Due to security issues, authorities flew the pair in via helicopter before getting into an armored truck and driving to the courthouse. Several news hounds and pundits on the scene said they've never seen security like this during any other legal case they've covered.
According to the New York Post, "Maduro and Flores are in separate, solitary cells inside Brooklyn’s notorious Metropolitan Detention Center — where heavily armed law enforcement members are on patrol outside."
In 2020, the United States Department of Justice unsealed indictments in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) charging Venezuela
...a country in Central America that sits on an enormous pool of oil. Formerly the most prospereous country in the region, it became infested with Commies sniffing almost unlimited wealth. It turned out the wealth wasn't unlimited, the economy collapsed under the clownish Hugo Chavez, the murder rate exceeded places like Honduras and El Salvador. A significant proportion of the populace refugeed to Colombia and points south...
n Maduro and several other current and former Venezuelan officials with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and other destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and other destructive devices — four counts total.
According to the charges, Maduro and his associates led Cartel de los Soles, a drug trafficking network that involved the Venezuelan military and other figures within the regime and partnered with FARC, a Colombian guerrilla group and designated terrorist organization, to flood the United States with massive quantities of cocaine while using the proceeds to maintain power and enrich their own lives.
Up until Saturday, when Maduro was captured and arrested by the U.S. military, the United States had a $50 million reward for information leading to his arrest.
On Monday, federal prosecutors unveiled a superseding indictment that expands those original charges, adding new defendants and details about Maduro’s alleged role in the conspiracy.
The U.S. District Judge in the case is Alvin K. Hellerstein. He's 92 years old and was nominated to SDNY by Bill Clinton
...former Democratic president of the U.S. Bill was the second U.S. president to be impeached, the first to deny that oral sex was sex, the first to have difficulty with the definition of the word
is...
Texas Attorney Mark Donnelly is representing Flores. Maduro's attorney is Barry Pollack, who represented Julian Assange
... Australian journalist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks made the Big Time in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by then Bradley, since Chelsea Manning. After the 2010 leaks, the United States government launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks and asked allied nations for assistance. U.S. officials are seeking to prosecute Assange under the Espionage Act, blaming him for directingpublication of a huge trove of secret documents that disclosed the names of people who provided confidential information to American and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan....
During his court appearance, Maduro, who spoke Spanish, said he did not know his rights but has since been informed. He also reportedly said, "I am innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man."
He waived the public reading of his charges and did not request bail.
He also said, "I'm the president of the Republic of Venezuela ... I am here kidnapped ... I was captured at my home in Caracas, Venezuela."
The judge replied, "Let me interfere — there will be a time and a place to go into all of this. Your counsel will be able to make motions ... at this time, I just want to know one thing: Are you Nicolás Maduro Moros?"
According to Fox News coverage (there was no video in the courtroom), he kept trying to talk, but the judge kept cutting him off, and he was very engaged in the proceedings, taking extensive notes on a legal pad. He also requested that he be able to request his notes. The Fox News team is describing him as "defiant."
Maduro reportedly asked how much he would have to pay for his attorney. The defendants' attorneys also requested that their clients receive medical care. Maduro reportedly has health issues, and Flores said she was injured during the capture.
Flores also pleaded not guilty
"Wudn't me."
The case now moves into the discovery phase. The judge set the next court date for March 17 at 11 a.m.
An interesting note I ran across while listening to the Bills game last night: According to this story, Russia put around six billion dollars’ worth of military aid into Venezuela. I mean, air defense systems, hardware, the whole shebang. According to several reports, those defenses never fired a shot.
It puts a different light on putting Maduro in cuffs in around three hours, doesn’t it? It also, in my mind, shows how desperately Putin wants a more solid foothold on our hemisphere. Those defenses were installed only a few months ago. Purpose? To protect Maduro, of course.
Add to this that the apparent ease of capture, the smoothness of this operation, I'm guessing, just guessing, mind you, that making sure we make sure our troops are lethal instead of allowing them to pretend to be women is actually the way the Military should have been going. I dunno about you, but I think Pete Hegseth deserves kudos and an apology, huh? Yeah, I know he won't get one, but still.
Seems to me it also should be causing the Kremlin some concern. The reasons for the lack of response and the total lack of retaliation after Maduro was taken seem to raise some questions. The support the socialists thought Maduro had wasn't there, obviously. Our administration of the place for a while is a plus from several angles. It'll give our folks the chance to examine the latest Russian hardware and software. But perhaps of greater import, maybe the support Maduro had among the people was not nearly as good as some made it.
Who was it that under-estimated how much Maduro was hated? Russia, Cuba, and Iran, and the leftists here in the states who are looking for an uprising against our being there. I'm seeing people who are supposedly American say that should happen. I see the same text under different names, as is usual with these things, trying to stir up an anti-American rebellion. Fox is reporting that Marxist cells here in the States are trying to incite riots in Venezuela.
The newest overnight campaign to support Maduro will likely send foot soldiers into the streets to support Maduro and his wife during any trials they face, not just as an expression of protest but as a continued campaign of information warfare on the domestic front.
Experts say the network that spent decades legitimizing and defending communist regimes abroad and now functions as a rapid-response influence force inside the United States is a new threat matrix that amounts to something the FBI and intelligence agencies investigate as malign foreign influence.
Its members operate as ideological foot soldiers, advancing a foreign-aligned narrative during moments of conflict, seeking to fracture public consensus, delegitimize U.S. action and apply pressure from within.
Experts say the network that spent decades legitimizing and defending communist regimes abroad and now functions as a rapid-response influence force inside the United States is a new threat matrix that amounts to something the FBI and intelligence agencies investigate as malign foreign influence.
Its members operate as ideological foot soldiers, advancing a foreign-aligned narrative during moments of conflict, seeking to fracture public consensus, delegitimize U.S. action and apply pressure from within.
I suspect they're going to be disappointed, given the dancing in the streets we saw yesterday. The article mentions non-profit orgs driving their actions. Might be worth it to investigate how much of their funding comes from OUR tax dollars because of the Democrats here in the States, via, among other paths, the now shut-down USAID.
Then there’s the question of Putin’s lack of wisdom, funding such defenses. Seems to me he’s got enough problems with another failed bit of expansionism in his own backyard. It should also cause some problems for those still trying so desperately to sell us on the laughable idea that Trump is a Putin puppet.
More than passing strange, Venezuela is now freer than New York City.
Be that as it may, the whole thing will go down in that rotting apple, where the Southern District of New York will be doing the prosecuting. Jay Clayton is running the show there. He has been in that role since last August, and apparently has some serious chops with corporate law. Not so much with the kind of criminal case he finds on his desk this morning. I imagine there will be a small mountain of people from SDNY working on this one, but I’ve not found who will be leading the team yet. Given the kind of thing we have seen out of SDNY in the past, I'm not confident we'll get a good prosecution.
From my understanding, Judge Alvin K Hellerstein is the judge assigned to the case. This is the same judge who was dealing with the Harvey Weinstein lawsuit.
One interesting tidbit: Judge Hellerstein is 92 years old. Obviously, he's the senior judge. I'd say by rather a lot, actually. At the risk of sounding harsh, this case has a smell about it that tells me it’s going to be a long, dragged-out affair. It seems logical to ask: Is this judge going to be around for the end of the proceedings?