Maduro being taken to New York to face U.S. charges, Trump says.
The U.S. captured Venezuela’s leader Nicolás Maduro in a “large-scale strike” early Saturday and flew him out of the country, U.S. President Donald Trump said.
“The United States of America has successfully carried out a large-scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the country,” Trump said in a post on social media. “Details to follow,” Trump added.
A press conference is planned at Mar-a-Lago at 11 a.m. local time Saturday, he said.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Maduro “will soon face the full wrath of American justice” under an indictment in the United States.
Trump confirmed in an interview with Fox News that Maduro and his wife are headed to New York. He posted on Truth Social a photo of Maduro on board the USS Iwo Jima.
The Venezuelan government criticized the operation as an attempt at “regime change” and vowed resistance to pressure from Washington.
“Far from a supposed fight against narcoterrorism, this deplorable action seeks to definitively force a regime change and subject us to the spurious designs of North American imperialism,” Venezuela’s Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López said in remarks carried by local media.
Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez demanded “immediate proof” that Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores are alive, according to Venezuelan TV.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the EU “is closely monitoring the situation” in Venezuela.
“The EU has repeatedly stated that Mr. Maduro lacks legitimacy and has defended a peaceful transition,” Kallas said in a post on X on Saturday. “Under all circumstances, the principles of international law and the U.N. Charter must be respected. We call for restraint,” she said.
Italy and Spain were among European countries who said they were closely monitoring developments in Venezuela, while France decried that the U.S. operation deprived Venezuelans of their right to self-determination.
“The military operation that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro contravenes the principle of non-use of force, which underpins international law,” France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said in a post on X. “France reiterates that no lasting political solution can be imposed from the outside and that sovereign peoples alone decide their future.”
U.S. Senator Mike Lee said that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio informed him in a phone call that Maduro had been “arrested by U.S. personnel to stand trial on criminal charges in the United States.” In a post on X, Lee added that Rubio said “the kinetic action we saw tonight was deployed to protect and defend those executing the arrest warrant.”
Maduro and his wife will “face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts,” under an indictment in the Southern District of New York, Attorney General Bondi said in a post on X.
In 2020, during Trump’s first term, Maduro was charged in the Southern District of New York for “narco-terrorism,” conspiracy to import cocaine and related offenses.
The U.S. attack, which followed a long pressure campaign by the Trump administration, lasted less than 30 minutes and included low-flying aircraft sweeping through the capital, according to media reports. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration had issued a ban on U.S. commercial flights in Venezuelan airspace because of “ongoing military activity” ahead of the explosions in Caracas, the Associated Press reported.
The U.S. Army’s Delta Force, an elite special forces unit, carried out the operation to capture Maduro, CBS News reported.
Trump told Fox News he watched the capture “in real time.”
“I watched it literally like I was watching a television show,” he told told Fox & Friends Weekend.
In a phone interview with the New York Times, Trump said “a lot of good planning and lot of great, great troops and great people” went into the mission to capture Maduro. “It was a brilliant operation, actually,” he added.
Maduro earlier this week rejected Trump’s claims that his government is abetting global narco-trafficking, accusing the White House of inventing a reason to go after the South American country in an interview with state media.
Trump has piled on the pressure against Maduro in recent weeks, imposing a blockade on Venezuela in December and classifying Maduro and other high-ranking members of the country’s government as leaders of a foreign terrorist organization.
The U.S. also has seized Venezuela-linked oil tankers in the Caribbean and last week boasted that American forces had “knocked out” a “big facility” in Venezuela connected to the alleged drug trade.
The Venezuelan government issued a statement Saturday saying it “repudiates and denounces to the international community the very serious military aggression” by the U.S. Venezuela said the strikes targeted civilian and military sites in the city of Caracas and the states of Miranda, Aragua and La Guaira.
“The whole country must be active to defeat this imperialist aggression,” the government’s statement read. It called for an immediate meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
Moscow condemned the U.S. attack, with the Russian foreign ministry saying Washington’s actions “constitute an unacceptable encroachment on the sovereignty of an independent state, respect for which is a key principle of international law.”
Americans have overwhelmingly opposed military action against Venezuela, with a majority of respondents telling a Quinnipiac poll last month that they oppose even the administration’s current strategy of using military strikes to kill alleged drug traffickers on boats.
Ali Bianco, Gabriel Gavin, Seb Starcevic and Gregory Svirnovskiy contributed to this report.