Having illegally attacked Venezuela in an effort to kidnap the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and transport him to the United States to stand trial for supposed violations of US drug laws, US officials have placed themselves in a position in which they are now compelled to secure a conviction. After all, how is it going to look if Maduro is acquitted of such charges and walks out of US District Court a free man? What then?
Needless to say, Maduro’s defense lawyers are challenging the legality of the kidnapping itself. But they have an uphill battle because US courts have traditionally held that even if a foreign criminal defendant is brought into US jurisdiction illegally, the criminal prosecution can nonetheless continue.
Of course, I’ve often wondered what the response of US officials would be if agents of a foreign regime came into the United States illegally, kidnapped some high US official, including a US president, and transported him back to their country to stand trial for supposedly violating their country’s drug laws. My hunch is that US officials would scream like banshees for being hoisted on their own petard.
In any event, for political reasons alone, it is to be expected that US officials will stop at nothing to secure a conviction of Maduro. For example, when Maduro sought to use Venezuelan government monies to pay his defense lawyers, US officials said “No!” They said that US sanctions against Venezuela prohibited the use of such funds for Maduro’s defense, notwithstanding the fact that he was president when he was kidnapped and notwithstanding the fact that he was serving as president when he supposedly committed those drug offenses.
Ultimately, however, US officials buckled in the face of defense arguments that their ridiculous sanctions position was depriving Maduro of his right to counsel, which is one of the rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
In fact, I can’t help but wonder why they didn’t transport Maduro to Guantanamo Bay rather than New York City. Since US officials have long alleged that Maduro’s regime was a narco-terrorist regime, they could have sent him to the Pentagon’s and CIA’s torture and incarceration center in Cuba, where they could have jailed him for life without due process of law and trial by jury and tortured him for the rest of his life.
Having chosen to use the criminal-justice system established by the Constitution, rather than the Pentagon-CIA alternative “judicial” system at Gitmo that was established after the 9/11 attacks, US officials have now effectively boxed themselves in. Given the enormous political ramifications of an acquittal, they are now compelled to get a conviction — much more so than in a standard drug-war case.
Of course, it’s possible that this will all be done fairly and justly through relevant and competent evidence that convinces a jury beyond a reasonable doubt of his guilt.
But there is also the possibility of nefarious, dark-side conduct on the part of federal prosecutors.
For example, when they attacked Venezuela and killed around 100 innocent people in the process, they didn’t settle for kidnapping only Maduro. They also kidnapped his wife and charged her with drug crimes also.
Sure, it’s possible that there is evidence that she too violated US drug laws while serving as the country’s First Lady. But there is another dark-side possibility as well: Use her as leverage to secure a guilty plea on the part of Maduro himself. In other words, an advantage of kidnapping and charging Maduro’s wife could manifest itself with the following type of plea offer by US officials to Maduro: If you’ll plead guilty, we will give you a relatively light sentence and, more important, let your wife go free. If instead you go to trial, we will do our best to convict her and have her sentenced to several decades in prison.
Thus, Maduro would be placed in the discomforting position of proceeding to trial and risking the freedom and well-being of his wife versus pleading guilty and protecting his wife from harm.
There is another dark-side possibility: that US officials will use perjured testimony, either wittingly or unwittingly, in order to secure a conviction. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that US officials have used perjured testimony to convict someone who they “know” is guilty of some drug offense.
Recently, US officials induced Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodriguez, who has been converted into a US puppet, to send to the United States a Venezuelan man named Alex Saab, who was a close ally of Maduro. Previously, Saab faced multiple criminal charges here in the United States when he was pardoned by President Biden as part of a prisoner swap with Venezuela.
So, why have US officials brought him back to the United States? It’s a virtual certainty that they plan to have him bolster their case against Maduro with testimony at trial. But the question is: Can anything that Saab says be trusted, given the implicit threat that US officials will go after him with extreme vengeance on any charges that weren’t arguably covered by Biden’s pardon? Wouldn’t he have a tremendous incentive to say whatever US officials want him to say?
Of course, at the center of all this drug-war charade is the drug war itself. It has proven to be one of the greatest destroyers of the freedom and well-being of the American people in US history. It has also been a major factor in the death, destruction, and corruption in foreign countries, not to mention corruption among both US officials and foreign officials. Among the best things the American people could ever do to get America back on the right track is to bring an immediate end to this evil and immoral program by restoring the legalization of all drugs.
Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.
