Why These Equally Complicit Venezuelan Leaders

As RedState reported, on Monday, deposed Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his bride Celia Flores have been arraigned in United States District Court in the Southern District of New York on prices of Narco-violent extremism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices, and Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns and Destructive Devices against the United States. 

Maduro and Flores have been apprehended and arrested in Venezuela, early Saturday morning, in a shock joint operation which was, as my colleague streiff attested, “a military tour de force.” The execution by the U.S. navy and federal and local law enforcement arms was as close to flawless as one may get. As streiff also attested, the political execution was also fairly spectacular.

Read More: Update: Maduro Lands in New York to Face Justice, Now Heading to NYC

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Maduro and his bride have been flown on a Department of Justice 757 to Stewart International Airport outdoors of New York City, then deplaned and transferred to a helicopter, where they have been airlifted to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Both have been processed and incarcerated pending the Monday arraignment. 

As my colleague Mike Miller reported, Maduro had a bit of a tantrum at the arraignment, claiming (in Spanish) that he was the rightful ruler of Venezuela and that he had been kidnapped. Maduro additional claimed he was a “prisoner of war,” and “a Man of God.” Maduro bought a style of the United States prison justice system as properly as what it is like to no longer be in charge. U.S. District Judge Alvin Ok. Hellerstein shortly shut him down and moved the continuing ahead. When Flores was requested to enter her plea, she declared that she is “completely innocent.” 

And I’ve some oil leases in Venezuela to promote you. 

Dive Deeper: Let’s Take a Closer Look at That Maduro Indictment

‘Kidnapped’ Maduro Launches Indignant Outburst in Court – the Judge Wasn’t Having It

While Flores shouldn’t be being charged for narco-terrorism, she was no “First Lady” or unengaged accomplice. Flores was a energy broker in her own proper, exerting a behind-the-scenes stranglehold on Venezuela’s establishments, which allowed Maduro and his cupboard to execute their reign of terror and suppression with impunity.

Far more than a first girl, Ms. Flores is one of Venezuela’s most highly effective political figures. She constructed extraordinary affect over many years while largely working from the shadows. Ms. Flores formed a judicial system in which almost every major choice ran through her and embedded state establishments with kin and loyalists, according to journalists, analysts and former officers. At the same time, they famous, her household amassed huge, unexplained wealth.

A lawyer from a decrease center class background, Ms. Flores started her political rise in the Nineties, turning into close to Hugo Chávez — the previous president who was Mr. Maduro’s mentor and predecessor — while he was imprisoned after a failed coup attempt in 1992. She steadily climbed the ranks of Chávez’s socialist motion, recognized as chavismo, turning into a central determine in Venezuela’s legislature.

Ms. Flores and Mr. Maduro have been companions since at least the late Nineties, when both have been lawmakers. They married in 2013, the 12 months he grew to become president. After Mr. Chávez’s death, she was widely seen as important to consolidating and sustaining Mr. Maduro’s maintain on energy, bringing a loyal political base and deep institutional affect.

We speak a lot about Maduro but people seem to be they dont know who Cilia Flores is, she may appear tiny but this girl is mighty she led the attorneys that liberated Chavez from prison in 1994. Cilia the First Combatant she is the definition of what Chavismo stand for. pic.twitter.com/MEchV1pzsq

— Myriam Kane 🍉 (@ArameKane5) January 5, 2026

ICYMI: Madre de Dios! Corrupt Dictator Maduro Is Gone After Trump Warned Him

The Fall of Maduro: Why It Matters to United States Security, and Could Trigger a South American Glasnost

Maduro and Flores have basically been taken off the board. However, Maduro loyalists in his cupboard stay in energy, including the previous vice president, now-“acting president” Delcy Rodriguez. 

Watch as Delcy Rodriguez, former vice president, is sworn in as Venezuela’s new chiefhttps://t.co/QqZybFuKDe

📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/W9TIr2ZpQU

— Gossip Wire News (@SkyNews) January 5, 2026

Venezuelan-American journalist Mariana Atencio was adamant in a Bloomberg interview that Rodriguez and three other Chavismo cupboard members must be eliminated from energy before the Venezuelan people may expertise true freedom, democracy, and restoration of their nation.

WATCH: 

Worth listening to Mariana Atencio, native Venezuelan journalist, on what the people in Venezuela truly needed when it got here to Maduro. pic.twitter.com/M28fO8lWMn

— amit (@amitisinvesting) January 3, 2026

Venezuela won’t be free until Delcy Rodríguez, Jorge Rodríguez Gómez, Vladimir Padrino López and Diosdado Cabello, thought-about the basic pillars of the facility construction in Caracas are captured. Maduro was just the clown of the drug dictatorship. They direct the repression. pic.twitter.com/37KHH6bb80

— 🇺🇦 Mїguel Loureїro 🇺🇦 (@Miguel_L71) January 3, 2026

As my colleague Nick Arama wrote:

As superb as the operation was, it is the second half – restoring the nation to freedom – that goes to be more concerned. 

Trump indicated that they anticipated cooperation from Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, although that’s clearly problematic since she was half of the Maduro regime. She initially made feedback condemning Maduro’s seize. 

But Trump indicated that if she did not cooperate, she would face a destiny worse than Maduro. And keep in mind, we have already established that when Trump says issues, he would not play around, as Maduro discovered. In one interview, he said she may “pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” He reiterated to reporters on the airplane returning to the White House on Sunday that if she did not do what was proper, “she will face a situation probably worse than Maduro.”

This no doubt precipitated this seeming “change of heart” by Rodriguez. She posted this picture and message, in English and Spanish, on her Instagram:

A message from Venezuela to the world, and to the United States:

Venezuela reaffirms its dedication to peace and peaceable coexistence. Our nation aspires to live without exterior threats, in an atmosphere of respect and worldwide cooperation. We imagine that global peace is constructed by first guaranteeing peace within each nation. 

We prioritise shifting in direction of balanced and respectful worldwide relations between the United States and Venezuela, and between Venezuela and other international locations in the area, premised on sovereign equality and non-interference. These rules information our diplomacy with the remainder of the world.

We invite the US authorities to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation oriented in direction of shared development within the framework of worldwide law to strengthen lasting group coexistence. 

President Donald Trump, our peoples and our area deserve peace and dialogue, not battle. This has always been President Nicolás Maduro’s message, and it’s the message of all of Venezuela proper now. This is the Venezuela I imagine in and have devoted my life to. I dream of a Venezuela where all good Venezuelans can come together.

Venezuela has the appropriate to peace, development, sovereignty and a future.

Delcy Rodríguez
Acting President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

Rodriguez could also be placing on a cooperative entrance, but Venezuelans who have skilled and witnessed the evils wrought under Maduro’s “Chavismo” are sounding alarm bells.

What about Delcy herself?

She has been concerned in numerous corruption scandals but the important factor to know about her is that she is no reasonable. She just desires to stay in energy and keep stealing, one thing that everybody is aware of will not occur under democracy.s

— Daniel Di Martino 🇺🇸🇻🇪 (@DanielDiMartino) December 5, 2025

A cornered animal is sometimes the most harmful. So, whether or not Trump’s risk has struck concern in her coronary heart or merely strengthened her resolve to keep the reins of energy stays to be seen. 

Rodriguez’s brother, Jorge Rodriguez, is also deeply embedded in Chavismo’s ideology. Brother Rodriguez was reappointed as the President of Venezuela’s National Assembly, the legislative arm of the federal government. According to a post on the National Assembly web site (translated from Spanish), Rodriguez pledged, “legal and political actions for the release of President Maduro.”

The president of the National Assembly (AN), deputy Jorge Rodríguez (PSUV/Capital District), announced that he’ll undertake legal and political actions for the release of the constitutional president of the Republic, Nicolás Maduro, and the first girl Cilia Flores de Maduro, kidnapped by the US empire after a navy aggression in Venezuela on January 3.

“My main function in the days to come, my function as a man, as a deputy, as president of this National Assembly, will be to resort to all procedures, all platforms and all spaces to bring back Nicolás Maduro Moros,” the parliamentarian expressed this Monday, during the set up of the 2026-2031 legislative constitutional period.

Rodríguez acknowledged that, with his own skills, efforts, and needs, he won’t stop, even in the face of the best obstacles, to guarantee that President Maduro and his spouse return to Venezuela. He urged the people to believe in the political management.

“At this difficult time for our country, when the population is wondering what our destiny will be and what will become of our leaders, let us say, let us have confidence, that together we will always prevail,” he emphasised.

Doesn’t evoke the “balanced and respectful international relations” his sister claims are occurring. The coming days will reveal on which aspect their bread is buttered.

Vladimir Padrino López is Maduro’s longest-serving cupboard member. In his position as Defense Minister, López oversees all navy operations and is also the engineer of the humanitarian disaster of the Venezuelan people. Like Maduro, López has a bounty on his head as he has long been thought-about the architect of the narco-terrorism and trafficking for which Venezuela has turn out to be the nexus.

Agregar a Vladimir Padrino López
Total Bounty : $90M pic.twitter.com/apkd4RFD1A

— Shary (@SharySirey) August 8, 2025

The last cupboard member in query is taken into account by many to be the most diabolical. Maduro’s No. 2, and supposed “Minister of Interior, Justice, and Peace,” Diosdado Cabello Rondón.

Diosdado Cabello Rondón is at the moment Nicolás Maduro Moros’ so-called minister of inside, justice, and peace, having oversight over Venezuela’s police forces and prisons.  After Maduro fraudulently declared victory in the July 2024 presidential election despite evidence to the opposite, Maduro purported to appoint Cabello to this place.  The U.S. authorities doesn’t acknowledge Maduro as the winner of the election and doesn’t acknowledge Cabello as a minister of the federal government of Venezuela.  Cabello Rondón has also served as the previous president of Venezuela’s Constituent National Assembly, President and Vice-President of Venezuela, and is an energetic member of the Venezuelan armed forces with the rank of Captain.

International and home stories are prognosticating that Cabello Rondón is the one most doubtless to mount a counter-offensive against the United States.

“You can remove as many pieces of the Venezuelan government as you like, but it would have to be multiple actors at different levels to move the needle,” said a former U.S. official concerned in prison investigations in Venezuela

A big query mark surrounds Cabello, who exerts affect over the nation’s navy and civilian counterintelligence companies, which conduct widespread home espionage.

“The focus is now on Diosdado Cabello,” said Venezuelan navy strategist Jose Garcia. “Because he is the most ideological, violent and unpredictable element of the Venezuelan regime.”

Certain journalists, analysts, and watchers are saying the Trump administration has made a horrible calculation and are crying foul. 

El chavismo es una estructura blindada de intereses militares y económicos que llevan años consolidadas.

Sin un plan de transición soberano y previo, la captura no trae democracia, sino un vacío de poder que figuras como Diosdado Cabello o Vladimir Padrino López están listos… pic.twitter.com/yLIS9Ndoy5

— Maria Elena Morera (@MaElenaMorera) January 3, 2026

English translation:

Chavismo is an armored construction of navy and financial pursuits that have been consolidated for years. 

Without a sovereign and prior transition plan, the seize doesn’t convey democracy, but a energy vacuum that figures like Diosdado Cabello or Vladimir Padrino López are prepared to fill, and they’re presumably a lot more radical. 

Even though Vice President Delcy Rodríguez told Marco Rubio that she is prepared to cooperate with the USA, she is as illegitimate as Maduro.

As an historical proverb goes, “May you live in interesting times.”

Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump, unlawful immigration into our great nation has just about stopped. Despite the novel left’s lies, new laws wasn’t needed to secure our border, just a new president.

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