US prosecutors charge Maduro, along with his wife and son, with drug trafficking

NEW YORK — U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Saturday that Venezuela’s leader Nicolás Maduro has been charged with drug trafficking and “will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”

Bondi wrote in a social media post that Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, had been charged by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office with narco-terrorism conspiracy, conspiracy to import cocaine and possession of machineguns and destructive devices, among other charges. The announcement came after President Donald Trump said the U.S. carried out “a large-scale strike” in Venezuela and had captured and flown the pair out of the country.

An indictment didn’t appear to be unsealed by mid-morning Saturday. A spokesperson for the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

U.S. officials appeared to be using the charges as legal justification for the strike in Venezuela, which occurred without congressional authorization. Vice President JD Vance wrote on social media that the U.S. had offered Venezuela “multiple off ramps.”

“And PSA for everyone saying this was ‘illegal’: Maduro has multiple indictments in the United States for narcoterrorism. You don’t get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas.”

Early Saturday morning, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reposted his own social media message from last year referencing charges against Maduro, writing that he is “NOT the president of Venezuela and and his regime is NOT the legitimate government.”

New York federal prosecutors, along with prosecutors in D.C. and Florida, in 2020 charged Maduro and 14 other current and former Venezuelan officials — although not Maduro’s wife — with narco-terrorism, corruption and drug trafficking. One of the prosecutors who led that case, Amanda Houle, is now the criminal chief at the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office. The investigation was supervised by Emil Bove, Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer and a former prominent Justice Department official who is now a federal judge.

The fresh charges against Maduro come weeks after Trump issued an unexpected and controversial pardon to another former foreign leader whom Bove pursued as a prosecutor: Juan Orlando Hernández, the ex-president of Honduras.

Hernández had been convicted in 2024 for conspiring to import cocaine into the U.S.