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The Justice Department has backed off a dubious claim about President Nicolás Maduro that the Trump administration promoted last year in laying the groundwork to remove him from power in Venezuela: accusing him of leading a drug cartel called Cartel de los Soles. That claim traces back to a 2020 grand jury indictment of Mr. Maduro drafted by the Justice Department. In July 2025, copying language from it, the Treasury Department designated Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization. In November, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and President Trump’s national security adviser, ordered the State Department to do...

One by one, they are singing, the men who used to do dirty deeds for the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro. Nobody knows what’s going to happen, whether the United States will attack, and whether Maduro will fall. But these Venezuelans sniff change in the air. As more countries exit Venezuela’s orbit, more allegations are likely to emerge. Two of the men are in prison here in the U.S.: Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal, the former spy mastermind, and Cliver Alcala Cordones, a former general, both of whom have written letters to President Donald Trump airing...

US President Donald Trump has warned Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to step down or risk potential American military action, a report says. Tensions between Washington and Caracas have surged after US President Donald Trump warned Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro that refusal to step down voluntarily could trigger the use of American military force. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Trump delivered a stark ultimatum during a hotline call on 22 November, telling Maduro he could take the “easy way or hard way," offering safe passage to a friendly capital or face direct US action. Trump’s warning coincided with a...

Though charged in 2023, Colombian national Michael Nunez Daza was only extradited to the U.S. earlier this year. The Justice Department this week announced Colombian national Michael "Luky" Nunez Daza, the leader of a transnational drug money laundering operation, has been sentenced to 60 months in prison, as part of the Trump administration’s Operation Take Back America.Nunez Daza's sentence follows him pleading guilty in August to one count of money laundering conspiracy in the U.S. District Court Southern District of Florida, in which he also was sentenced. The department, in announcing the sentence Wednesday, said that it was part...

The United States has designated the Cartel de los Soles (Spanish for Cartel of the Suns) - a group it alleges is headed by Venezuela's president, Nicolás Maduro, and senior figures in his government - as a foreign terrorist organisation. Labelling an organisation as a terrorist group gives US law enforcement and military agencies broader powers to target and dismantle it. In recent months, the US has been ramping up pressure on Maduro, saying his government is illegitimate following last year's election, which was widely dismissed as rigged. The designation gives it another way to turn up the heat. But...

Nicolás Maduro's days are numbered, and no one knows it better than the man himself. If you can call him that. As I wrote earlier this week, he wears $1,000 shoes, while the people of Venezuela can't even feed their children. That's not a man. Anyway, as I'm writing this, it's Sunday evening, which means that when the clock strikes midnight tonight, Maduro's Cartel de los Soles will officially become a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). As usual, there's a lot of speculation going on in the MSM this weekend, ranging from military action that may or may not go down...

VENEZUELAN tyrant Nicolas Maduro is not merely complicit in organised crime — he leads it. From generals to judges, the very top of Venezuela’s political and military elite are deeply embedded in a powerful, sprawling cocaine trafficking network, experts say. Cartel de los Soles, translated as Cartel of The Suns, isn’t a cartel in the traditional sense. It’s a web of Venezuelan military, intelligence and political elites accused of taxing, protecting and moving cocaine with state resources. With parts of Maduro’s government deeply enmeshed in the drug trade, the lines between state power and organised crime have been blurred. Dr...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to strip temporary legal protections from 350,000 Venezuelans, potentially exposing them to being deported.The Justice Department asked the high court to put on hold a ruling from a federal judge in San Francisco that kept in place Temporary Protected Status for the Venezuelans that would have otherwise expired last month.The status allows people already in the United States to live and work legally because their native countries are deemed unsafe for return due to natural disaster or civil strife.A federal appeals court had earlier rejected the administration’s request.President...

CCTV Footage was released today, from Israel’s Precision-Airstrike against Hezbollah’s Central Command Bunker in the Dahieh Suburb of Southern Beirut on September 27th, which resulting in the elimination of the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah as well as several… pic.twitter.com/SLzTYiG0WW— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) February 7, 2025VIDEO AT LINK.........................

EXCLUSIVE: I've obtained the leaked security briefing that's been provided to Trump national security officials in recent months regarding the criminal group Tren de Aragua and the Venezuela government. President Trump designated Tren de Aragua as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) on January 20th by Executive order because it's “conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions” inside the United States. According to the order: “TdA operates in conjunction with Cártel de los Soles, the Nicolas Maduro regime-sponsored, narco-terrorism enterprise based in Venezuela, and commits brutal crimes, including murders, kidnappings, extortions, and human, drug, and weapons trafficking.” It's not a street...

Judge Boasberg blocks Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Tren de Aragua, despite intelligence linking the gang to Venezuela’s government and acts of sabotage in the U.S. As President Trump fulfills his campaign promise to deport criminal illegal aliens, a blatantly corrupt judge is trying to stop him. Judge James Boasberg, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, has abandoned all pretense to fairness. I will leave it to others to focus on his conflicts of interest (the FISA Court, his wife, his daughter) and his double standard of justice. This article...

Thanks to oil, Venezuela was once the wealthiest country in the region — before becoming the continent’s poorest, ravaged by corruption and feckless economic policy. And amid the economic decline, high-ranking government officials became conspicuously wealthy. But how? According to U.S. indictments, former government officials, and regional experts, officials linked to the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah and members of Maduro’s government built a massive drug syndicate — while most of the country increasingly struggled to find food to eat, or medicine to care for the sick. “Venezuela was a narco state several years ago, but it has become darker and...