Mike Baker

We're now learning that months before the U.S.

operation that ousted Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, backroom discussions were already underway.

The Trump administration opened talks with the regime's interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, and reportedly they've remained in contact ever since.

According to a Reuters exclusive report citing multiple people familiar with the matter, Trump administration officials warned Cabello not to deploy the security forces or militant ruling party supporters that he controls against Venezuela's opposition.

Now, I want to pause on that warning for a moment, because it explains the pressure point that Washington was already focused on, even before Maduro was removed from power.

Cabello still controlled the security apparatus, including intelligence agencies, police units, and elements of the armed forces, and those services, of course, currently remain intact.

That means Cabello didn't just survive the operation.

He emerged from it still holding the levers that could either steady the country or push it toward chaos.

Trump administration officials say containing that risk is why the channel to Cabello was opened and why it remains active.

From Washington's perspective, the goal is to prevent unrest during the fragile transition.

That concern leads directly to the figure that the White House is watching most carefully.

While interim President Delcy Rodriguez is viewed in Washington as the linchpin of President Trump's approach to post-Maduro Venezuela, Cabello is seen as a potential spoiler, someone with enough coercive power to either stabilize or upend the moment.

That influence is rooted in Cabello's role.

For background, he was and still is regarded as the country's second most powerful figure.

Cabello is a former military officer and longtime loyalist of the former Venezuelan socialist leader Hugo Chavez and, of course, later Maduro.

For years, he's been feared as the central enforcer of repression, exerting influence over military intelligence, civilian counterintelligence agencies, and pro-regime militias, known as the colectivo, which are armed civilians deployed to intimidate or attack protesters.

Cabello was named in the same U.S.

drug trafficking indictment that the Trump administration used to justify Maduro's arrest, but he was not targeted in that operation.

Cabello has long been under U.S.

sanctions for alleged drug trafficking.