Free Republic

Alex Saab made his initial court appearance after being deported over the weekend by acting President Delcy Rodríguez as part of a purge of insider businessmen who are believed to have enriched themselves through corrupt dealings with Maduro.A close ally of ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was charged in federal court in Miami on Monday with bribing top officials to profit from lucrative government contracts. Alex Saab made his initial court appearance after being deported over the weekend by acting President Delcy Rodríguez as part of a purge of insider businessmen who are believed to have enriched themselves through corrupt...

In Latin America, in China, in the Middle East, the outline of Donald Trump's plan of action is becoming clear. It is of a scale to take the breath away. It’s obvious to me that during the four-year hiatus from the White House occasioned by a stolen election, President Trump gave thoughtful consideration to what had to be cleaned up domestically and internationally. It’s equally clear that he mapped out how he planned to do that, and despite media, congressional, and judicial intransigence, he plowed ahead. We are at a point now where the blueprint is obvious. It’s a continuing,...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has technically been banned from visiting China by its communist government, but he accompanied President Donald Trump on his trip to Beijing on Tuesday using a bureaucratic loophole created by the Chinese to let him in. Rubio, the son of Cuban exiles to Florida who was elected to the Senate in 2011, was one of several congressional representatives banned from traveling to China in July 2020 because they spoke out against China’s brutal oppression of the Uyghur Muslims of occupied East Turkistan. The U.S. had previously sanctioned four Chinese officials for herding the Uyghurs into...

Another sterling week for the Trump administration, another interval of agony for his opponents. The attention of those less politically minded is focused on the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie’s mother, Nancy -- always fodder for the would-be Colombos and Miss Marples -- and the Olympics. Yet this week saw some victories for the administration along with some serious unfinished business. The ousted dictator Nicolás Maduro seems isolated, depressed, and devoid of funds sufficient to hire teams of lawyers to defend him. Any claims he might have for immunity seem destined to fail. The evidence establishes he was born in Colombia;...

A U.S. Army soldier was arrested on an indictment accusing him of using classified information to make bets that won him $400,000 on the Polymarket prediction market related to the American military mission that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, the Department of Justice said on Thursday. The soldier, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, “participated in the planning and execution of the” operation to capture Maduro, the DOJ said.

A Glimmer of Justice Amidst Enduring Shadows:Venezuela's Unlikely Strike Against Islamic Fascist Republic of Iran / Hezbollah's Legacy of Jewish BloodIn a stunning turn that defies the toxic alliance between Venezuela's Chavismo regime and the genocidal mullahs of the Islamo-Fascist Iranian Republic, President Nicolás Maduro's forces have apprehended Ali Hage Zaki Jalil—a Lebanese-Arab Hezbollah terrorist long-sought for his role in the barbaric 1994 bombing of Alas Chiricanas Flight 901 over Panama.[0][1] This monstrous act of Jew-hatred claimed 21 innocent lives, including 12 precious Jewish souls en route from Colón to Panama City, their dreams shattered by the same Iranian-backed terror...

Was this illegal part of a Venezuelan or Cuban military intelligence operation? Why, again, was he let in? Joe Biden's open borders may be about more than just replacing the electorate. The New York Post found that one of the most malevolent of the border surgers, a Venezuelan illegal named Leonel Moreno, who famously urged other illegals to squat in Americans' homes and waved hundred-dollar bills around to boast of his public benefits on TikTok, is being investigated by the feds for his military intelligence work for the Marxist dictatorship back home. According to the Post: Joe Biden's open borders...

BETHLEHEM, West Bank: Venezuelan flags and portraits of President Hugo Chavez have been flying high during protests in the West Bank against Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. The Venezuelan president’s decision on January 6 to expel Israel’s ambassador from Caracas – the only country apart from Mauritania to take such a step – has made the left-wing South American leader a hero to Palestinians. Hamas has welcomed Chavez’s “courageous decision,” while Hassan Nasrallah, head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, urged Arab states to follow the Venezuelan president’s example. Chavez on Saturday accused Israel of being the “murder arm” of the...

“This isn’t just about Maduro. This is the final nail in the coffin for the CIA-black-budget narco pipeline that’s been running since the 80s.” —The Ghost of Ezra on “X”. CIA Headquarters, Langley, Va. You must wonder: what exactly has CIA Director John Ratcliffe been doing over in Langley, VA, lo these many months since things changed bigly in Swamptopia? Does he wander the hallways of that giant black box howling ineffectually. . . sit barricaded in his office playing sudoku. . . or is he doing what needs to be done: methodically uncovering and disassembling the diabolical racketeering operation...

A report published by the Spanish newspaper ABC on Thursday claimed that Venezuela’s deposed socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro spends his nights in prison yelling “I am the president” and claiming that he was “kidnapped” by the U.S. Maduro, long wanted by U.S. authorities on multiple narco-terrorism charges, led the Venezuelan socialist regime from March 2013 to January 3, 2026, the day the United States executed a law enforcement operation in Caracas to arrest him and his wife, Cilia Flores. The now-deposed dictator clung to power after the end of his first term in 2019 by holding sham presidential elections in...

NPR correspondent Eyder Peralta was amazed during a segment Friday by his recent trip to Venezuela following President Donald Trump's arrest of the country's president Nicolás Maduro. "It is absolutely surreal because you land at the airport and the signs are in Spanish, Russian, Arabic and Chinese, which tells you just where this country was facing a few months ago," Peralta told host Steve Inskeep. "And then you go out on the streets and people here tell you that they feel like a weight has been lifted." He continued, "For the first time in a long time, there are street...

Saab was charged with money laundering in the US One of President Nicolás Maduro's closest aides has been extradited from Cape Verde to the United States, where he's been charged with money laundering. The US Treasury says Alex Saab worked as a front man for Mr Maduro's regime. The Venezuelan government suspended talks soon afterwards with the US-backed opposition. The talks were to resolve a political crisis that has led to violence and the collapse of the economy

Iran, Turkey, and Venezuela's Super Facilitator: Who Is Slex Saab? On June 12, Alex Nain Saab Morán, a Colombian businessman of Lebanese  descent, was arrested at Amílcar Cabral International airport in Cape Verde. This was a huge blow to the Maduro regime’s illicit networks, as Saab is a key facilitator, involved in alleged corrupt dealings and money laundering in Venezuela since 2004.  His arrest was made after years of investigations on behalf of the U.S. and Colombia to uncover a myriad of shell companies that Saab; his business partner, Alvaro Pulido Vargas; and family members set up. Considered a fugitive in Colombia,...

The official story is real — but incomplete. Operation Epic Fury’s stated goals — eliminating Iran’s nuclear program, destroying its missile arsenal, degrading its proxy networks, and annihilating its navy — are all legitimate grievances rooted in 47 years of Iranian hostility toward the United States. But they are the surface layer of a much deeper strategic play.

Their revolution could soon be coming to an end. January 3, 2026. Caracas. 2:47 AM. The helicopters had come in low over the Caribbean, running dark. The Delta Force operators on board were well-rehearsed. By 3:29 AM, it was over. Thirty-two Cuban bodyguards lay dead in the compound. Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were in flex cuffs, hustled onto a transport aircraft bound for New York. At Mar-a-Lago, President Trump watched the operation unfold in real time with his national security team. It was January 3—exactly 36 years to the day since American forces had extracted military dictator Manuel...

A 33 min YouTube show with Stephen Gardner interviewing best-selling author Ralph Pezzullo on his 5-year deep dive into how a foreign actors have infiltrated, corrupted, and stole US elections beginning in 2008! This is a must-watch to get you up to date on what President Trump is facing concerning the corruption throughout the US government. Mr. Pezzullo authored "Stolen Elections-- the Takedown of Democracies Worldwide The interview goes into how Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, China, Russia and various drug cartels collaborated and started stealing elections in the United States and other countries worldwide, earlier than suspected. There is mention of...

Rand Paul made his name as a gadfly preaching about the dangers of a tyrannical federal government. Now, after the killings of two Minnesota residents at the hands of Homeland Security agents, the Kentucky Republican has a chance to do something about it. The 63-year-old, who spent years on the outskirts of the party, is now at the center of the Senate’s response to the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, which have sparked new criticism of the administration’s immigration enforcement policies and raised many of the same civil liberties questions Paul has long been asking. As chair of...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued with Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul Wednesday over whether the U.S.’ capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro was an “act of war.” Paul expressed disagreement with Rubio by stating that if any country captured the U.S. president in the same kind of operation carried out in Venezuela, he would declare war. President Donald Trump’s administration, including Rubio, have repeatedly stated that Maduro’s arrest was simply a “law enforcement action” and not an act of war against Venezuela. Trump said that the move brought Maduro to “justice” and that the U.S. acted within its constitutional...

Trump boasted that the mysterious weapon “made [enemy] equipment not work” when US helicopters swooped into Caracas on Jan. 3 to arrest Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on federal drug and weapons charges — without losing a single American life. “The Discombobulator. I’m not allowed to talk about it,” Trump said during an exclusive interview in the Oval Office.

On Sunday, Venezuelans went to the polls to select a new president. By Sunday night the results were clear. Exit polls found that the Venezuelans voted two-to-one to end the communist dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro. The exit polls had communist tyrant Nicolas Maduro losing by a landslide. 66.6% for opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez and 30.86% for Nicolas Maduro. -- snip -- But on Monday, Maduro announced he was the clear winner. On Tuesday he called for the arrest of the two leading opposition figures. And by Thursday, the communist tyrant announce the construction of two maximum-security prisons where he will...