Nicolas Maduro on a US warship, will face prosecution in New York, says Donald Trump
President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago, Monday, December. 29, 2025, in Palm Beach, Florida. (AP Photo US President Donald Trump said Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife were aboard the US warship Iwo Jima and headed to New York, where they will face prosecution.
Trump, in an interview with Fox News on Saturday, also said that the United States will be making decisions on what is next for Venezuela after capturing the Latin American country’s president and flying him out of the country.
“We’ll be involved in it very much” as to who will govern the country, Trump said.
“We can’t take a chance in letting somebody else run and just take over what he left, or left off,” Trump said.
Trump also brushed off criticism from Democratic lawmakers that he did not seek permission from Congress ahead of time and that the strike was illegal. He called his Democratic critics “weak, stupid people” and blaming his political opponents for inflation in the U.S.
He said the operation in Venezuela was “really genius.”
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“All they do is complain,” he said of the Democrats.
“They should say, ‘Great job.’ They shouldn’t say, ‘Oh Gee, maybe it’s not constitutional.’ You know, the same old stuff that we’ve been hearing for years and years and years,” Trump said.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, would face charges after an indictment in New York.
Bondi vowed in a social media post that the couple would “soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”
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Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on “narco-terrorism” conspiracy charges.
