Ousted leader pleads not guilty in first US court appearance

De­posed Venezue­lan leader Nicolás Maduro de­clared him­self “in­no­cent” and a “de­cent man” as he plead­ed not guilty to fed­er­al drug traf­fick­ing charges in a US court­room yes­ter­day. “I’m in­no­cent. I am not guilty. I am a de­cent man, the pres­i­dent of my coun­try,” Maduro told a judge.

Maduro was mak­ing his first ap­pear­ance in an Amer­i­can court­room on the nar­co-ter­ror­ism charges Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump‘s ad­min­is­tra­tion used to jus­ti­fy cap­tur­ing him and bring­ing him to New York.

Maduro, wear­ing a blue jail uni­form, and his wife were led in­to court around noon for a brief, but re­quired, le­gal pro­ceed­ing that will like­ly kick off a pro­longed le­gal fight over whether he can be put on tri­al in the US.

His next court date is set for March 17. Writ­ing on a yel­low le­gal pad placed next to a copy of the in­dict­ment in his spot on the de­fence ta­ble, Maduro asked that his notes “be re­spect­ed” and that he be al­lowed to keep them.

US Dis­trict Judge Alvin Heller­stein di­rect­ed pros­e­cu­tors to work with the US Mar­shals to abide by that re­quest.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion is mak­ing pre­lim­i­nary plans to re­open the US em­bassy in Venezuela fol­low­ing Maduro’s ouster, a State De­part­ment of­fi­cial said.

The of­fi­cial, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss in­ter­nal ad­min­is­tra­tion de­lib­er­a­tions, said ear­ly prepa­ra­tions “to al­low for a re­open­ing” of the em­bassy in Cara­cas had be­gun in the event Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump de­cides to re­turn Amer­i­can diplo­mats to the coun­try.

The of­fi­cial cau­tioned, how­ev­er, that no de­ci­sion had yet been made to re­sume op­er­a­tions at the fa­cil­i­ty, which was shut­tered in 2019 dur­ing Trump’s first term in of­fice. Re-open­ing a closed em­bassy re­quires a great deal of lo­gis­tics, se­cu­ri­ty and staffing prepa­ra­tion that can take months to com­plete.

Mean­while, Amer­i­can Sen­ate Ma­jor­i­ty Leader John Thune says he ex­pects to “find out more” about what Trump means by say­ing his ad­min­is­tra­tion will run Venezuela.

Thune said he and oth­er law­mak­ers over­see­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty were to be briefed late yes­ter­day by Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, De­fense Sec­re­tary Pe­te Hegseth and oth­ers.

The South Dako­ta Re­pub­li­can said he was com­fort­able with the no­ti­fi­ca­tion he re­ceived about the US op­er­a­tion to cap­ture Maduro, even though he was not in­formed in ad­vance.

“But I think there’s a rea­son why, like I said be­fore, no­ti­fi­ca­tion of Con­gress in ad­vance of re­al­ly crit­i­cal and hy­per-sen­si­tive mis­sions, to me, it seems ill-ad­vised,” Thune said. “I felt the no­ti­fi­ca­tion con­sid­er­ing the scope of the mis­sion was suf­fi­cient.”

Sen­ate De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Chuck Schumer warned that Trump’s ac­tion in Venezuela is on­ly the be­gin­ning of a dan­ger­ous ap­proach to for­eign pol­i­cy as the pres­i­dent pub­licly sig­nals US in­ter­ests in Green­land and oth­er coun­tries.

When­ev­er the US gets in­volved in regime change ef­forts, Schumer said, “Amer­i­can fam­i­lies pay the price in blood and trea­sure.”

Schumer said, “The Amer­i­can peo­ple did not sign up for an­oth­er round of end­less wars.”

Hegseth sug­gest­ed that forces that par­tic­i­pat­ed in the raid on Venezuela’s cap­i­tal city num­bered less than 200. (AP)