Maduro Captured
But the regime appears intact and the U.S. case against Maduro may pose problems for Trump
Pres. Donald Trump this morning announced the capture of Venezuelan Pres. Nicolás Maduro, who is being brought to the U.S. to stand trial.
Maduro was indicted in the U.S. on charges including drug trafficking and the Trump administration claims that Maduro ran the country as a cartel.
The U.S. attack to capture Maduro was said by Venezuelan officials to have killed some members of their military. But Maduro’s top deputies apparently were left in charge of the regime, despite their alleged corruption and complicity with the regime.
In fact, two of the regime leaders who spoke publicly after Maduro’s capture have been criticized previously by right-wing supporters of Trump who have provided him with intel on alleged Venezuelan drug running and election interference. They refer to these deputies as “Cartel Lite,” rather than representing real change for Venezuela.
Maduro is widely recognized as having stolen the last presidential election and fostered endemic corruption in his administration.
The Trump supporters feeding information to his administration about Maduro are former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne and two business partners Byrne has subsidized, a former CIA agent and a Venezuelan dissident. A high-profile leader of election denial in 2020, Byrne reportedly has spent millions funding efforts to get evidence against Maduro.
Byrne and his partners have been cheerleaders of Trump’s efforts against Venezuela for several months. But they’ve also warned that elements of the Trump administration were pushing for Maduro deputies to retain control.
And that’s what appears to have happened today.
Delcy Rodriguez
Maduro’s hand-picked vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, spoke on Venezuelan TV after Maduro’s capture, apparently still in a leadership position and calling the deadly U.S. raid “brutal.”
One month ago Byrne called Rodriguez “vile” and posted a Twitter thread of allegations against her. Without evidence, Byrne claimed that “CIA & NYT [New York Times] are cooperating to push the vile Delcy Rodriguez as the replacement for the vile dictator Maduro running Venezuela now.”
Among Byrne’s claims: “[S]he is the head accountant and top money-launderer of Venezuela’s narco-regime. … [S]he manages the criminal fortune of the Cartel de Los Soles.”
Cartel de Los Soles (“Cartel of the Suns”) is the nickname for corrupt military officers, who sport suns on their uniforms. Antifa is a good analogy, as Trump officials have begun treating the Cartel de Los Soles as a coherent, hierarchical criminal organization, but presenting no evidence to back that up.
Byrne’s New York Times reference appears to involve the paper’s reporting on Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado. She’s the preferred choice of Byrne and his right-wing allies, and the Times has questioned her election-theft claims.
Byrne shared an image of that article and wrote that “in order to help the CIA install this vile slut [Rodriguez] as president, the New York Times is playing its normal customary role of fellating the CIA.”
Rodriguez’s brother, Jorge, is another regime leader. Byrne has likened him to both Dr. Evil and Hannibal Lecter, calling him “the great Grandmaster chess player in the regime.”
One of Byrne’s partners, former CIA official Gary Berntsen, has spoken in similar terms about the Rodriguez siblings. He told Lara Logan in November 2025, “Jorge and Delcy are the spawn of evil, okay?”
Trump shared that interview online.
The previous month, a Miami Herald reporter who’s followed Berntsen wrote that the Rodriguezes had been “presenting themselves to Washington as a ‘more acceptable’ alternative to Nicolás Maduro’s regime.”
But they’re not acceptable to Trump’s right-wing supporters.
Here’s what Berntsen told Logan about the Rodriguezes in November:
“[T]hey’ve been trying, and the State Department has been trying, to negotiate to have Delcy stay behind, right? The State Department right now — diplomats, [Special Envoy] Ric Grenell and company, right? — were trying to get Cartel Lite. They didn’t want, they want anybody but the Nobel Prize winner, Maria Corina Machado. They want anybody but her.”
In fact, the Herald had reported, not only was Grenell involved in these talks, so was Maduro. The overtures to replace Maduro with Delcy Rodriguez were made, according to the Herald, “with Maduro’s approval.”
The Herald story also said that retired Gen. Miguel Rodríguez Torres, now in exile, would lead a transitional government. But this Rodriguez, no relation, has also been described as “Cartel Lite” by Berntsen.
On Sept. 3, Berntsen appeared on The Adam Carolla Show and criticized elements of the Trump administration for pushing the retired general as a replacement for Maduro.
“The cartel and members of this administration in the intelligence community, and my old employer, the CIA, are trying to promote an individual by the name of Miguel Rodriguez Torres... They want to put him in there so they can keep the party rolling. They want Cartel Lite...
“Efforts by the cartel and the cartel sympathizers and agents in the United States at this moment — and shame on you people — is to put Miguel Rodriguez Torres in power, and we have to stop that. I'm praying that people in the Trump White House and those in the intel community can hear that I'm calling you out on what you're doing. Shame on you.”
In other words, whichever Rodriguez may end up replacing Maduro, they’ve already been identified by Trump’s right-wing supporters as just more proxies for the narco-terrorists.
Diosdado Cabello
The other Maduro deputy left standing is Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello. A former deputy to previous Pres. Hugo Chavez, Cabello reportedly leads the nation’s efforts to quash dissent, abusing the civil and human rights of protesters and dissidents.
Cabello, too, remains in power, appearing this morning on Venezuelan TV to seek international condemnation of the U.S. raid.
Unlike Delcy Rodriguez, Cabello hasn’t just been sanctioned, he was literally one of Maduro’s co-defendants in the 2020 indictment. In a 2024 video, Berntsen said,
“The Cartel de los Soles is the Venezuelan government and is led by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Diosdado Cabello, [and others] … Diosdado Cabello has US indictment and a $10 million bounty on his head.”
Here’s where it gets tricky. That indictment was based in part on statements by a former Venezuelan military official, Leamsy Salazar.
And that could lead to legal difficulties for prosecutors and politically awkward moments for Trump in the Maduro case.
That’s because Salazar was a key figure in the Trump team’s 2020 election denial — and his claims then were widely debunked. In fact, as I revealed in November, Salazar was first brought out of Venezuela at the request of a Cabello rival who wanted Salazar to finger Cabello to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
All of which has potentially serious implications for the U.S. prosecution of Maduro.
The Case Against Maduro
Attorney General Pam Bondi this morning wrote that Maduro and his wife, who’s also in custody, are being charged with “Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices, and Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns and Destructive Devices against the United States.”
Reportedly, this may be a new indictment, superseding the 2020 charges.
Trump and his administration have publicly alleged that Maduro ran Tren de Aragua. This was the predicate for claiming extraordinary deportation powers early last year.
Tren de Aragua is a criminal gang, not centrally organized, with members in multiple countries. Trump has claimed that Maduro sent Tren de Aragua to the U.S. to destabilize the country.
That claim reportedly was refuted by members of Trump’s own intelligence community.
Bernsten and his business partner, Venezuelan dissident Martin Rodil, have described Tren de Aragua as a paramilitary force trained by and operating on Maduro’s orders to carry out sabotage, trafficking, and violence in the U.S.
Then, on top of Trump’s allegation that Maduro runs Tren de Aragua, in July the Treasury Department without evidence asserted that Maduro runs the Cartel de Los Soles.
In November, the State Department followed suit. Announcing that Cartel de Los Soles would be designated as a terrorist organization, the department alleged that “the Cartel de Los Soles is headed by Nicolás Maduro and other high-ranking individuals of the illegitimate Maduro regime.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Cartel de Los Soles “is a criminal organization that happens to masquerade as a government.” Rubio reportedly has opposed Grenell’s diplomatic efforts and is a hard-liner with a focus on Maduro’s ties to Cuba.
Maduro’s trial could bring to light some problematic aspects of the Trump administration’s intelligence sources — especially the administration’s consultations with Byrne, Berntsen, and Rodil.
And the U.S. hasn’t disclosed direct evidence of Maduro’s operational control of narco-trafficking.
Prosecutors have been inconsistent about his role. For instance, a 2025 legal filing in another case claimed that Maduro has been running the Cartel de Los Soles since his predecessor’s death in 2013.
“The Cartel, whose name derives from the sun insignias on the epaulettes of Venezuelan generals, was first led by Chavez, who was president of Venezuela from 1998 until his death in 2013. After Chavez died, Maduro assumed the Venezuelan presidency and led the Cartel’s massive cocaine trafficking.”
But the 2020 Chavez indictment described Maduro as a mere participant: “[A]fter Hugo Chavez died in or about 2013 and, during his presidency, continued to participate in cocaine trafficking with the Cartel de Los Soles”
As recently as August, the State Department said that Maduro for more than a decade had been “a leader” — not “the” leader — of the Cartel de Los Soles.
Then there’s an allegation made by U.S. Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz just a couple weeks ago. Waltz told the UN Security Council that sanctioned oil tankers provide Maduro’s “primary economic lifeline.”
The oil proceeds, Waltz said, “also fund the narco-terrorist group Cartel de Los Soles.” But Waltz doesn’t explain why drug dealers would need oil proceeds to operate, when they’re rolling in cocaine money.
Trump is set to speak about the Maduro capture today at 11am eastern time.
Related Stories
I’m an independent journalist whose reporting is made possible by reader support. As a former executive producer at MSNBC, I helped create Up w/ Chris Hayes and previously was a senior producer on Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann. Your paid subscription will help me keep digging.
I find this very ironic. "Maduro is widely recognized as having stolen the last presidential election and fostered endemic corruption in his administration."
So strange.......Trump pardons drug dealers. Also we are taking international policy from a merchandise (seconds) retailer ? thing is China sent a tanker over to collect their purchased oil, and given BRICS is now operational and getting bigger, the world can go around SWIFT. Given the administrations extortion of our trading partners, Trump is setting the US up to be fully isolated with no power.