Diosdado Cabello has a $25 million American bounty on his head and is under federal indictment in New York for narco-terrorism, weapons trafficking, and conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States. Last week, cameras caught him personally turning away an American rescue worker trying to reach earthquake victims in La Guaira, a Venezuelan state long associated with drug and money-laundering networks.Rescue teams from Germany, Spain, and Chile reported similar treatment. One rescuer stated his team found roughly 20 safe-deposit boxes in the basement of a collapsed building — a neighbor called it cartel money. The confirmed death toll has climbed toward 3,000, with tens of thousands still unaccounted for.This is the man helping to oversee Venezuela’s stabilization six months after the U.S. removed Nicolás Maduro and celebrated the start of a democratic transition, a transition now being run on legal authority that has expired.
The Trump administration presented Maduro’s capture as a strategic success: a dictator flown to New York on drug charges, sanctions eased, and Chevron back in Venezuelan oil fields. Yet the government now consists largely of the officials who sustained Maduro’s rule. Interim leader Delcy Rodriguez, her brother Jorge, and Cabello formed his inner circle. Maduro disappeared. They did not.Venezuelan Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace Diosdado Cabello (L) and Executive Vice President Delcy Rodriguez (R). (Washington Examiner illustration; Andalou/Getty Images)
