Sam Cooper

Military strike part of a wider confrontation with cartel-state alliances and Iran-linked networks.

President Donald Trump said early Saturday that the United States carried out a “large scale strike” in Venezuela and that President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were “captured and flown out of the Country,” in an operation conducted jointly with U.S. counter-narcotics agencies.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said Maduro and Flores “have been indicted in the Southern District of New York,” and that Maduro has been charged with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess destructive devices against the United States.

Bondi said they will “soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts,” and credited “our brave military” for what she called a successful mission to capture “two alleged international narco traffickers.”

Bondi’s statement builds on the Justice Department case first unveiled on March 26, 2020, when federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed an indictment accusing Maduro and other current and former Venezuelan officials of leading a long-running narcotics conspiracy tied to multi-ton cocaine shipments, with linkages to terrorist actors.

Bondi has also linked Maduro’s regime to fentanyl-tainted trafficking networks, while senior lawmakers — including Senator Tom Cotton — have cast Maduro’s alleged operations as intertwined with Iranian regime activity and broader hostile-state plots against the United States.

The dramatic U.S. announcement followed a night of explosions and rolling power outages in Caracas and other parts of Venezuela, with witnesses reporting flare-like streaks crossing the sky before blasts hit near major military installations in the capital, including the Fuerte Tiuna complex and the La Carlota area.

The Associated Press reported the strike “lasted less than 30 minutes,” with at least seven blasts that sent residents into the streets as videos and photos showed smoke plumes and a fireball over the city. The early fallout remained murky—questions persisted about casualties, and how fully Congress and senior military leadership were consulted—while Venezuelan authorities demanded proof of life for Maduro and declared an emergency, as uncertainty spread over who controls the country’s government apparatus following the strike and extraction operation.

After sunrise, Reuters reported Caracas appeared relatively calm, with soldiers patrolling some areas; separately, Reuters said Venezuela’s oil facilities appeared to be operating normally, though the port of La Guaira sustained severe damage.

Previously, Bondi has described the 2020 indictment as the backbone of the administration’s claim that Maduro ran a state-protected trafficking enterprise aligned with cartel partners to push cocaine toward the United States, including cocaine allegedly mixed with fentanyl-laced additives. The Bureau has also reported Bondi’s earlier assertion that authorities seized more than $700 million in assets linked to Maduro, including private jets, and nearly seven tons of cocaine allegedly tied directly to him.

The evidentiary foundation for those allegations, U.S. officials have repeatedly said, is the Southern District of New York indictment itself — along with related prosecutions and investigative records that, in the government’s telling, map a long-running alliance among Venezuelan officials, Colombian armed actors, and international facilitators.

One of the most consequential bridges between narcotics trafficking and terrorism claims in the Maduro case emerged in May 2020, when the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration announced charges against former Venezuelan legislator Adel El Zabayar. In that statement, officials alleged that El Zabayar supported the Cártel de los Soles and worked “in coordination with designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations … Hizballah and Hamas,” including allegations that the cartel sought to recruit operatives from those groups to assist in plotting attacks against U.S. interests.

The Southern District of New York superseding indictment against Maduro also underscores the government’s contention that the alleged conspiracy’s footprint extended beyond Latin America — listing the offense as “begun and committed” in multiple jurisdictions, including Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Iran, and Syria.

Senator Tom Cotton amplified the administration’s message Saturday, saying he had spoken with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who “confirmed that Maduro is in U.S. custody and will face justice for his crimes against our citizens.”

Cotton added that “the interim government in Venezuela must now decide whether to continue the drug trafficking and colluding with adversaries like Iran and Cuba or whether to act like a normal nation and return to the civilized world,” urging Venezuelan authorities to “choose wisely.”

The escalation also comes as Iran faces intensifying internal unrest, with protests and crackdowns that U.S. officials and allied analysts have framed as additional pressure on Tehran at the same time Washington signals willingness to use direct force against governments it portrays as cartel-state partners.

Early Friday morning, in a social media post, Trump commented on the growing movement against Iran’s clerical leadership, warning that if security forces opened fire on demonstrators, the United States was “locked and loaded and ready to go.”

As of early Saturday, the U.S. government had not publicly released new court filings detailing the capture operation itself or clarifying whether prosecutors filed additional charges beyond the New York case first unsealed in 2020, and it remained unclear when Maduro and Flores would make their first appearance in a U.S. federal court.

President Trump said he will speak on the operation against Maduro later this morning in Florida.

MxM News

President Trump stunned the world early Saturday with a dramatic announcement saying Venezuela’s socialist strongman Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, had been captured and removed from the country following U.S. military action that rocked Caracas overnight. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the United States “successfully carried out a large-scale strike against Venezuela and its leader,” adding that Maduro and Flores were “captured and flown out of the country” in an operation conducted alongside U.S. law enforcement.

The announcement came just hours after multiple explosions were reported across Caracas and other parts of the country, with witnesses describing airstrikes and widespread power outages. Trump’s statement was quickly amplified by senior administration officials, including Pete Hegseth and Karoline Leavitt, who shared the message on X as speculation swirled about the scope and targets of the operation.

Maduro, who has clung to power through what critics and international observers have long described as rigged elections, has been a top target of U.S. law enforcement for years. Washington has accused him of running—or at minimum directing—the Cartel of the Suns, an international cocaine trafficking network allegedly embedded within Venezuela’s regime. In 2020, U.S. prosecutors charged Maduro with narco-terrorism, accusing him and senior officials of conspiring to “flood” the United States with cocaine. A $50 million U.S. reward remains in place for information leading to his arrest or conviction.

Venezuela’s government had not formally responded to Trump’s claim as of early Saturday, but local reporting painted a picture of chaos and uncertainty on the ground. The Venezuelan daily El Nacional reported that large portions of Caracas were without electricity, with residents evacuating areas around Fuerte Tiuna, the country’s main military complex long believed to house Maduro’s personal bunker. The outlet also said La Carlota, Venezuela’s principal military airport, was struck during the overnight bombardment.

Shortly before Trump’s announcement, Venezuela’s defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López, addressed the nation in a video posted to Instagram, denouncing the strikes as an “invasion” and “the greatest outrage suffered by Venezuela.” Padrino López, who is himself wanted by U.S. authorities on drug trafficking charges, dismissed the narco-terrorism allegations and claimed the attacks were part of a U.S.-led regime-change effort. “Desperation is the invader’s ally,” he said, urging Venezuelans to avoid “chaos and anarchy” and calling on the international community to condemn the United States.

Trump said further details on the operation, including how Maduro was taken into custody and where he was flown, would be released later in the day during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, setting the stage for what could be one of the most consequential developments in U.S.–Venezuela relations in decades.

(AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)