How the US captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro

Af­ter months of grow­ing mil­i­tary pres­sure on Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump or­dered a brazen op­er­a­tion in­to the South Amer­i­can coun­try to cap­ture its leader and whisk him to the Unit­ed States where his ad­min­is­tra­tion planned to put him on tri­al.

In a Sat­ur­day morn­ing in­ter­view on “Fox & Friends Week­end,” Trump laid out the de­tails of the overnight strike, af­ter which he said Maduro and his wife, Cil­ia Flo­res, were flown by he­li­copter to a U.S. war­ship. Lat­er Sat­ur­day, Trump and oth­er of­fi­cials gave more de­tails dur­ing a news con­fer­ence from his Flori­da res­i­dence.

Maduro was in a ‘fortress,’ Trump says

Trump de­scribed Maduro as be­ing “high­ly guard­ed” in a pres­i­den­tial palace that was “like a fortress.” Maduro had near­ly made it to a safe room in­side it, Trump told re­porters, al­though “he was un­able to close it.”

Amer­i­can forces were armed with “mas­sive blow­torch­es,” which they would have used to cut through steel walls had Maduro locked him­self in the room, Trump said ear­li­er.

“It had what they call a safe­ty space, where it’s sol­id steel all around,” Trump said. “He didn’t get that space closed. He was try­ing to get in­to it, but he got bum-rushed right so fast that he didn’t get in­to that. We were pre­pared.”

US mil­i­tary pre­pared for months

Gen. Dan Caine, chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. forces had re­hearsed their ma­neu­vers for months, learn­ing every­thing about Maduro — where he was and what he ate, as well as de­tails of his pets and the clothes he wore.

“We think, we de­vel­op, we train, we re­hearse, we de­brief, we re­hearse again, and again,” Caine said, say­ing his forces were “set” by ear­ly De­cem­ber. “Not to get it right, but to en­sure we can­not get it wrong.”

Ear­li­er, Trump said U.S. forces had prac­ticed their ex­trac­tion on a repli­ca build­ing.

“They ac­tu­al­ly built a house which was iden­ti­cal to the one they went in­to with all the same, all that steel all over the place,” Trump said.

We turned off all the lights’

Trump said the U.S. op­er­a­tion took place in dark­ness, al­though he did not de­tail how that had hap­pened. He said the U.S. turned off “al­most all of the lights in Cara­cas,” the cap­i­tal of Venezuela. At the news con­fer­ence, he said the city’s lights “were large­ly turned off due to a cer­tain ex­per­tise that we have.”

“This thing was so or­ga­nized,” he said. “And they go in­to a dark space with ma­chine guns fac­ing them all over the place.”

At least sev­en ex­plo­sions were heard in Cara­cas. The at­tack, which De­fense Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth de­scribed as part of “mas­sive joint mil­i­tary and law en­force­ment raid,” last­ed less than 30 min­utes.

Venezuela’s vice pres­i­dent, Del­cy Ro­dríguez, who un­der law takes pow­er, said some Venezue­lan civil­ians and mem­bers of the mil­i­tary were killed.

Trump says ‘a cou­ple of guys in­jured’

Trump said a few U.S. mem­bers of the op­er­a­tion were in­jured but he be­lieved no one was killed.

“A cou­ple of guys were hit, but they came back and they’re sup­posed to be in pret­ty good shape,” he said.

The Re­pub­li­can pres­i­dent said the U.S. had lost no air­craft, but that a he­li­copter was “hit pret­ty hard.”

“We had to do it be­cause it’s a war,” he added.

In his news con­fer­ence, Trump did not men­tion the in­juries or he­li­copter dam­age, stress­ing that no Amer­i­can lives had been lost. Caine said the he­li­copter that was struck was able to safe­ly fly on its re­turn.

The weath­er was a fac­tor

Trump said U.S. forces held off on con­duct­ing the op­er­a­tion for days, wait­ing for cloud cov­er to pass be­cause the “weath­er has to be per­fect.”

“We wait­ed four days,” he said. “We were go­ing to do this four days ago, three days ago, two days ago. And then all of a sud­den it opened up and we said, go. And I’ll tell you, it’s, it was just amaz­ing.”

Caine said that on Fri­day night, “the weath­er broke just enough, clear­ing a path that on­ly the most skilled avi­a­tors in the world could move through.” He said he­li­copters flew low to the wa­ter to en­ter Venezuela and were cov­ered above by pro­tec­tive U.S. air­craft.

Op­er­a­tion ‘Ab­solute Re­solve,’ by the num­bers

Caine de­tailed the air­craft and U.S. forces in­volved in the op­er­a­tion, which he said was named “Ab­solute Re­solve”:

—more than 150 air­craft launched from across the West­ern Hemi­sphere, in­clud­ing F-18, F-22 and F-35 fight­er jets, B-1 bombers and drones.

—Trump gave the go-ahead at 10:46 p.m. EST Fri­day.

—U.S. forces reached Maduro’s com­pound at 1:01 a.m. EST Sat­ur­day and were back over wa­ter head­ed away at 3:29 a.m. EST.

—U.S. ser­vice mem­bers in­volved in the op­er­a­tion ranged in age from 20 to 49

Where is Maduro now?

Trump said that Maduro and Flo­res were flown by he­li­copter to a U.S. war­ship and would go on to New York to face charges. He lat­er post­ed on Truth So­cial a pho­to of the Venezue­lan leader, wear­ing in a gray sweat­suit, pro­tec­tive head­phones and blind­fold. The cap­tion said: “Nico­las Maduro on board the USS Iwo Ji­ma.”

The Jus­tice De­part­ment re­leased an in­dict­ment ac­cus­ing the pair of hav­ing an al­leged role in a nar­co-ter­ror­ism con­spir­a­cy.

Months of es­ca­lat­ing ac­tions

The raid was a dra­mat­ic es­ca­la­tion from a se­ries of strikes the U.S. mil­i­tary has car­ried out on what Trump has said were drug car­ry­ing boats in the Caribbean Sea and east­ern Pa­cif­ic Ocean since ear­ly Sep­tem­ber. There had been 35 known strikes that killed at least 115 peo­ple.

On Dec. 29, Trump said the U.S. struck a fa­cil­i­ty where boats ac­cused of car­ry­ing drugs “load up.” The CIA was be­hind the drone strike at a dock­ing area be­lieved to have been used by Venezue­lan drug car­tels. It was the first known di­rect op­er­a­tion on Venezue­lan soil since the U.S. be­gan its strikes in Sep­tem­ber.

WASH­ING­TON (AP)