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Justice Dept. Drops Claim That Venezuela’s ‘Cartel de los Soles’ Is an Actual Group 01/08/26(Thu)05:24:47 No.1473391
Justice Dept. Drops Claim That Venezuela’s ‘Cartel de los Soles’ Is an Actual Group 01/08/26(Thu)05:24:47 No.1473391
Justice Dept. Drops Claim That Venezuela’s ‘Cartel de los Soles’ Is an Actual Group Anonymous 01/08/26(Thu)05:24:47 No.1473391 [Reply]▶
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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/us/trump-venezuela-drug-cartel-de-l os-soles.html
The DOJ has backed off a dubious claim about President Nicolás Maduro that the Trump administration promoted last year in laying the groundwork to remove him from power in Venezuela: accusing him of leading a drug cartel called Cartel de los Soles.
That claim traces back to a 2020 grand jury indictment of Mr. Maduro drafted by the Justice Department. In July 2025, copying language from it, the Treasury Department designated Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization. In November, Marco Rubio ordered the State Department to do the same.
But experts in Latin American crime and narcotics issues have said it is actually a slang term, invented by the Venezuelan media in the 1990s, for officials who are corrupted by drug money. And on Saturday, after the administration captured Maduro, the Justice Department released a rewritten indictment that appeared to tacitly concede the point.
Prosecutors still accused Maduro of participating in a drug trafficking conspiracy but they abandoned the claim that Cartel de los Soles was an actual organization. Instead, the revised indictment states that it refers to a “patronage system” and a “culture of corruption” fueled by drug money.
Where the old indictment refers 32 times to Cartel de los Soles and describes Maduro as its leader, the new one mentions it twice and says that he, like his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, participated in, perpetuated and protected this patronage system.
Profits from drug trafficking and the protection of drug trafficking partners “flow to corrupt rank-and-file civilian, military and intelligence officials, who operate in a patronage system run by those at the top — referred to as the Cartel de los Soles or Cartel of the Suns, a reference to the sun insignia affixed to the uniforms of high-ranking Venezuelan military officials,” the new indictment said.
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>>1473449
>before disappearing Maduro to gitmo regardless
Good luck with that bullshit. He's touched down in the US, which means he has habeas rights. And somehow I don't think El Salvador wants to imprison a world leader for us.
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>>1473449
One of their claims is that he had machine guns in New York. Might as well have charged him with violating traffic laws and some Disney copyrights. Fuck it, hit him with attempting to purchase cigarettes for a minor and opening someone else's mail while we're at it.
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>>1473841
>and that Obama was better at lying or obfuscating the truth
Pretty sure we didn't bomb Libya because of Gaddafi's dancing.
Just cause Trump is insane and too mentally ill to hide it doesn't mean all leaders before him were equally insane and just good at masking it.
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>>1474277
I was going to bring this up for the fagets who jilm over the ICC seeking other world leaders.
Turns out, I found out they're full of shit and literally don't care.
There's nothing inside the shell of leftism. Don't look, it's terrifying.
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