Washington — President Trump announced Saturday that the U.S. carried out an “assault like people have not seen since World War II” in Venezuela and captured President Nicolás Maduro.
Mr. Trump said in remarks from Mar-a-Lago that “we’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.” He did not specify a timeline.
The president said he did not believe there would be a “second wave” of strikes. He also said no U.S. service members were killed.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the operation a “massive joint military and law enforcement raid that was flawlessly executed.”
Mr. Trump had said Maduro and his wife were flown out of Venezuela after the U.S. carried out a “large scale strike.” Calling into “Fox and Friends” later Saturday morning, he said Maduro had been “in a very highly guarded, like a fortress actually.”
The president also confirmed that Maduro was being taken to New York, after Attorney General Pam Bondi said earlier in the day that Maduro had been indicted in the Southern District of New York on narco-terrorism charges. Bondi said Maduro and his wife “will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”
“They’ll be heading to New York,” Mr. Trump said. “They were indicted in New York.”
Shortly before addressing reporters at Mar-a-Lago late Saturday morning, Mr. Trump shared a photo he said was Maduro on board the USS Iowa Jima.
In an indictment filed against the Venezuelan leader in 2020, federal prosecutors alleged that Maduro and other senior Venezuelan government officials collaborated with the Colombian guerrilla group Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC, to traffic cocaine and weapons to the United States. Later Saturday morning, Bondi shared a superseding indictment.
The indictment, prepared by U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, accuses Maduro of conspiracy to commit narcoterrorism and to import cocaine, and of possessing and conspiring to possess “Machineguns and Destructive Devices.” The charges appear to be the same as a 2020 indictment of Maduro and several key aides.
Mr. Trump said Maduro was in a house when he was captured, saying it was “more like a fortress than a house.”
“It had steel doors, it had, what they call a safety space where it’s, you know, solid steel all around,” he said. “He didn’t get that space closed. He was trying to get into it but he got bum-rushed so fast that he didn’t get into that. We were prepared, we had, you know, massive blow torches and everything else that you need to get through that steel, but we didn’t need it. He didn’t make it to that area of the house.”
Mr. Trump praised the operation in Venezuela, saying he thinks no U.S. troops were killed.
“You know that we had nobody killed was amazing,” he said. “I think we had nobody killed, I have to say, because a couple of guys were hit, but they came back and they’re supposed to be in pretty good shape.”
The president said the U.S. was going to carry out the Venezuela operation days ago, but the weather was not ideal
“We were going to do this four days ago but the weather was not perfect,” Mr. Trump said. “And then all of a sudden it opened up and we said go.”
