarian Revolution, so closely that he had married his daughter and was essentially a family spokesman.
So a pretty well-placed person who fervently denied the idea that there had been some kind of betrayal or inside deal to sell out Maduro. And I think, at least based on everyone he knows, I take him at his word on that. There’s no evidence of any such thing, at least at a high level, or that it would have been possible to order some kind of military stand down from within the leadership of Venezuela without being exposed. And knowing those people, I just couldn’t see that happening.
There is deal-making, which we’ll talk about in a second—backroom deal-making with the U.S.—but that was always taking place under Maduro. Arreaza openly admitted that their communication systems had been taken out. The U.S. bombed the two major bases that would have allowed Venezuela to respond instantly and bombed communication towers. They still have drones operating in Venezuelan airspace.
And from that point on, there was no point in responding. I think a question is, was there an order not to scramble the Sukhoi jets in a counterattack? Because by that point you would just be escalating the casualty count by engaging directly with the Americans. So it was just a staggering failure of intelligence, counterintelligence, and military capability which allowed this to take place.
The Resilience of the Chavista Movement
At the same time, you have the evidence of a kind of long-term success of the Chavista movement and of this government, which has faced so much pressure, including violent pressure, assassination attempts, street riots, and years of crushing sanctions. The success being that regime change has not occurred. There is no regime change.
And you have a Chavista stalwart in Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, who is committed to the vision of national sovereignty, who is president right now, who’s also committed to returning Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores to Venezuela. You have Diosdado Cabello, who has been in the streets and is addressing the nation, who has the confidence of the military. The military structure is still in place. The Defense Minister, Vladimir Padrino López, was not assassinated as was said early on. The colectivos, or the militant Chavistas, are in the streets.
And so if Trump has to deal with anyone, he has to deal with this movement because they control the institutions.
The Political Prisoner Deal
The evidence of the deal—leaving aside all of Trump’s statements, which we can talk about later—I’ve been saying that it’s better to let actions speak louder than words when we look at any deal-making.
And the Venezuelan government has today announced that it’s releasing “political prisoners.”
When you think about political prisoners, these are often people who plotted violent riots, who carried out violence, who plotted coups, who were essentially members of a U.S.-backed opposition that the U.S. would never tolerate in its own territory. Because the U.S. would never tolerate people who are funded and trained by foreign countries, especially countries more powerful than its own, to conduct subversive and insurrectionist activities on their own soil. But that’s what Venezuela is mostly dealing with when it’s dealing with political prisoners.
And there may have been some people there who got a bad rap and who were unfairly treated, but I don’t have the names. And you know who else didn’t have the names until very recently? The United States government.
And we know this because Trump’s envoy to Venezuela, Rick Grenell, who was in Caracas a year ago negotiating directly with Nicolás Maduro for a deal which would have extended Chevron’s drilling license in exchange for Venezuela accepting deportees—Venezuelan migrants from the U.S.—Rick Grenell has come out and said that it was the radical U.S.-backed opposition led by María Corina Machado which failed to provide the names of the “political prisoners.”
Obstruction by the Opposition
It sought to make a deal impossible because they did not actually want a deal and they didn’t want to allow the Trump administration to negotiate directly with Maduro. Their whole game was to delegitimize Maduro, not allow Venezuela to make a deal that would even let their own people out from prison, let them out from the supposed torture centers.
So if they were being tortured so horribly and treated so badly, why wouldn’t you immediately treat this like an emergency and get them out? It’s because you are a cynical sociopath. And Marco Rubio was part of that process of obstructing a deal at that time.
The El Salvador Torture Episode
Which is why Marco Rubio did something even more sadistic, which is, instead of directing a Venezuelan plane—a plane of Venezuelan migrants to be deported—directly to Caracas, he sent the plane without any negotiations completed to El Salvador to his buddy, the local comprador strongman, self-described “world’s coolest dictator,” Nayib Bukele. This is last March 2025, right when Trump had come into power for the second time.
And they were sent to the CECOT, an actual torture prison. And they were publicly humiliated coming out of the plane, portrayed as terrorists when less than 50% of them had ever been convicted of any crime and only three of them out of 250 had ever been convicted of a violent crime. They had their heads shaved on camera, they were beaten and pushed around on camera. Then they went into the prison with MS-13 members where guards brutalized them.
And when they came out, some of them testified to 60 Minutes about what took place—our supposedly premier investigative broadcast magazine show. And Trump lackey or Trump toady Bari Weiss spiked the broadcast because it was so embarrassing to Rubio and Trump adviser Stephen Miller.
But why did Rubio do that? Why did he have these Venezuelan migrants tortured by his boy Bukele? Because he couldn’t allow them to go back to Venezuela, because once again, that would allow direct negotiations. And so now that Maduro—that’s one reason. And it would also allow Venezuela to have revenue through the extension of Chevron’s drilling license.
And there’s more to it. I just don’t want to go too far down the rabbit hole that really exposes how sick this administration is.
The Invasion Plan
But Grenell was sidelined, and by doing so, for months, they prepared this operation, which starts with mass deportations, labeling all the Venezuelan migrants as enemies of the United States who are connected to a gang, Tren de Aragua, which actually had no connection to Maduro, but supposedly was part of a foreign invasion. And that paves the way for them to begin to prepare an invasion of Venezuela.
January 3rd, they kidnapped Maduro, removed the head of state, and now they suddenly have a deal where these “political prisoners” come out. And I think that’s part of a larger deal.
The Oil Deal and Offshore Accounts
Trump has said that the larger deal includes Venezuela agreeing to sell 30 to 50 million barrels of oil to the U.S. The U.S. buys it straight from Venezuela, and then the state gets the revenue on the condition that they use it to buy American products, which will supposedly boost the U.S. economy. Trump has done this before, but there’s another crazy, I would say disturbing, aspect to that part of the deal.
And I don’t know if that part of the deal has actually been authorized by Caracas, and that’s that the money will not be held in the U.S. Treasury, which is supposedly accountable to the U.S. public. It’s going to be held in offshore accounts, which means Trump Incorporated could plunder the money. The CIA could use it for black operations. It would just basically become a Trump world slush fund that would exist outside the control of any ostensibly democratic institution.
Trump’s Golden Age of Plunder
And so they’re clearly up to something very devious and very revealing about what Trump wants in Venezuela and what this is all about. And at its base, for Trump and his cronies, it’s just about plunder. It’s just about money. That’s what Trump’s “golden age” is all about.
Trump’s golden age is just about maximizing the profits off the carcasses of global capitalism for Trump and his inner circle of militant Zionist one-percenters and imposing a regime of terror across the Americas to pulverize any force that might get in the way, from Minneapolis to Caracas. We’re witnessing it all play out right now.
And Venezuela, while they still are asserting their sovereignty, the Chavista movement and the Bolivarian government, because of the military collapse they experienced on January 3rd, because of the overwhelming preponderance of force that the U.S. has in its hemisphere and its capacity for perpetual kinetic action against any target, they do have to make a deal here. But Maduro was always open to that deal. Maduro would have made the deal. For whatever reason, they just couldn’t allow it to be made with him.
The Scope of Trump’s Demands
GLENN DIESEN: It’s hard to see what all of this plunder has to do with narco-terrorism. I think they strayed a bit away from the plot. But in terms of the deal-making, it seems as if the deals would have to cover larger ground. Because Trump said, “We are now running Venezuela,” but this is a bit strange because he only kidnapped the president and killed some people. It’s unclear they’re not controlling the government.
But he then made this comment that Acting President Rodríguez could keep her position if she would do as she’s told. And of course you have this—he’s tweeting out about this oil deal. But unless they’re going to go in full strength, do something like Iraq, which doesn’t seem to be something Trump wants to do—I think he prefers the lower-hanging fruit, to get what he wants through threats and a bit of bombing.
But what kind of deal-making do you think he would be after? Because it seems like he wants to pressure the Venezuelan government to accept how to run the country. So in other words, they can run the country as long as it’s on his orders. But what he demands seems to be a bit too much. It’s not just some oil. He’s talking about cutting off Venezuela from China, Russia, other partners, essentially becoming the exclusive gas station of the United States.
But do you know—have you heard any of this kind of deal? What they’re trying to reach? Because if you listen to Trump, it sounds like they already conquered Venezuela.
The Geopolitical Stakes: Venezuela, Russia, China, and the Monroe Doctrine
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Well, I think in my last really extended answer, I said everything I knew about what is public and any aspect of negotiations between Caracas and Washington that are public have been disclosed. But there will certainly be more. And as you said, Trump’s demands of Caracas are onerous. And he is certainly asking too much.
His claim to own Venezuela’s oil is not just exaggerated, it’s false because there has not been a regime change. And he cannot tell Delsey Rodriguez to do whatever he wants because behind Delsey Rodriguez are the institutions of the state. And Trump has two options. He can negotiate with Delsey Rodriguez, who, like Nicolás Maduro, is a deal maker and does not want her country to be destroyed.
She’s a Venezuelan patriot who does not want to see Venezuela descend into the kind of decades-long civil crisis, civil war that Colombia did, or destabilization as we saw in Libya. Trump and Rubio do not have an exogenous enemy force to arm and weaponize against the Chavista movement inside Venezuela as they did with Mohammed Jolani, AKA Ahmed Al-Sharah in Syria, who operated behind the fake cover of “moderate rebels.”
Or like if you were a Trotskyist, you thought there were these democratic anarchists, local action people who are going to storm into Damascus, but they don’t have that in Venezuela. They tried the violent riots known as guarimbas—that failed. They tried Juan Guaidó and the “humanitarian intervention” with USAID—that failed. Everything they tried has failed until now. And they’ve gotten some leverage with this military raid. They killed a number of people, a lot of people. It was kind of an Israeli-style operation.
But if they continue to attack Caracas and continue to pulverize the country, it will be destabilized. And this is a point that Jorge Arreaza, the former foreign minister, made to me in our interview, which is that “with us in power, we guarantee stability, we keep the peace. So you have to deal with us.”
So Trump does not own Venezuela. Venezuela owns Venezuela. And since Hugo Chávez restructured the managerial structure, first of all of PDVSA, kicked out the opposition managers back in 2005 and then tried to push ExxonMobil to play by his rules, which meant make a win-win deal where Venezuela gets a portion of the revenue from the oil you pump from its own soil. Since then, Venezuela has that. That’s when Venezuela finally controlled Venezuela.
That’s really what the Bolivarian Revolution was about at its base. It is a nationalist revolution. You can see it as socialist because it took inspiration from Cuba in its symbols, in its concepts, in the comunas and cooperativos that they have established throughout the country and in some of the economic nationalization that especially occurred under Chávez. But it’s basically just a nationalist revolution to control their own resources.
And it makes Venezuela a strong country and a powerful player on the world stage by leading the vanguard of multipolarism. And I don’t see this government, knowing the people who control it, shedding that model or the basic Bolivarian ideology. And the card they can put on the table is “us or catastrophe,” and “we’re in your hemisphere.”
Not that I see them threatening the United States with migrants. It’s just a reality that if Venezuela is destabilized, there will be another massive wave of migration and the region will be destabilized. South America will be destabilized if there’s a civil war. We saw that take place in Colombia.
The Sidelining of María Corina Machado
And that’s why I think the Cuban Americans in the Trump administration, Marco Rubio being the kind of frontman for this cadre—but behind him is a fairly radical Cuban American who’s dedicated himself, his life mission is regime change in Havana. His name is Mauricio Claver-Carone. That’s why I think they sidelined María Corina Machado.
Because in order to bring María Corina Machado to power, and they’ve pretty much said this publicly, they would have had to have militarily occupied Venezuela with U.S. troops. They would have had to have destroyed the Venezuelan military, which is not a neo-colonial military trained in the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, like all the militaries of the comprador strongman countries across the region. They would have had to have killed lots and lots of people. That would have been bloodshed.
And they understood there’s a more elegant way of doing this. And so they kicked her to the curb. Many of the Democrats who had gotten behind her are furious. The human rights industrial complex is furious. They thought she was some kind of democratic hero. They’re mad that Trump did all this without caring about democracy or human rights.
The whole cover of the regime change lobby in Venezuela has been lifted. And we can see that it’s just about oil now. It’s just about resources. It’s just about raw Monroe Doctrine neocolonialism interpreted through the kind of cretinist Don Rowe doctrine model and power politics, great state power politics.
Messages to Russia and China
And so this is also, as you alluded, Glenn, a message to Russia and China. Trump is pushing Venezuela to roll back its ties with Russia and China. And Russia and China have already been challenged. Russia directly through Trump’s seizure of the Marinera, which was known as the Bela 1 tanker in the North Atlantic, in coordination with probably the front line of the anti-Russian NATO alliance, the UK. They worked together to seize this runaway tanker which belonged to Russia, which was carrying oil, I think from Iran, but was not sanctioned.
And it officially belonged to Russia. And Russia appeared to have been protecting it with submarines, but stood down to avoid a military clash with the United States. So what does that say about Trump’s negotiations with Russia when he’s willing to do that to implement the Don Rowe doctrine?
And then we saw President Xi of China having envoys in Miraflores Palace meeting with Nicolás Maduro just hours before he was kidnapped. And it was clearly a show of support for Venezuela. What happened to them? Were they given fair warning by the U.S. that there was going to be this dangerous military assault? Clearly it was a message to China as well, which has vast investments in the Orinoco Belt, the oil-rich region of Venezuela, and in Venezuelan minerals, construction and across Latin America.
It’s a way of severing the Belt and Road from the Americas. And they’re open. Trump is openly stating that Venezuela needs to basically be American property. This means, I think this has implications in the Sahel for Burkina Faso, which has adopted relations with Russia after having so much security and stability under the de facto control of France and NATO. Message to Mali, all those countries, Niger, that have sought to adopt a more multipolar model and sought to exploit their own resources for the public good, sending a message to them.
Iran in the Crosshairs
There’s a message being sent to Iran, obviously as well. Trump meeting with Lindsey Graham, holding a “Make Iran Great Again” hat in his hand, embracing the image of neocon Don, the third coming of Bush’s first term, of the second Bush’s first term, and threatening Iran after he conducts this successful kinetic operation in Caracas suggests that some kind of assault on Iran could be coming soon.
And while I can’t predict when it might take place, we have to consider that midterms are coming up and that the Democrats, as poorly as that party is being run inside the United States, are surging. And there is a very strong public, there’s a lot of outrage across the U.S. public at Trump’s behavior, at his policies. People are upset about the economy, they’re upset about the unaffordability of goods, which is partially due to his tariffs.
What took place in Minneapolis yesterday where a 37-year-old mother was almost practically executed by an ICE officer, an ICE goon shot almost point-blank range while driving away in her car. A mother who appears to have simply just been living in the area and may not have even been an activist. This is a pivotal moment, I think, in Trump’s second term that is leading him to electoral doom in the midterms.
And that means that Israel and the forces that want to attack Iran are getting antsy, because without Trump or without a strong Trump and a Republican Congress, it’s going to be harder for them to, for example, avoid the kind of war powers resolution that was finally authorized today in the Senate to force Trump to go to Congress to authorize further military action against Venezuela.
So what if a similar vote comes down on Iran? They don’t want that, so they’re angling for an attack, possibly by February. There’s actually been an anonymous account placing something like a $400,000 bet on Trump striking Iran or Israel striking Iran by January 31st. Was it an Israeli army insider? All kinds of money has been made off of María Corina Machado’s various moves, including winning a Nobel Prize through insider trading on Polymarket.
So this looks like more insider trading, and it’s a good way to forecast events. I think if Iran were to attack Israel, like right now, as we’re speaking, it would be by definition a preemptive attack.
The Abandonment of Liberal Democratic Justifications
GLENN DIESEN: So war against Iran? Yeah, why not? They already said Greenland, Mexico, Nicaragua, Cuba, Colombia. So the list is becoming quite long. I know that what bothered the Europeans, though, they really, we were always ready to support any wars by the United States, but we were kind of hoping that the United States would lean into the whole liberal democratic justification.
You know, just say that he’s a dictator and you want to bring democracy and you have our full support. But Trump kept saying, “No, we want their oil.” And it kind of takes me to just my last question about the legality of all of this, because, I mean, even the arrest of Maduro, did he do something wrong? What do they base it on? Do they have witnesses or evidence?
And also the way he was taken, I know they have to refer to it as being arrested, but, you know, this is a kidnapping. And can you put a head of state in a court in New York? It just seems a bit of a contradiction. It seems very illegal. And also, what happens if he’s found innocent? Is it possible that they can allow this? What are they going to do? Send him back to Venezuela and say, “Sorry, we murdered all these people?”
I just was wondering if you could say something about the legality of this whole issue and at least how they’re presenting it as being legal or if they’re just ignoring that altogether.
The Cartel of the Suns: A CIA Creation
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Great questions. Before I get to that, I want to make one point that I wanted to tack on to my last comments, which is that for the neoconservative movement in Washington that orchestrated the invasion of Iraq, and for the liberal humanitarian interventionists who orchestrated or provided the intellectual fodder through which the bombings of Yugoslavia, Libya and the dirty war in Syria were developed in the name of kind of spreading democracy, they’re experiencing a resurgence right now because of what happened in Venezuela.
And they’re proclaiming through Trump that they have finally overcome Iraq War syndrome. And that’s what’s so dangerous about this moment that we’re in. The United States has the most powerful military in world history. It’s a maritime power. It can conduct kinetic activity in the Western Hemisphere almost at any point. And few can challenge it in certain scenarios.
The Achilles heel of the U.S. Military is that the American public is not historically accustomed to large amounts of casualties and hasn’t been since the so-called greatest generation. The Vietnam War syndrome actually has not been broken. The Iraq War syndrome has not been broken because the American public has not been tested on losing large amounts of soldiers or even having a Black Hawk down scenario, as was seen in Mogadishu, Somalia under Clinton.
And I think if one helicopter had gone down of U.S. Soldiers in Caracas, it would have been an absolute disaster for Donald Trump. And this could take place in Iran. So it’s something to keep in mind because this is one of the major debates taking place, I think, like the major intellectual or ideological debates taking place in Washington and is taking place mostly within Republican Party circles.
The Illegality of Kidnapping a Head of State
To the question of the legality of taking Nicolás Maduro: First of all, under an International Court of Justice decision, the Democratic Republic of Congo versus Belgium, it is illegal to kidnap a head of state and place him or her on trial in a national court. Has to be done through an ICC indictment. Then you bring them to the Hague. That’s the procedure that has gotten Netanyahu indicted.
So it would be—I would totally support any government in the world capturing Netanyahu and then taking out the rage of tens of thousands of families from Gaza who lost their children to him and without anesthetic, because those children got none. Thousands of children in Gaza got none without anesthesia. But that’s not what’s happening because it’s just, it’s not even something that has been tested in the rules-based post World War II order.
So what the Trump administration is doing by kidnapping Maduro and putting him on trial in the Southern District Court of New York is testing the entire post-war order and the case will determine whether international law exists anymore. I think most people watching this will say, well, yeah, it doesn’t exist, we’re just in a, we’re in the law of the jungle. But that case will really put a nail in the coffin of international law if Maduro can be convicted.
Donald Trump, the U.S. regime wanted to do the same thing to Julian Assange—kidnapping him, putting him on trial in a U.S. court, locking him away for the crime of journalism. The problem wasn’t international law, the problem was the First Amendment, that he was just doing journalism and he wasn’t a U.S. citizen.
The Fraudulent Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy
Then, you know, if you look deeper, if you look into the indictment, the narco-terrorism conspiracy is a complete fraud. The 2020 indictment of Maduro accused him of being the head of this “Cartel of the Suns,” a supposed narco-terror criminal syndicate that actually didn’t exist. I’ve been saying for some time it didn’t exist.
And what’s more, when it did exist, it was essentially a creation of the Central Intelligence Agency, which established its own drug conspiracy during the Reagan era when it began shipping cocaine into the United States through a network of Venezuelan National Guard generals that it controlled. It was essentially ordering them to send cocaine uncontrolled into the United States so the DEA supposedly could establish, gather intelligence on drug trafficking networks in the U.S.
When some DEA officials learned of this essentially criminal operation the CIA was running, they went to 60 Minutes and 60 Minutes exposed it along with the New York Times. They called it the “Cartel of the Sun” simply because those generals who are CIA assets wore suns as patches on their military uniforms. So they just keep bringing out this idea of the Cartel of the Suns just to attack Venezuela’s government.
We didn’t hear the word “Cartel of the Suns” between that 60 Minutes special and probably 2014. And that’s when the U.S. government started putting the squeeze on the former head of military intelligence under Hugo Chávez as Nicolás Maduro came into power. His name was Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal. They called him El Pollo because he kind of looks like a chicken.
And he was accused of being the leader of this corrupt network of Venezuelan generals that were shipping cocaine into the U.S. and it was, they just said, oh, the Cartel of the Suns. That was in his first indictment. He was arrested in Aruba in 2014, but got returned to Venezuela. Then they hit him with two more indictments in 2017.
The Carvajal Operation: Creating a Star Witness
Carvajal goes from being the most loyal general of Chávez to denouncing Nicolás Maduro in public in Venezuela. Then he seeks asylum in Spain, the base of the anti-Chavista opposition. And in 2019, he sides with Juan Guaidó and says, this is the real president. And so he’s starting to position himself as this whistleblower from the inside of the deep state of Venezuela, who’s a principal dissident who can’t take any more of Maduro’s crimes.
And at the same time, Marco Rubio announces Pollo Carvajal is coming to the U.S., we have extradited him and he will supply us with all the dirt we need to convict Nicolás Maduro. “A bad day for the Maduro crime family.” That’s a public tweet by Senator Marco Rubio in 2019. So this is an operation and a process that had been put in place for some time.
Carvajal was extradited from Spain in 2023. The U.S. did everything to block him from getting asylum in Europe, to bring him to the Southern District Court in New York and before the same judge who will preside over Maduro’s trial this June. Carvajal was convicted of a narco-terror drug conspiracy. And he signed a secret plea deal with the Trump administration to provide dirt on Maduro.
And in exchange, he gets his possibly 50-year sentence reduced to—it could be just a few years. All he has to do is be the star witness in the trial against Maduro, where he has pledged to Trump in a letter authored to Trump, that he will provide evidence that Venezuela’s Smartmatic voting machine company actually helped rig the 2020 election in favor of Joe Biden, indulging one of Donald Trump’s favorite pet conspiracy theories.
So that’s the witness against Maduro. And this is how the United States Department of Justice finessed its case against Maduro as the U.S. Military developed an operation to steal Maduro from Caracas.
GLENN DIESEN: This is wild that this is how the rule of law is supposed to work.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: It’s, you know, one mafia against a phony narco-terror conspiracy. And this is really just like a sophisticated mafia operation. And I mean, you have to give them credit for pulling it off the way they did. But it’s gangster. It’s government by gangsterism.
GLENN DIESEN: Well, we spoke together about a month ago and you said that this whole Cartel de los Soles was just, it was fake. And then three days ago, we now see after the attack, Washington Post comes out with an article as well, saying, well, it’s not an actual organization. And you say, same French TV as well, France 24 saying the same thing. Is this an actual organization or is it made up? So, you know, I recommend they should have listened to you instead. It’s a bit late to come up with this now.
The DOJ Quietly Admits the Truth
MAX BLUMENTHAL: The DOJ now acknowledges it. So in the new superseding indictment against Maduro that was unsealed on the day of the raid, when they got Maduro, the Cartel of the Suns is referred to simply as a “loose network.” Whereas in the 2020 indictment it’s mentioned 32 times as a straight-up cartel, like a real criminal syndicate.
So they realized that that was one of the, that was going to be one of the weak points of their indictment. I’d question whether they also wanted to avoid discovery about the CIA shipping drugs. Learning more about how the Cartel of the Suns was cover for that.
And I have since learned something really interesting. This will be the first time I talk about it in any interview and I’m still trying to nail down the details. But there’s this one flight that is covered in the indictment. A flight that went from Venezuela’s Simón Bolívar International Airport to Campeche, Mexico on a DC-9 jet, which is kind of like a private plane containing tons of cocaine.
And they allege that this jet was managed by Pollo Carvajal and that behind the scenes Diosdado Cabello, who’s still in the Venezuelan government and is a defendant in the indictment of Maduro, oversaw this shipment of cocaine which was intended for the U.S. Now they had no evidence that any of that cocaine was actually going to the U.S. This was outside of U.S. jurisdiction, so it could be thrown out on that basis. But the flight did occur.
“Cocaine One”: A CIA-Linked Shell Company
Some things that are not mentioned in the indictment: It looks like the flight stopped in a Colombian city for some time, which is where it may have picked up the cocaine. And the DC-9, known as “Cocaine One,” was owned by a U.S. company which had exchanged hands with another U.S. company whose owner was a Jeb Bush associate.
And it appears very clear that this DC-9 was owned by some kind of CIA-linked shell company. And so Pollo Carvajal, Hugo Carvajal, when he made his defense in the Southern District Court of New York, confronted this allegation and actually sought to call as a witness the owner of the DC-9 jet.
And Judge Hellerstein, who will preside over the Maduro trial, refused to allow that witness. That witness presumably would have or could have provided evidence or testimony showing that the CIA actually controlled that flight and was running it in order to compromise Venezuelan leadership from Carvajal on down.
And so it looks to me like this judge will not allow further testimony that will expose the CIA, which is extremely unfortunate because I think the political context in which the assault on Venezuela has occurred over the last 25 years is really important in the defense of Maduro.
GLENN DIESEN: This could be a very embarrassing trial. So, yeah, well, we run out of time, so thank you very much for taking the time.
MAX BLUMENTHAL: Thanks a lot, Glenn.
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