US to ‘Run’ Venezuela and Tap its Oil reserves, Trump says, after Operation to Oust Maduro

Hours after an audacious military operation that plucked leader Nicolás Maduro from power and removed him from the country, President Donald Trump said Saturday that the United States would run Venezuela at least temporarily and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations.

The dramatic action capped an intensive Trump administration pressure campaign on the South American nation and its autocratic leader and months of secret planning resulting in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Legal experts immediately raised questions about whether the operation was lawful. Venezuela’s vice president Delcy Rodríguez demanded in a speech that the U.S. free Maduro and called him the country’s rightful leader, before Venezuela’s high court ordered her to assume the role of interim president.

Speaking to reporters hours after Maduro’s capture, Trump revealed his plans to exploit the leadership void to “fix” the country’s oil infrastructure and sell “large amounts” of oil to other countries.

Maduro and his wife, seized overnight from their home on a military base, were first taken aboard a U.S. warship on their way to face prosecution for a Justice Department indictment accusing them of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.

A plane carrying the deposed leader landed around 4:30 p.m. Saturday at an airport in New York City’s northern suburbs. Maduro was escorted off the jet, gingerly making his way down a stairway before being led across the tarmac surrounded by federal agents. Several agents filmed him on their phones as he walked.

He was then flown by helicopter to Manhattan, where a convoy of law enforcement vehicles, including an armored car, was waiting to whisk him to a nearby U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office.

A video posted on social media by a White House account showed Maduro, smiling, as he was escorted through that office by two DEA agents grasping his arms. (AFP)