Gordon Carrera

Oil, drugs, and raw power.

The autobiography, yeah.

But yes, technically, this was a law enforcement operation with the military acting in support of...

DOJ and DEA to bring him to justice.

I think it's worth maybe looking at the drugs first because I think it is the overt or part of the overt justification.

President Trump described Maduro as the kingpin of a vast criminal network trafficking drugs into the US, flooding the US

with lethal poison which was killing thousands of people.

So the claim here is that Maduro was a narco-terrorist head of state conspiring to smuggle drugs into the US and over the summer the bounty on him stemming from existing charges was doubled to 50 million dollars.

Now the first charges were actually laid in 2020 against Maduro but we've just had this superseding indictment which is the basis of the charges that are actually going to be laid

what he's appearing in court for today on this Monday as we speak.

And I think it's interesting, isn't it?

If we look at some of what's being alleged that he's done to support that claim, I mean, it goes back through his backstory.

So it says, when he was a member of the National Assembly, Maduro moved loads of cocaine under the protection of law enforcement.

As Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maduro provided Venezuelan diplomatic passports to drug traffickers and facilitated diplomatic cover for planes used by money launderers to repatriate drug proceeds from Mexico to Venezuela.

And that then, as he becomes head of state when he succeeds Hugo Chavez, that he presides over this kind of

narco-terrorist state which is also partnering with what are called, by the US, narco-terrorist groups from Colombia, the FARC, the ELN, the Sinaloa Cartel, a whole range of different criminal and drug networks.

I think the most interesting bit, though, is that there is this idea that he sits atop something called the Cartel de la Soles.

Cartel of the Sons.

Let's just call it the Cartel of the Sons because I think that might be easier.

Yeah.