Prosecutors also charged the Venezuelan leader with narco-terrorism.
Nicolas Maduro Guerra, left, son of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, center, and first lady Cilia Flores, right, attend a closing campaign rally for the regional election in Caracas, Venezuela, on May 22, 2025. | Ariana Cubillos/AP
NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors charged Venezuela’s leader Nicolás Maduro, his wife and adult son with drug trafficking, according to a 25-page indictment unsealed Saturday.
The indictment charges Maduro; his wife, Cilia Flores; and son, Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra — referred to in the charging papers as “the Prince” — with conspiracy to import cocaine and possession of machineguns and destructive devices. The Venezuelan leader is additionally charged with narco-terrorism conspiracy.
President Donald Trump said during a press conference Saturday afternoon that Maduro and his wife “will soon face the full might of American justice and stand trial on American soil.” The indictment was unsealed hours after Trump said the U.S. carried out “a large-scale strike” in Venezuela and had captured and flown Maduro and his wife out of the country.
Trump said during the press conference that the pair would be taken to New York. It was not immediately clear if the U.S. had also captured Maduro’s son.
The indictment alleges that Maduro “sits atop a corrupt, illegitimate government that, for decades, has leveraged government power to protect and promote illegal activity, including drug trafficking.” The drug trafficking, according to the indictment, has enriched Maudro’s family, including his wife and son, who is a member of Venezuela’s National Assembly.
“This cycle of narcotics-based corruption lines the pockets of Venezuelan officials and their families while also benefiting violent narco-terrorists who operate with impunity on Venezuelan soil and who help produce, protect, and transport tons of cocaine to the United States,” the indictment says.
Trump in his remarks called Maduro “the kingpin of a vast criminal network responsible for trafficking colossal amounts of deadly and illicit drugs into the United States.”
“As alleged in the indictment, he personally oversaw the vicious cartel known as Cartel de Las Olas, which flooded our nation with lethal poison,” Trump said.
A spokesperson for the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
U.S. officials appeared to be using the charges as legal justification for the strike in Venezuela, which occurred without congressional authorization. Vice President JD Vance wrote on social media that the U.S. had offered Venezuela “multiple off ramps.”
“And PSA for everyone saying this was ‘illegal’: Maduro has multiple indictments in the United States for narcoterrorism. You don’t get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas.”
Early Saturday morning, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reposted his own social media message from last year referencing charges against Maduro, writing that he is “NOT the president of Venezuela and and his regime is NOT the legitimate government.”
New York federal prosecutors, along with prosecutors in D.C. and Florida, in 2020 charged Maduro and 14 other current and former Venezuelan officials — although not Maduro’s wife or son — with narco-terrorism, corruption and drug trafficking. The indictment unsealed Saturday is a revision to the 2020 charging document that adds Flores and Maduro’s son as defendants.
One of the prosecutors who led the case when it was charged in 2020, Amanda Houle, is now the criminal chief at the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office. The investigation was supervised by Emil Bove, Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer and a former prominent Justice Department official who is now a federal judge.
The fresh charges against Maduro come weeks after Trump issued an unexpected and controversial pardon to another former foreign leader who Bove pursued as a prosecutor: Juan Orlando Hernández, the ex-president of Honduras.
Hernández was convicted in 2024 for conspiring to import cocaine into the U.S.
Trump in his remarks Saturday addressed the pardon, saying Hernández “was treated like the Biden administration treated a man named Trump. That didn’t work out too well for them. This was a man who was persecuted very unfairly.”
Gregory Svirnovskiy contributed to this report.