Before ouster, Maduro's thuggish and illegal behavior chronicled in two decades of U.S. documents

The daring U.S. military operation that captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro on Saturday immediately launched Democrats and some U.S. enemies such as Iran and Cuba into a tirade, suggesting that the arrest of an indicted world leader was somehow illegal and that one of the Western hemisphere's most brutal leaders deserved sympathy.

But two decades of U.S. documents produced under Democrat and Republican presidents and reviewed by Just the News chronicle Maduro's thuggish, illegal and lethal behavior toward the United States as well as his alliances with enemies like drug-trafficking leftist guerrillas, rogue regimes like Iran and terror groups like Hezbollah.

Even former Democrat President Joe Biden – who eased sanctions on Maduro in a failed effort to reboot relations with Venezuela – had to admit he was an "illegitimate" leader of his country after Maduro declared himself the victor of a 2024 election that international observers insisted was won by the opposition.

"Maduro clearly lost the 2024 presidential election and has no right to claim the presidency," then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared a year ago this month.

The stolen election was the latest in a two-decade rampage by Maduro and his socialist cronies.

For instance, a federal grand jury in Manhattan provided compelling evidence in 2020 that Maduro and his top leadership were running a brutal narco-terrorism cartel aligned with Colombia's notorious FARC guerrilla traffickers that addicted Americans to cocaine and opened the door for them to be poisoned by more powerful opioids such as fentanyl shipped from Mexico.

Drug Enforcement Administration memos and Treasury Department sanction records demonstrated how Venezuela became an international hub for illicit money laundering.

And in 2017, Maduro literally stole an automobile plant from General Motors, a seizure that shocked the business world and forced the American automaker to shutter operations and lay off hundreds of workers.

"Maduro was a narco-dictator under a strong 2020 indictment for flooding the US with narcotics, sending criminal gangs into our country and sponsoring terrorism. This is a huge win for American and regional security due to President Trump's decisive leadership," former CIA analyst and National Security Council chief of staff Fred Fleitz told Just the News.  

"This was not regime change," Sixty-seven percent of Venezuelans voted for regime change last July when they voted for the opposition candidate in the presidential election.  Maduro refused to accept the election result. His capture by the U.S. will be celebrated in Venezuela." he also said.

The most damning document the U.S. government produced on Maduro before Saturday was the 2020 indictment handed up by a federal grand jury in Manhattan at the request of the first Trump Justice Department. The indictment chronicles how Maduro seized power after rising through the ranks of a drug cartel closely aligned with Colombia's leftist guerrillas and drug traffickers.

You can read that indictment here.

Since at least 1999, the indictment claimed, Maduro and his cohorts "acted as leaders and managers of the Cártel de Los Soles," also known as Cartel of the Suns.  The cartel’s name refers to the sun insignia affixed to the uniforms of high-ranking Venezuelan military officials. 

Maduro Moros and the other charged cartel members "abused the Venezuelan people and corrupted the legitimate institutions of Venezuela – including parts of the military, intelligence apparatus, legislature and the judiciary – to facilitate the importation of tons of cocaine into the United States," the indictment also states. "Under the leadership of Maduro Moros and others, the Cártel de Los Soles sought to not only enrich its members and enhance their power, but also to 'flood' the United States with cocaine and inflict the drug’s harmful and addictive effects on users in the United States."

The indictment laid out how Maduro conspired with Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC, a leftist guerrilla group that waged years of civil war in Colombia while destabilizing the West with drug trafficking.

"Beginning in approximately 1999, while the FARC was purporting to negotiate toward peace with the Colombian government, FARC leaders agreed with leaders of the Cártel de Los Soles to relocate some of the FARC’s operations to Venezuela under the protection of the Cartel," the inictment said.

"Thereafter, the FARC and the Cártel de Los Soles dispatched processed cocaine from Venezuela to the United States via transshipment points in the Caribbean and Central America, such as Honduras.  By approximately 2004, the U.S. Department of State estimated that 250 or more tons of cocaine were transiting Venezuela per year."

The Justice Department added: "In his role as a leader of the Cártel de Los Soles, Maduro negotiated multi-ton shipments of FARC-produced cocaine; directed that the Cártel de Los Soles provide military-grade weapons to the FARC; coordinated foreign affairs with Honduras and other countries to facilitate large-scale drug trafficking; and solicited assistance from FARC leadership in training an unsanctioned militia group that functioned, in essence, as an armed forces unit for the Cártel de Los Soles." 

In 2015, then-Democrat President Barack Obama declared that Maduro and Venezuela had "failed demonstrably to adhere to its obligations under international counternarcotics agreements. Obama, however, continued to give Venezuela a waiver so it could received U.S. foreign aid.

When Trump took office for the first time, in 2017, Maduro stepped up his anti-American hostilities as his government seized and nationalized American-built and owned factories under its socialist economy.

In April 2017, for instance, the Venezuelan government seized a GM plant in Valencia, causing the automaker to end 35 years of production in the Latin American country and to lay off 2,700 workers.

GM said its "plant was unexpectedly taken by the public authorities, preventing normal operations. In addition, other assets of the company, such as vehicles, have been illegally taken from its facilities."

Illicit money laundering also became a big business under Maduro, causing the U.S. Treasury Department to sanction more than 300 corrupt figures in Venezuela for moving illegal commodities and cash.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office gave a sweeping look at the scope of money laundering under Maduro in a 2023 report.

"Between 2017 and 2022, State consistently determined that Venezuela is a major money laundering country," the office reported. "Illicit financial flows related to Venezuela include proceeds from the sale of commodities, such as oil and gold, and drug trafficking."

You can read that GAO report here.

One of the areas of grave concern for U.S. officials was money laundering tied to Iran and its terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah, which were first unveiled during a 2013 congressional hearing on that terrorist group's activities.

Lawmakers introduced evidence in that hearing that Hezbollah had "attempted laundering of approximately $70 million from Venezuela to Germany in January 2013" and was "running training camps and international narcotics smuggling operations in Venezuela, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, and even Mexico."

A 2025 report from the security think tank Rand Corp. provided more details on the ties a decade later.

"Iran and affiliated networks have demonstrated interest in Venezuela’s gold reserves as a means of sanction evasion," the report revealed. "In 2020, Iran shipped gasoline to Venezuela in exchange for gold; U.S. officials successfully deterred some shipments through sanction threats against the former.

"Although direct Hezbollah involvement in Venezuelan gold mining remains difficult to verify conclusively, the established gold-trade relationship between Iran and Venezuela – combined with Hezbollah’s documented presence in Venezuela and its role as an Iranian proxy – suggests that there are potential opportunities for the organization to benefit from these arrangements," Rand said.

You can read that report here.