{"id":389495,"date":"2026-01-05T17:12:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T17:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/389495\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T17:12:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T17:12:16","slug":"maduro-appears-in-us-courtroom-on-drug-trafficking-charges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/389495\/","title":{"rendered":"Maduro appears in US courtroom on drug trafficking charges"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Deposed Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a> was making his first appearance in an American courtroom Monday on the narco-terrorism charges the Trump administration used to justify capturing him and bringing him<\/a> to New York.<\/p>\n

Maduro, wearing a blue jail uniform, and his wife were led into court around noon for a brief, but required, legal proceeding that will likely kick off a prolonged legal fight<\/a> over whether he can be put on trial in the U.S. Both put on headsets to hear the English-language proceeding as it is translated into Spanish.<\/p>\n

The couple were transported under armed guard early Monday from the Brooklyn jail where they\u2019ve been detained to a Manhattan courthouse. <\/p>\n

The trip was swift. A motorcade carrying Maduro left jail around 7:15 a.m. and made its way to a nearby athletic field, where Maduro slowly made his way to a waiting helicopter. The chopper flew across New York harbor and landed at a Manhattan heliport, where Maduro, limping, was loaded into an armored vehicle.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n AP AUDIO: Maduro is taken to a US courthouse for his first appearance on drug trafficking charges\n <\/p>\n

AP correspondent Julie Walker reports Maduro\u2019s case will revive a legal debate over immunity for foreign leaders tested in Noriega trial.<\/p>\n

A few minutes later, the law enforcement caravan was inside a garage at the courthouse complex, just around the corner from the one where Donald Trump was convicted in 2024 of falsifying business records. Across the street from the courthouse, the police separated a small but growing group of protesters from about a dozen pro-intervention demonstrators, including one man who pulled a Venezuelan flag away from those protesting the U.S. action.<\/p>\n

As a criminal defendant in the U.S. legal system, Maduro will have the same rights as any other person accused of a crime \u2014 including the right to a trial by a jury of regular New Yorkers. But he\u2019ll also be nearly \u2014 but not quite \u2014 unique.<\/p>\n

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Maduro\u2019s lawyers are expected to contest the legality of his arrest, arguing that he is immune from prosecution as a sovereign head of state.<\/p>\n

Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega<\/a>unsuccessfully tried the same defense<\/a> after the U.S. captured him in a similar military invasion in 1990. But the U.S. doesn\u2019t recognize Maduro as Venezuela\u2019s legitimate head of state \u2014 particularly after a much-disputed 2024 reelection<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Venezuela\u2019s new interim president, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez<\/a>, has demanded that the U.S. return Maduro, who long denied any involvement in drug trafficking \u2014 although late Sunday she also struck a more conciliatory tone in a social media post, inviting collaboration with President Trump and \u201crespectful relations\u201d with the U.S.<\/p>\n

Before his capture, Maduro and his allies claimed U.S. hostility was motivated by lust for Venezuela\u2019s rich oil and mineral resources.<\/p>\n

The U.S. seized Maduro and his wife in a military operation Saturday, capturing them in their home on a military base. Trump said the U.S. would \u201crun\u201d Venezuela temporarily, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that it would not govern the country day-to-day other than enforcing an existing ” oil quarantine<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

Trump suggested Sunday that he wants to extend American power further<\/a> in the Western Hemisphere. <\/p>\n

Speaking aboard Air Force One, he called Colombia\u2019s president, Gustavo Petro, \u201ca sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States. And he\u2019s not going to be doing it very long.\u201d<\/p>\n

He called on Venezuela\u2019s Rodriguez to provide \u201ctotal access\u201d to her country, or else face consequences.<\/p>\n

Trump has suggested that removing Maduro would enable more oil to flow out of Venezuela, but oil prices<\/a> rose a bit more than 1% in Monday morning trading to roughly $58 a barrel. There are uncertainties about how fast oil production can be ramped up in Venezuela after years of neglect and needed investments, as well as questions about governance and oversight of the sector.<\/p>\n

A 25-page indictment<\/a> made public Saturday accuses Maduro and others of working with drug cartels to facilitate the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine<\/a> into the U.S. They could face life in prison if convicted. <\/p>\n

It was unclear as of Sunday whether Maduro had hired a U.S. lawyer yet.<\/p>\n

He and his wife, Cilia Flores, have been under U.S. sanctions for years, making it illegal for any American to take money from them without first securing a license from the Treasury Department.<\/p>\n

While the indictment against Maduro says Venezuelan officials worked directly with the Tren de Aragua gang, a U.S. intelligence assessment<\/a> published in April, drawing on input from the intelligence community\u2019s 18 agencies, found no coordination between Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan government.<\/p>\n

Maduro, his wife and his son \u2014 who remains free \u2014 are charged along with Venezuela\u2019s interior and justice minister, a former interior and justice minister and Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, an alleged Tren de Aragua leader who has been criminally charged in another case and remains at large. <\/p>\n

Among other things, the indictment accuses Maduro and his wife of ordering kidnappings, beatings and murders of those who owed them drug money or undermined their drug trafficking operation. That included a local drug boss\u2019 killing in Caracas, the indictment said. <\/p>\n

Maduro\u2019s wife is also accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in 2007 to arrange a meeting between \u201ca large-scale drug trafficker\u201d and the director of Venezuela\u2019s National Anti-Drug Office, resulting in additional monthly bribes, with some of the money going to Maduro\u2019s wife, according to the indictment.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press writers John Hanna in Topeka, Kan., Josh Boak in Washington, Darlene Superville aboard Air Force One and Joshua Goodman in Miami contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Deposed Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro was making his first appearance in an American courtroom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,14271,90848,2302,3071,12,22048,793,3138,108734,189177,3073,3140,2221,152186,4227,188194,643,2005,1999,3,18231,111,5572,2825,18598,24265,795,21,19,22,20,25,24,18232,18597,800,965],"class_list":["post-389495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-central-america","tag-cilia-flores","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-donald-trump","tag-drug-crimes","tag-general-news","tag-government-and-politics","tag-gustavo-petro","tag-hector-rusthenford-guerrero-flores","tag-indictments","tag-latin-america","tag-legal-proceedings","tag-local-news-for-apple","tag-manhattan","tag-manuel-noriega","tag-marco-rubio","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nicolas-maduro","tag-politics","tag-president","tag-prisons","tag-south-america","tag-terrorism","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-venezuela","tag-venezuela-government","tag-washington-news","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}