US launches military strikes on Venezuela, Trump says Maduro captured and flown out of the country!

The capture was reportedly executed by the U.S. Army’s Delta Force, the military’s elite Tier 1 special operations unit.⁴ Sources familiar with the mission described it as a surgical strike aimed at the heart of the Venezuelan leadership, designed to minimize collateral damage while decapitating the command structure of a regime the U.S. has long labeled a “mafia state.” The operation follows months of a palpable military buildup in the Caribbean, where the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group and an array of supporting warships had been positioned in what many analysts now see as a deliberate prelude to this weekend’s events.⁵+1

For months, the Trump administration has been laying the groundwork for this intervention through a series of maritime interdictions.⁶ Recent weeks saw the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard seize two massive oil tankers off the Venezuelan coast and launch deadly kinetic strikes against more than thirty smaller vessels. The administration alleged these boats were part of a state-sponsored drug smuggling network.⁷ President Trump specifically noted that recent air strikes had targeted “the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs,” framing the military action not as a traditional regime-change war, but as a massive international law enforcement operation conducted with the full might of the American military.+1

The legal machinery of the United States moved just as quickly as the special forces on the ground. Attorney General Pam Bondi took to social media on Saturday morning to confirm the arrival of the high-profile detainees. In a sharply worded post, Bondi declared that Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores would “soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.” Her statements underscore a long-standing U.S. legal strategy that has targeted Maduro for years. The Venezuelan leader was previously indicted in 2020 on charges of narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States, and the possession of machine guns and destructive devices.⁸

Bondi clarified that the current proceedings are being handled by the Southern District of New York, a jurisdiction famed for its pursuit of high-level international criminals.⁹ While Maduro’s legal troubles in the U.S. date back years, the inclusion of his wife, Cilia Flores, in this capture marks a significant expansion of the legal scope.¹⁰ Flores, often referred to as the “First Combatant” in Venezuela, had not been previously charged in the 2020 indictment, leading to speculation that new, sealed indictments were handed down by a grand jury immediately preceding or following the military strikes.+1 Continue reading…