The case against ousted Venezuelan chief Nicolás Maduro hasn’t been in a position to transfer ahead in the previous six years.
Now along with his seize and first look in Manhattan federal court docket behind him, getting to trial could take much more years, with rings of surprising political and authorized battles to come.
The felony case against Maduro is so legally complicated — along with his previous management of Venezuela, the dramatic nature of proving a global narco-terrorism conspiracy and the bigger nationwide safety and international coverage implications — that his protection could try a number of totally different ways of derailing the case earlier than a trial.
Maduro pleaded not responsible Monday to prices of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine weapons and damaging gadgets and conspiracy to possess machine weapons and damaging gadgets.
“Not that he won’t negotiate, but he will push some of the buttons first,” Dick Gregorie, a longtime Miami-based federal prosecutor, mentioned on Monday after following information protection of Maduro’s arraignment.
Gregorie had labored on the indictment and trial of Panama’s Manuel Noriega virtually 40 years in the past, changing into considered one of the few prosecutors who has efficiently tried a international fugitive who claimed he was a head of state.
The Noriega case has some parallels to Maduro’s — particularly in how uncommon it’s for the US to strike a international nation and abduct a political chief by pressure.
It seems seemingly that the lawyers representing Maduro and his spouse Cilia Flores, who additionally pleaded not responsible Monday to drug and weapons prices, will argue they had been captured unlawfully. On Monday in court docket, the deposed Venezuelan chief mentioned he was “kidnapped” by the US navy.
His lawyers will even seemingly battle with the Justice Department over the proof in the case, what they will entry which will assist them, and over the protected nationwide safety info which may be in a position to be utilized in a trial.
The categorised information-handling course of overseen by the court docket can add months to even a simple case, and defendants generally try to push for the publicity of delicate info in order that the federal authorities turns into unwilling to try the case, a tactic referred to as “graymailing.”
The proof collected to date and plans for shifting the case towards trial are seemingly to be mentioned at Maduro’s subsequent court docket look in Manhattan, set for March.
Maduro is probably going to try to use his place in Venezuela’s authorities to argue he has immunity as a international chief.
In court docket, Madura told the judge he was “still president” of Venezuela. His spouse equally referred to as herself “the First Lady of Venezuela” in her court docket look Monday.
Gregorie recalled how vital a combat the head-of-state immunity claims had been with Noriega. They additionally arose earlier than the bribery trial of a political chief who claimed he was head of state of Turks and Caicos, which Gregorie additionally prosecuted in Miami some 40 years in the past.
“It’s quite clear, in order to get head-of-state immunity, you have to be the diplomatically recognized head of state,” Gregorie mentioned. Other authorized students have taken the identical place, that the US State Department’s diplomatic recognitions are essentially the final word.
The US has maintained since 2024 that Maduro was an illegitimate chief of Venezuela, and as an alternative recognized Maduro’s opposition as president-elect. Still, the reply of who led the nation would have to be interpreted by the US court docket system, probably up to the Supreme Court.
Noriega lost his head-of-state and diplomatic immunity claims in 1990. He was convicted in 1991 for importing cocaine and given a 40-year sentence.
And Norman Saunders, the chief minister of the Turks and Caicos island nation in the Eighties, wasn’t deemed to be the nation’s head of state both, Gregorie recalled. The head of state in Turks and Caicos, a British territory, at the time of Saunders’ case was the Queen.
One query that may linger is how intent the Justice Department is to take Maduro to trial.
Removing him from his nation makes that simpler in a single core approach: It can shake out new witnesses.
Gina Parlovecchio, a white-collar associate at the massive regulation agency Mayer Brown and former lead prosecutor of the trial against Mexican kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, mentioned there are seemingly a number of cooperators who’ve helped the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York construct the Maduro case.
The workplace beforehand prosecuted others with ties to Maduro, together with his spouse Cilia Flores’ nephews. The federal authorities additionally carefully tracks the 5 designated international terrorist organizations which can be talked about in the Maduro indictment as participating in the scheme to transfer medicine from Venezuela to the US.
Still, having cooperating witnesses seem at a trial could be a problem.
Gregorie described how one witness died in a suspicious car crash days earlier than he was set to testify against a Noriega co-defendant. Gregorie additionally famous the killing of DEA informant Barry Seal, by the employed gun of a drug cartel in Louisiana in the Eighties.
“He was murdered before the trial started. There were incidents like that that made you worried,” Gregorie mentioned. “A witness who had documents I was looking for, and those documents disappeared.”
Others in Noriega’s case entered witness safety, giving up their identities for new identities, in cities determined by the federal authorities, Gregorie mentioned.
“Certainly this business is a violent business,” the retired Miami prosecutor added.
Michael Nadler, one other former federal prosecutor on a case against high-ranking Venezuelans, mentioned that drug trafficking conspiracy instances will be tougher to show, due to the reliance on witnesses inside the drug commerce, somewhat than following the cash in international bribery instances.
Nadler labored on the Miami cash laundering indictment of one other high Venezuelan official, Alex Saab, who was launched from US custody in a 2023 prisoner swap and returned to Venezuela to work in Maduro’s authorities.
“You’re going to have to get somebody in the room with him who says he knew about it, he allowed it to happen, or that he did something more,” Nadler mentioned about proving a drug trafficking case.
The indictment against Maduro, nonetheless, isn’t as particular on transactions as some drug trafficking and cash laundering indictments have been. Yet prosecutors included a number of episodes, or vignettes, in the now-public allegations against Maduro that seem to recommend they’ve info from witnesses who had shut entry to him.
In one vignette, for occasion, prosecutors say Maduro instructed different alleged traffickers they shouldn’t have despatched greater than a ton of cocaine on a 2013 business flight that landed in Paris, and which French regulation enforcement seized.
The particular moments prosecutors describe in the Maduro indictment hyperlink to every of the 5 narco-terrorist organizations: the FARC and ELN, which produce cocaine in Colombia; the Sinaloa Cartel and the Zetas, which visitors cocaine from central American by Mexico to the US; and Tren de Aragua, which helps to transport cocaine out of Venezuela.
“I almost read it like a greatest hits,” Parlovecchio mentioned.
Several former prosecutors say the Justice Department would solely be keen to indict and seize Maduro if it believed the case was sturdy sufficient.
Some prosecutors additionally imagine the ousted chief might want to face a jury.
“I think that they are likely anticipating a trial,” Parlovecchio mentioned, citing how Flores’ two nephews, called the Narcosobrinos, had been convicted by a jury of cocaine trafficking in 2016. “These high-level drug trafficking cases do tend to go to trial …. When you have this type of a case, with a defendant who has nothing to lose.”
Maduro’s prices are severe, probably carrying with them a life sentence for conspiracy plus a long time in jail for weapons violations, Parlovecchio mentioned.
She pointed to her case for the Eastern District of New York US Attorney’s Office years in the past, the place El Chapo additionally went to trial and was convicted. He is now in the Bureau of Prison’s solely Supermax facility, in Colorado, serving a life sentence for the drug trafficking felony enterprise conviction, plus 30 years for possessing a machine gun.
Yet would the US authorities be open to some kind of negotiation or cope with the captured ruler?
The overwhelming majority of federal felony instances finish in defendants pleading responsible, both as a part of a deal or to keep away from a trial, in accordance to federal court docket knowledge.
A authorized and geopolitical deal could come up at any time involving Venezuela — particularly if the international coverage state of affairs modifications or the case nonetheless lingers after the Trump presidency ends.
However, Gregorie, who tried the Noriega case, mentioned {that a} drug trafficking prosecution of a international chief was all the time seemingly to be on the trial monitor, partly due to the effort it took to cost the case and apprehend them.
“We were constantly pushing to get the case to trial, and if I indicted him, I intended to try him,” Gregorie mentioned on Tuesday about the Noriega case.
Maduro’s protection legal professional Barry Pollack, a nationwide safety and white-collar protection specialist out of Washington, DC, declined to remark for this story.
Pollack is well-versed in high-profile defendants with a political angle to their instances, having beforehand resolved the felony case against Julian Assange.