The US Seized a President, Put Him on Trial in Manhattan, and Started Collecting His Oil Money

President Trump authorized the operation, later named Operation Absolute Resolve, at 23:46 Venezuelan time on 2 January 2026; roughly 150 US Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps aircraft suppressed Venezuelan air defenses starting around 02:00 on 3 January, while Delta Force and FBI personnel conducted the ground capture at Maduro's compound. Maduro and Flores were transported to the USS Iwo Jima and then to Manhattan federal court, where they pleaded not guilty on 5 January before US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein to narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy and weapons possession — charges alleging Maduro ran the 'Cartel of the Suns' drug-trafficking operation from within the Venezuelan state. The administration did not notify Congress in advance, citing mission security, and characterized the raid as 'a law-enforcement action with military support' under the president's 'inherent constitutional authority.' Casualty counts vary by source: Wikipedia's tracking cites 23–47 Venezuelan military personnel killed, 32 Cuban military and intelligence personnel killed (per Cuba's own government), two civilians killed and seven US soldiers injured. Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro's vice president, was sworn in as acting president within hours; she initially called the capture 'kidnapping' but has since sought 'peace and peaceful coexistence' with Washington. As of the last reported hearing, 22 July 2026, Judge Hellerstein had not set a trial date, and Maduro continues to object to the legality of the operation itself from the stand.

The administration's public justification rests on a 2020 federal indictment naming Maduro as the head of the 'Cartel of the Suns,' which US prosecutors describe as using state institutions to move cocaine into America. That indictment predates the raid by six years, which is itself evidence the legal case was ready to be activated rather than freshly built. What changed was the willingness to enforce it by force: within 20 days of the capture, Washington had negotiated a 50-million-barrel oil supply deal and collected a first $300 million payment; within a month, a new privatization law gave private companies direct control of Venezuelan oil production; within six weeks, more than $13 billion in oil proceeds had moved with no financial oversight body confirmed. Chevron's roughly 220,000 barrel-a-day production, licensed under the Biden administration's Barbados Accord framework, had already been generating Maduro's government an estimated $3.2 billion a year — CSIS's own analysis argues that continuing to license Venezuelan oil mainly enriched the regime it was meant to pressure, one of the arguments used publicly to justify escalation beyond sanctions. Likely, not confirmed, because the administration has not itself stated oil access as a war aim, and the drug-trafficking case is real and predates any of this — the two motives are not mutually exclusive, and the reporting available cannot cleanly separate law enforcement from resource access as the operative cause.

The oil upside is real but contested even among the companies positioned to capture it: Chevron CEO Mike Wirth's team stayed engaged, but ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods told the administration in a 9 January meeting that Venezuela remained 'uninvestable' given the legal uncertainty — Trump responded by saying he was 'inclined' to exclude ExxonMobil from future licensing, accusing the company of 'playing too cute.' That exchange suggests the winners are not simply 'US oil majors' as a bloc but whichever companies accept the risk and the terms Washington is now setting directly, a change from the arm's-length OFAC licensing regime that preceded the raid. Delcy Rodríguez's government has the most immediate stake: having been a DEA 'priority target' since 2022 by the Associated Press's own reporting, her pivot from calling the capture 'kidnapping' to seeking 'peaceful coexistence' reads as the position of someone whose government's survival now depends on Washington's continued cooperation rather than its opposition. María Corina Machado, the opposition leader who spent years building the political case against Maduro, publicly praised the operation as delivering Venezuela's 'freedom.' Uncertain, because which of these beneficiaries ends up actually better off depends on questions still unresolved seven months in — whether Rodríguez's government survives as more than what The New York Times has already called a 'de facto puppet state,' and whether the oil licensing regime stabilizes enough for companies like ExxonMobil to re-enter.

The clearest, least contested loss is to the legal norm itself: UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the operation a 'dangerous precedent' and said he remained 'deeply alarmed' that rules of international law had not been respected; Russia called the strikes 'an act of armed aggression'; China said it was 'deeply shocked' and that the US had 'recklessly' used force against a sovereign state 'seriously' violating its sovereignty. Colombia, convening the UN Security Council alongside Venezuela, rejected what it called 'the aggression against the sovereignty of Venezuela and of Latin America'; Brazil called it 'a very serious affront to sovereignty and an extremely dangerous precedent'; Mexico said it 'strongly condemns and rejects' the strikes as a breach of the UN Charter. Even the EU's Kaja Kallas, while acknowledging Maduro's government 'lacks legitimacy,' called for restraint and adherence to international law rather than endorsing the method. None of this produced a binding Security Council response — the US holds a veto there — so the condemnation is real but has cost the operation nothing concretely. Inside Venezuela, the population has had no vote on any part of this sequence: not the capture, not Rodríguez's succession, not the oil-licensing terms now being renegotiated from Washington. Confirmed, because the reactions above are each on the record from the states and officials themselves, not inferred — the disagreement in this file is about interpretation and consequence, not about what was said.