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The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper
Inside The Raid: Venezuela's Future. Aired 8-9p ET
Aired January 11, 2026 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[20:00:00]
JESSICA DEAN, CNN ANCHOR: And as we just mentioned, stay right here, it's an all-new episode of "THE WHOLE STORY WITH ANDERSON COOPER." You'll see David's reporting "Inside the Raid: Venezuela's Future." It airs next here on CNN.
In the meantime, thank you so much for joining me tonight. I'm Jessica Dean. And remember, if you're in the U.S., you can now stream CNN whenever you want using the CNN app. Just visit CNN.com/Watch to learn more about that.
We're going to see you again here next weekend. In the meantime, have a wonderful night.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to THE WHOLE STORY. I'm Anderson Cooper.
The capture and arrest of Venezuela's leader, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife last week raised a number of questions about the legality of the operation, as well as the motivations behind the Trump administration for his ouster.
The U.S. and Venezuela have a long and complicated history. They were once allies until the Hugo Chavez years, when the relationship deteriorated and only worsened under the Maduro regime, which saw an increase in violence and poverty and corruption.
CNN's David Culver has been reporting this week from the border of Venezuela. And in this next hour, he takes us through everything we know about the events leading up to the raid inside Caracas, the legal case against Maduro, and what may be next for Venezuela.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID CULVER, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The news was sudden and startling. A foreign leader whisked from his homeland, in U.S. custody, headed for America.
FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: President Nicolas Maduro and his wife have been captured in a U.S. attack and flown out of Venezuela.
CULVER (voice-over): But the plan had been coming together for months right before our eyes. NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: The U.S. began
this massive buildup of forces in the Caribbean in August, and no one was quite sure what they were actually doing there. And then the boat strikes began.
COOPER: The U.S. Military carried out a strike in international waters on an alleged drug boat.
BERTRAND: Those attacks on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean and in the Eastern Pacific, that the U.S. was using the military to conduct.
CULVER (voice-over): There were three attacks in September.
BERTRAND: And this is a really significant escalation.
CULVER (voice-over): By the end of December, 35 boats had been destroyed and at least 115 people killed.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: These are people that are killing our population. We're saving tremendous amounts of lives.
DAVID SANGER, WHITE HOUSE AND NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: We never believed that this was just about drugs. Why not? Well, first of all, the president has been rightly concerned about the fentanyl crisis, but fentanyl does not move through Venezuela.
CULVER (voice-over): It's mostly cocaine, but --
EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: A lot of the cocaine that comes from that region and goes through Venezuela ends up in Europe, not the United States. Most of it actually.
SANGER: There's a reason for concern, but not the kind of concern that would require you to move 15 percent or 20 percent of the U.S. Navy offshore.
CULVER (voice-over): By October, the Trump administration had amped the military pressure significantly, sending the world's largest warship toward Venezuela, the USS Gerald R. Ford, along with its support ships.
SANGER: You don't need the Gerald R. Ford to intercept these boats. The Coast Guard can do it with small cutters very nicely. Thank you.
CULVER (voice-over): And thousands of U.S. troops were arriving in Puerto Rico. Then economic pressure was added on top of military pressure. In mid-December, President Trump announced a blockade on all oil tankers going into and out of Venezuela.
TRUMP: We're not going to let anybody going through that shouldn't be going through.
CULVER (voice-over): The U.S. would seize two Venezuelan-linked oil tankers in December.
BRIAN FONSECA, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS PROFESSOR, FIU: The blockade was really designed to cripple Venezuela's economy.
JORGE RAMOS, FORMER UNIVISION ANCHOR: The idea was that this policy of maximum pressure was going to work and finally make sure that someone within the military or within the Venezuelan government would do something against Maduro.
CULVER (voice-over): And just in case, military and economic pressure wouldn't do the trick, the Trump administration added another element. The CIA.
BERTRAND: Beginning in August, the CIA inserted a very small team into Caracas undetected in order to monitor Venezuelan President Maduro's movements. They managed to track his locations where he was living, what he was eating, what he was wearing. And so this was creating a very detailed pattern of life that the CIA was then able to pass back to the U.S. Military so that they could ultimately map out where Maduro would be at any given point.
The CIA also, according to our sources, actually had an asset inside Maduro's inner circle that was feeding them information as well.
CULVER (voice-over): And in late December, the CIA orchestrated the first U.S. attack on Venezuelan soil.
TRUMP: There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs.
BERTRAND: This particular operation was carried out by the CIA, which conducted a drone strike on a port facility on the coast of Venezuela that they believed was being used by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to load drugs onto boats coming from Venezuela and then ship them onward.
[20:05:17]
CULVER (voice-over): It was all designed to make Maduro voluntarily give up power, but publicly he didn't seem to be taking any of it too seriously. There were repeated instances of the Venezuelan leader doing crazy, exaggerated dances.
TRUMP: He gets up there and he tries to imitate my dance a little bit.
CULVER (voice-over): According to "The New York Times," that dancing made the Trump administration believe Maduro was mocking or dismissing the U.S. president.
ELLIOT ABRAMS, FORMER U.S. ENVOY TO VENEZUELA FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP: I don't think Maduro ever dreamed there would be a snatch and grab in Caracas. What I was working on this in 2019 and '20, we kept saying all options are on the table, but the lesson Maduro would have learned is there weren't really on the table. We weren't going to do anything military.
SANGER: Behind the scenes there were conversations with Maduro, including directly with the president on at least one or two occasions where by the president's own account he told Maduro to leave the country.
BERTRAND: So the initial order by President Trump to get the mission started came at 10:46 p.m. on Friday night. Around 2:00 a.m. local time, which is 1:00 a.m. Eastern Time, there began to be a lot of explosions lighting up the sky in Venezuela. Very dramatic images were coming out from the ground. It turned out to be those explosions from the U.S. drones and warplanes dropping bombs on these military installations in Venezuela, radio towers, air defense systems, kind of lighting up the sky in a way that made it seem like the entire city was under attack.
CULVER (voice-over): Analyst Phil Gunson lives in Caracas.
PHIL GUNSON, SENIOR ANALYST, CARACAS INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP: My wife heard some bangs and wasn't sure what was going on. Thought it might be thunder or maybe an earthquake. And I was actually woken up by a phone call. A friend of mine calling me to see if -- see if I was OK.
BERTRAND: This operation involved over 150 aircraft.
CULVER (voice-over): You can see some of the helicopters approaching in this video posted to social media.
BERTRAND: Up to 200 U.S. personnel were on the ground in Caracas as this operation unfolded. Several of them were very elite. Delta Force operators, who were the ones who were actually going to go into the compound and arrest Maduro. Upon reaching that compound, the Delta Force operators actually encountered a Cuban quick reaction force, which was serving as a kind of security force for Maduro. And a massive gunfight ensued. No American was killed.
WILLIAM NEUMAN, AUTHOR, "THINGS ARE NEVER SO BAD THAT THEY CAN'T GET WORSE: INSIDE THE COLLAPSE OF VENEZUELA": The Cuban government has said that more than 30 of their personnel were killed in the raid.
CULVER (voice-over): Venezuela's interior minister says at least 100 people died on the ground.
BERTRAND: Once that firefight was over, U.S. forces, they were able to go into the compound by blowing open the steel door that was the entryway of that facility. They made their way into the building looking for Maduro. They found him in just about three minutes time. They encountered him as he was trying, along with his wife, to hide behind another steel door that was going to lead into a more heavily fortified area of the compound.
CULVER (voice-over): A safe room.
BERTRAND: And as they were trying to flee U.S. forces, they actually hit their heads on that steel door and they sustained pretty significant injuries from that, according to our sources.
CULVER (voice-over): Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were injured and captured. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We arrived at Maduro's compound at 1:01 a.m.
Eastern Standard Time. The force successfully exfiltrated and was over the water at 3:29 a.m. Eastern standard time.
FONSECA: Think about this for a minute. You have your own intelligence capability, right? You have been preparing six months for some move that the Americans were going to make militarily. And you mean to tell me that the Americans can fly from ship to shore, go into country, land, pick up Maduro? No one tipped him off. No one said, hey, here's a WhatsApp message. They're coming for you, boss. And within two and a half hours, the Americans can go in, snatch, grab and get out. And just -- I mean that is an incredible operation by U.S. special forces.
CULVER (voice-over): Once in custody, the couple was taken by helicopter to the USS Iwo Jima, waiting about 100 miles offshore. It's where this photo of Maduro was taken and posted to social media by President Trump.
BERTRAND: This was a really remarkable photo because it showed President Maduro in a sweat suit with headphones on and goggles that were meant to disorient him, make him unaware of his surroundings, and detained by U.S. forces who were clearly holding on to his arm.
[20:10:08]
CULVER (voice-over): The USS Iwo Jima transported Maduro and his wife to the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, where they were transferred to a 757, which took them to Stewart National Guard Base north of New York City. The pair was then taken by chopper to Manhattan for processing. And the DEA agents gave Maduro a perp walk.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good night. Happy New Year.
PEREZ: The perp walk was highly unusual. It's generally against Justice Department policy because the concern is that you're going to affect his right to a fair trial, that you will essentially taint the jury pool.
CULVER (voice-over): The couple was now in New York, but did they get there legally?
REP. JIM HIMES (D-CT): It's clearly illegal under international law. No, no, no argument about that. I happen to believe it's illegal under U.S. law and the Constitution. And I mean, people can Google the Constitution and read that war making powers reside with the Congress.
REP. RANDY FINE (R-FL): There's no question it was legal. I think everyone on the left and the right agrees that he was not the legitimate leader of Venezuela. They had an election that Maduro refused to accept the results of. So he was a -- he was a drug kingpin running a country, not recognized by anyone. So -- and he was indicted in the United States. So of course, we had the right to do it.
CULVER (voice-over): Once in New York, Maduro and his wife learned the charges they are facing. PEREZ: Maduro is facing four charges, narco terrorism, cocaine
importation conspiracy, as well as two charges related to providing weapons. In the case of Cilia Flores, she's only charged with three of those charges. She's not charged with the narco terrorism charge.
CULVER (voice-over): As for who is overseeing Venezuela while Maduro awaits trial?
TRUMP: We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.
SANGER: When the president spoke about the operation on that Saturday morning after Maduro was seized, he never mentioned the word democracy once.
TRUMP: We're in the oil business.
CULVER (voice-over): But he did mention oil.
TRUMP: We're going to take back the oil that, frankly, we should have taken back a long time ago.
CULVER (voice-over): More than 20 times.
TRUMP: We're going to rebuild the oil infrastructure.
BETH SANNER, FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: This is not about democracy. We have made no demands about that.
SANGER: He seemed happy to leave in place the structure that Maduro had created.
CULVER (voice-over): The Trump administration chose Delcy Rodriguez, Maduro's vice president, to lead Venezuela instead of opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize and whose party is believed to be the real winner of the 2024 election in Venezuela.
SANNER: They looked at the opposition and Machado and said, how in the world is she going to be able to just come in and run a country that is run by the military and a military that won't willingly give up? And the only way that would happen if we put in Machado in one day, the next day, you'd have to have U.S. boots on the ground to enforce that. So you cannot flip a switch and turn it into a democratically run country, even though it should be.
FINE: I think you've got the same people largely in charge, but I think they know that the drugs are stopping. I think they know that they're going to have to work with the United States, and I think they know what's going to happen if they don't.
RAMOS: The dictatorship is in place completely right now in Venezuela. Millions of people in Venezuela, as we speak, they are in silence and in fear. They don't feel safe to go out and to express their ideas.
CULVER (voice-over): The uncertainty has put the whole region on edge, as we witnessed along the Colombian-Venezuelan border.
And so here it is now evening going into late in the night. And we're about to see some of the many patrols that have sprawled out across the 1300 plus miles of border between Colombia and Venezuela.
(Voice-over): Ahead, Venezuela's black gold and how it's long colored its relationship with the U.S.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:16:33]
CULVER (voice-over): Near the Venezuelan border, a Colombian city sits at the foot of a mountain range.
And this is a community that's basically a migrant settlement.
(Voice-over): Here we find some of the nearly three million Venezuelans who have fled to Colombia in recent years.
Javierliz (PH) is a mother of three who came to Colombia two years ago.
She said life in Venezuela was incredibly difficult. Even working, she said. You had to make choices. Do you buy clothes? Do you buy food?
(Voice-over): Her home, incredibly modest, but better, still she insists, than life on the other side of the border.
She acknowledges that Venezuela has a lot of resources. Obviously oil primarily, but she says a lot of the money that's made there stays to the upper class and doesn't trickle down to the rest of the population.
(Voice-over): Venezuela's wealth in oil has long co-existed with corruption and deep poverty, wealth that has tied the U.S. and Venezuela together for more than a century.
FONSECA: U.S. interests have been paired with Venezuelan oil since the beginning.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Newly awarded concessions shared by U.S. companies add to the strategic importance of this oil boom area.
CULVER (voice-over): U.S. oil companies rushed into Venezuela after World War I, quickly scaling up their production.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Precious oil makes big news in Venezuela.
CULVER (voice-over): The result, Venezuela emerged as a global oil power. All while the country was under a brutal dictatorship. For most of the 1950s, Venezuela was ruled by another dictator, Marcos Perez Jimenez.
NEUMAN: When Venezuela was under the Perez Jimenez dictatorship, it was very close to the United States. CULVER (voice-over): Washington even gave Perez Jimenez a prestigious
U.S. Military medal in 1954.
NEUMAN: That was a period when the U.S. was perfectly happy to ignore questions of human rights and work with dictators.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Vice President Nixon arrives in Venezuela, last stop on his South American tour.
CULVER (voice-over): May 13th, 1958.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Motorcade stops for traffic. The mob catches up and attacks the cars.
CULVER (voice-over): Richard Nixon's car attacked by a mob in Caracas. They were angry at the U.S. for letting Perez Jimenez take refuge in America after he was overthrown.
NEUMAN: Venezuela was going towards democracy.
CULVER (voice-over): 1958 became a watershed year for U.S.-Venezuela relations. The violence against Nixon forced the U.S. to focus on Venezuela's transition to democracy, and that attention helped pull the two countries closer together.
GUNSON: The end of the Perez Jimenez dictatorship ushered in this really very successful, stable two-party democracy.
CULVER (voice-over): In 1963, John F. Kennedy welcomed the Venezuela's president, Romulo Betancourt, to the White House.
TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: The Kennedy administration saw countries like Venezuela as models. Democratic countries that are the future.
CULVER (voice-over): From Kennedy to Reagan, Washington provided military aid. Under Reagan, the U.S. sold Venezuela 24 F-16 fighter jets. The country, as they saw it, was a trusted ally in the region.
[20:20:05]
FONSECA: We did offer not just military equipment like fighter jets, but we offered a lot of doctrinal training, and that meant the military institutions sort of comprised a Western military culture.
CULVER (voice-over): But by the 1980s and well into the '90s.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There has been rising unrest in Venezuela.
CULVER (voice-over): Venezuela's economy soured.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A country rich in oil, but in which the army of poor is growing and falling farther behind all the time.
CULVER (voice-over): Even in democracy, Venezuela's government started to become synonymous with corruption yet again. FONSECA: There are lots of Venezuelans that were suffering and
struggling, and this is the argument that made Chavez so popular. He was elected in a landslide.
CULVER (voice-over): On the eve of the 1998 election, Univision anchor Jorge Ramos sat down with future Venezuelan authoritarian leader, Hugo Chavez.
RAMOS: He wanted to project the image of a democratic leader open to the world. That was a complete lie. He created alliances with Russia, but mostly with Cuba. He admired what Fidel Castro had done.
GUNSON: Castro, I think, probably would have said to Chavez, one good way of staying in power is fighting the U.S. So from the beginning of Chavez's rule in 1999, there was a very tense relationship with Washington.
CULVER (voice-over): Optimistic, Bill Clinton invited Chavez to the White House.
NEUMAN: There was this talk about creating this hemisphere wide free trade.
CULVER (voice-over): Interviewing Chavez again two years later, Ramos was met with hostility.
RAMOS: I remember that he put two chairs in the middle of a basketball court. He surrounded the court with hundreds of people that follow him and that loved him.
CULVER (voice-over): Chavez rewrote the constitution and lifted term limits, allowing him to stay in power.
NAFTALI: U.S. president George W. Bush would view Chavez as a threat. And indeed, when there was an attempted coup in 2002, the United States very quickly and prematurely recognized the coup leaders as the legitimate government of Venezuela.
CULVER (voice-over): The coup failed, and Chavez remained.
RAMOS: And after that he became radicalized.
NAFTALI: Relations between the United States and Chavez were never repaired.
NEUMAN: He was extremely critical. George W. Bush, he famously went to the U.N. General Assembly and gave a speech the day after Bush had spoken, where he said, the devil was here yesterday. Still smell the sulfur.
RAMOS: He directly chose Nicolas Maduro as his successor so the dictatorship continue.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Venezuela is at its economic breaking point.
NEUMAN: It's a crisis. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:27:50]
CULVER (voice-over): Venezuela 2013. A 14-year era ends.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, he has now passed away. The vice president, Nicolas Maduro, made the official announcement.
NICOLAS MADURO, FORMER VENEZUELAN LEADER (through text translation): We've received the most tragic and difficult information.
CULVER (voice-over): Maduro, a former bus driver and union organizer, was hand-picked by Chavez to be his successor.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: After Maduro came into power very shortly after that, the oil price collapsed.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Look at this chart. Crude oil is sitting at about $54 a barrel right now. Prices have been slashed in half.
FONSECA: You have this massive decline in energy prices. So now Maduro takes power. He does not have the kind of economy or checkbook that Chavez had, and he can't make investments in social programing.
CULVER (voice-over): Less than a year into President Nicolas Maduro's first term, protesters took to the streets and were met with gunfire, tear gas and water cannons.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The demonstrations began two weeks ago. Thousands of students demanded government action to end violent crime waves in the country, stem inflation and bring an end to shortages of necessities.
GUNSON: In the first decade of Maduro's time in office, Venezuela underwent the most severe economic contraction in peacetime of any country in the modern era.
CULVER (voice-over): Life under Maduro was grueling for the vast majority of Venezuelans, with rolling blackouts.
MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: Medicine is in short supply, leaving many with treatable illnesses to die.
CULVER (voice-over): Staggeringly long lines for fuel in the most petrol rich nation in the world. Hyperinflation and the monumentally steep devaluation of Venezuela's currency, the bolivar.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The currency is so devalued some shopkeepers weigh the money rather than waste time counting.
[20:30:06]
LULU GARCIA NAVARRO, JOURNALIST, NEW YORK TIMES: During the Maduro years, there was starvation. CULVER (voice-over): Maduro's citizens reported losing an average of
24 pounds of body weight in 2017, according to a Venezuelan university study.
Despite all that, in 2018, Maduro told the United Nations General Assembly that the humanitarian crisis was a fabrication.
GARCIA NAVARRO: 2018 is really, I think, politically, a turning point because it's the first time that it's pretty much widely acknowledged that the government and Maduro has not legitimately won the elections.
CULVER (voice-over): More than 50 countries refused to recognize Maduro's 2018 reelection.
MADURO (through translator): I swear to you, I will fulfill my promise and will dedicate myself entirely to recover the economic growth, to heal our economy.
CULVER (voice-over): United States officials called it a sham and an insult to democracy.
NEUMAN: Over time, he started banning opposition leaders from running against him, jailing opposition figures.
GARCIA NAVARRO: This is all in the context of torture happening, disappearances. This was a brutal, brutal regime.
RAMOS: He used all the resources that he had in government and in the army to control Venezuelan people, to control protests.
CULVER (voice-over): In February 2019, then Univision anchor Jorge Ramos traveled to Caracas to sit down with the Venezuelan president.
RAMOS: I remember thinking about my first question because that was going to set the tone and deciding to ask him about him being a dictator, and I told him, you're not the president of Venezuela, you're a dictator.
(Through text translation): You know you are not the legitimate president. So, what should I call you? For them you are a dictator.
CULVER (voice-over): After calling him a dictator, Ramos showed him this video of young people eating from a garbage truck.
RAMOS: I showed Nicolas Maduro, look, this is what you've done. You are responsible for the hunger and for the poverty of these people. And he just couldn't stand it. So after minute 17, he stood up and he said, this interview doesn't work anymore. And then he left. They stole the equipment. They stole the video cards. They arrested us. They deported us.
It was terrible for them because they wanted to project the idea of a democratic government, a legitimate government. And what they proved is that they were dictators.
GARCIA NAVARRO: When historians look back at the Maduro regime, they will see a period of decay, corruption, unbearable cruelty and the degradation of Venezuelan society.
BRETT MCGURK, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: The rule of Maduro is terrible for the people of Venezuela. It's against the interests of the United States of America. He has invited in Iran and Hezbollah.
CULVER (voice-over): While Maduro has consistently denied any ties to the terrorist group Hezbollah, he's often touted close relationships with two crucial allies, Russia and China.
GARCIA NAVARRO: There are sanctions placed on his regime, and what we see is Russia, China coming in to fill the breach, taking the opportunity to get into a part of the world that they see as America's backyard.
One of the great tragedies of Venezuela is the massive exodus that the Maduro years caused.
CULVER: Just over my shoulder here, this is the Venezuelan flag here in Mexico. And that's because the vast majority of these folks are from Venezuela. We're talking about one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world, and you've got millions that are hoping to get into the U.S.
ABRAMS: This is the greatest refugee flow in the history of Latin America. About eight million Venezuelans, which is a fourth of their population, have fled the country.
CULVER (voice-over): But this woman stayed.
RAMOS: Maria Corina Machado stands out for her bravery and for staying in Venezuela. She was able to bring together all the opposition figures and all the opposition movements.
CULVER (voice-over): After winning by a landslide in the primary, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was banned from running in the 2024 presidential election by the Maduro regime, but by most accounts, she led her party to victory.
GARCIA NAVARRO: When the elections happen in 2024, the Carter Center, which was the only group that was allowed to monitor the elections, says that it had been completely illegitimate.
[20:35:06]
TIMOTHY SNYDER, HISTORIAN: A majority of Venezuelans voted against this regime.
MCGURK: Maduro's regime cracked down on the opposition and continued to remain and seized power.
GARCIA NAVARRO: We see Maria Corina Machado, who is really the heart and soul of the opposition, the head of the opposition have to go into hiding.
CULVER (voice-over): She would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize and dedicate it to President Trump. MARIA CORINA MACHADO, VENEZUELAN OPPOSITION LEADER: Maduro started the
war. President Trump is ending the war.
CULVER (voice-over): And while Machado may not be returning to Venezuela to lead for now, neither will Nicolas Maduro.
RAMOS: I think he's going to spend the rest of his life in jail.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:40:32]
CULVER (voice-over): As commuters were making their way into New York City for the first full workweek of 2026, an extraordinary spectacle was happening in the skies above them.
RENATO STABILE, ATTORNEY: They were flying him on helicopters and taking him on boats. I think it was all for show.
CULVER (voice-over): Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were being moved from a notorious Brooklyn lockup to a storied Manhattan courthouse.
PEREZ: The imagery was clearly very carefully orchestrated, and it worked just as they wanted. The showmanship aspect of this could be prejudicial to his trial.
CULVER (voice-over): Waiting for them outside the courthouse, both pro and anti-Maduro protesters.
PEREZ: The atmosphere was electric because the Venezuelan community in New York turned out in a very big way.
LAURA COATES, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: In this extraordinary moment of having Maduro in a courthouse behind us right now in Manhattan.
CULVER (voice-over): CNN's Laura Coates was inside the courtroom.
COATES: He's very large in stature, man, and he certainly did not appear to be accustomed at all to being manhandled around any room. He seemed to do so with some difficulty. He seemed to have to hold on to the sides of his chair, almost like a belabored lifting and a belabored sitting.
CULVER (voice-over): The fallout from the raid was clear from the moment they arrived.
BERTRAND: Maduro's wife appearing with bandages on her head, presumably from the head injuries that she suffered during the operation, and Maduro himself appeared to have trouble sitting and standing. And, according to Maduro's wife's attorney, she also had significant bruising on her ribs. So they have asked the court for a full health evaluation before any of this can move forward.
PEREZ: That could be an effort to try to get the two of them relocated from what is a very notorious prison. This is the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. And if you're the Maduros' attorneys, you want to try to get them out of there as soon as you can.
CULVER (voice-over): But despite these injuries, Maduro tried to strongarm the proceedings.
COATES: When Maduro was speaking to his attorney, it was clear that he held, if not one, but both reigns. He really was seeming to be clear about what it is he wanted.
PEREZ: Maduro started talking about how he was the rightful president of Venezuela, that he was innocent, and then turned it into essentially an arraignment, which was not supposed to happen that day. So you can see how this is going to go.
STABILE: My initial impression of Maduro at his arraignment is he's going to be a very difficult client to manage.
CULVER (voice-over): Something Attorney Renato Stabile understands having defended the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was convicted on drug charges in the U.S. in 2024.
STABILE: Defending someone of this stature is different because there are really these historical implications and what happens in that courtroom is really going to affect the course of history in a lot of ways.
CULVER (voice-over): That will be up to the judge to decide.
PEREZ: Alvin Hellerstein, the judge who's overseeing this case, is 92 years old. He was put on the bench by President Bill Clinton, and he's done a number of very prominent cases. Of course, he handled some of the Trump cases in New York.
COATES: This judge is well aware of the historical significance of having Nicolas Maduro in a court before him on federal charges. And yet it seemed as if he was going to some length to ensure that he wasn't going to treat this case as a high profile matter, that he was going to treat this case according to what due process required.
JON MAY, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: He is not going to be impressed with who the defendant is, or impressed with all the media coverage.
CULVER (voice-over): Jon May understands this kind of case. He was General Manuel Noriega's defense attorney in the 1990s, when the former dictator of Panama was tried in Miami federal court for drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering.
[20:45:01]
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: We're going to show you what it was like when General Manuel Noriega surrendered to United States forces.
CULVER (voice-over): Similar to Maduro, Noriega was captured and arrested by U.S. forces in 1990, an apprehension that his lawyers argued was unlawful. MAY: We argued that the U.S. Military had engaged in war crimes in how
they apprehended General Noriega in terms of all of the civilians that were killed. There are certain provisions of the Geneva Convention and the Humanitarian Law of War that prohibit certain kinds of activity.
CULVER (voice-over): A defense Maduro foreshadowed his very first day in court, proclaiming in Spanish he is a kidnaped president and prisoner of war.
COATES: It was very clear that his strategy early on was that he wanted it very clearly known that he felt the operation that deposed him was in violation of his rights.
STABILE: The case law says that no matter how a defendant is brought into the United States, they can still be tried here. So whether or not it's legal is really of no consequence to whether or not he can be tried here.
CULVER (voice-over): The second big issue before they even get to the actual charges against him, should Maduro have immunity from prosecution because he is a leader of a sovereign country?
STABILE: And that's an issue that the United States government is contesting because they don't recognize him as the sovereign of a foreign country.
COATES: This case might be more difficult in terms of undermining an immunity argument for Maduro. Not impossible, but more difficult because he believes and has been recognized by other countries as the legitimate head of state of Venezuela.
CULVER (voice-over): Noriega also tried to argue immunity, but his defense didn't work. He was convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: In Miami today, General Manuel Noriega was found guilty on eight of 10 counts of drug trafficking, money laundering and conspiracy.
CULVER (voice-over): For Maduro and his wife, the next step then will come facing the actual charges. Both have been indicted for drug trafficking and weapons possession, and the former president is also accused of supporting terrorist organizations in South America.
MAY: When you read the Maduro indictment, whether or not they are layman or a lawyer, and seriously looks at the allegations, I think are going to come to the same conclusion that I do. This is a very weak indictment.
STABILE: It seems very snitch heavy. In other words, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of concrete, objective evidence behind the charges. I expect you're going to have a parade of cooperators who have cut deals with the government coming in.
PEREZ: I think one of the interesting things in this case will be the role of the CIA. There's clearly a CIA asset who was inside his inner circle, essentially. And the question will be, can prosecutors use that person in this prosecution? The CIA generally doesn't want its assets or its informants to be used in any criminal case because those people are undercover.
COATES: And the defense strategy, they are going to try to drown the United States prosecution in motions to make sure that classified documents come out.
CULVER (voice-over): No matter how it turns out, guilty or not guilty, most agree it will go on for years, and Maduro will likely never return to Venezuela again.
RAMOS: I think he's going to spend the rest of his life in jail.
COATES: In the court of public opinion, the jury has already decided that he should not be in Venezuela. In a court of law, his guilt has yet to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. But if the goal was his removal then the case is already successful for the United States.
CULVER (voice-over): With Maduro gone from Venezuela, what comes next for the country?
SANNER: I think the worst case scenario is probably that the country falls apart.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:53:41]
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Explosions rocked Venezuela.
CULVER (voice-over): After a large scale military strike.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump celebrates the operation to capture Venezuela's leader.
CULVER (voice-over): After an arrest.
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Hard to understate quite what a move this is geopolitically by the Trump White House.
CULVER (voice-over): What's next for Venezuela and the world?
WALSH: The U.S. military very good at this sort of thing, but they fail repeatedly in what comes next.
TRUMP: We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.
STEPHEN MILLER, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF: We are in charge because we have the United States military stationed outside the country.
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Delcy Rodriguez has formerly been sworn in as Venezuela's acting president. CULVER (voice-over): For now, Rodriguez and the rest of Nicolas
Maduro's power structure remain intact.
SANGER: That means that in this vast country, it is Maduro's old intelligence and military leaders that will be the enforcers on the ground.
SANNER: This is going to be a really tough nut to crack, especially if we don't have boots on the ground and they don't want us there.
CULVER (voice-over): The U.S. did have military boots on the ground in Panama before and after they arrested General Manuel Noriega in 1990.
[20:55:09]
MCGURK: One of the benefits of that operation was we actually did help bring to power the democratically elected leader of Panama. And today, Panama is a flourishing democracy.
CULVER (voice-over): And for the United States, it's secured a strategic asset, the Panama Canal. In Venezuela, the strategic asset President Trump covets is oil.
TRUMP: We're going to have our very large United States oil companies go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.
CULVER (voice-over): President Trump's declarations about Venezuelan oil echo from the 2003 Iraq war and the U.S. removal of Saddam Hussein.
GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Oil belongs to the Iraqi people. It's their asset.
CULVER (voice-over): But insurgency and chaos prevented oil companies from returning until years later.
SANNER: The real difference with Iraq is the way we went about it. We said, let's get rid of everyone who had anything to do with the government, and we got rid of everybody. And for that reason, it failed in Iraq.
CULVER (voice-over): Failure that turned into a nearly nine-year military mission, leaving thousands of American troops dead and tens of thousands more wounded.
TRUMP: We are going to run the country until such --
CULVER (voice-over): So what does President Trump mean when he says the U.S. will run Venezuela?
FONSECA: I think President Trump used the term run very intentionally because this is not about U.S. governing Venezuela. I think what Secretary Rubio has reinforced is this idea that the United States is going to run Venezuela because it's going to completely control Venezuela's economy, and it's going to leverage its ability to control the economy to push for political concessions.
MARCO RUBIO, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: They understand that the only way they can move oil and generate revenue and not have economic collapse is if they cooperate and work with the United States.
ANNA STEWART, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Trump announced tariffs on America's top three trading partners.
TRUMP: They charge us. We charge.
CULVER (voice-over): Economic threats, including tariffs and trade wars, have been part of the Trump administration's arsenal from day one. An administration that wants to dominate the Western Hemisphere.
SANGER: And the "National Security Strategy," which came out in November of 2025, was the big blaring siren of where Donald Trump was taking America.
CULVER (voice-over): The strategy states, quote, "The United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere."
The Monroe Doctrine refers to President James Monroe's 1823 annual message to Congress, in which he warned European powers not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.
TRUMP: The Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we've superseded it by a lot, by a real lot. They now call it the Donroe document. I don't know. American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again. Won't happen.
MILLER: We live in a world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.
CULVER (voice-over): The day after the raid in Venezuela, the president began naming other countries that could be next.
TRUMP: Cuba is ready to fall. We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security and the European Union needs us to have it. And they know that. Colombia is run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States, and he's not going to be doing it very long. Let me tell you.
CULVER (voice-over): Pressure was building here in Colombia, just a border away from where Maduro was ousted by the U.S.
What you're looking at here might look like military special forces, but these are Colombia's national police, anti-narcotics officers, and they're prepping for a jungle mission near the country's southern border. This operation comes at a moment of regional tension. You can almost feel it at times with uncertainty in neighboring Venezuela spilling over after the U.S. capture of Nicolas Maduro.
(Voice-over): Despite the uncertainty in the region, there are signs that tensions may be easing. Days after threatening military action in Colombia, President Trump and Colombian President Gustavo Petro spoke by phone for the first time. And on Friday, President Trump struck a hopeful tone that the U.S. and Venezuela are working well together.
FONSECA: I think the best case scenario for Venezuela is that elections occur. They're free, they're fair, and that there is a peaceful transition of power.
SANNER: I think the worst case scenario is probably that the country falls apart and becomes just a chaotic conflagration of forces fighting each other and mass migration.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
