Federal prosecutors and protection legal professionals for ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his spouse Cilia Flores are in search of a June 2027 trial date of their narco-terrorism and drug trafficking case, in keeping with a court docket submitting Tuesday.
Forward of a court docket look scheduled for Wednesday, prosecutors and protection legal professionals laid out a proposed schedule for pre-trial motions, the turnover of categorized proof and the trial date.
U.S. District Decide Alvin Hellerstein might lock in a schedule as early as Wednesday through the beforehand scheduled court docket convention.
Former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, far proper, listens as his protection legal professional, Barry Pollack, heart, addresses Decide Alvin Hellerstien (not pictured), as Maduro’s spouse Cilia Flores, far left, appears to be like on. Thursday, March 26, 2026, in Manhattan federal court docket inNew York.
Elizabeth Williams/AP
Along with the June 2027 trial date, either side proposed that Maduro’s legal professionals file their movement to dismiss the case based mostly on sovereign immunity by September, with oral argument scheduled for November. Maduro’s different pretrial motions can be due in January.
Based on the submitting, prosecutors have already turned over the majority of the non-classified proof within the case, and would flip over many of the categorized supplies by November.
Either side reserved the correct to request to delay the trial, and prosecutors famous that the schedule may shift if they’ve points with a number of the categorized proof.
Maduro and Flores final appeared in court in March, the place his legal professionals unsuccessfully pushed to have the case thrown out as a result of the Treasury Division had blocked the Venezuelan authorities from paying Maduro’s protection legal professionals.
Nicolas Maduro and his spouse, Cilia Flores, are seen in handcuffs after touchdown at a Manhattan helipad, escorted by closely armed Federal brokers as they make their method into an armored automotive en path to a Federal courthouse in Manhattan on January 5, 2026 in New York Metropolis.
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Protection legal professionals have since withdrawn their movement to dismiss the case after the Treasury Division’s Workplace of Overseas Belongings Management in April started permitting Maduro and Flores to obtain cash from Venezuela to pay for his or her attorneys.
In January, the USA carried out a navy operation in Venezuela to seize and produce Maduro and his spouse to the USA to face fees together with narco-terrorism and drug trafficking. Federal prosecutors accuse Maduro and Flores of conspiring with drug cartels to facilitate the circulate of hundreds of tons of cocaine into the USA.
“I’m harmless. I’m not responsible. I’m a good man. I’m nonetheless president of my nation,” Maduro instructed the court docket throughout his arraignment in January.
Whereas Maduro and Flores have awaited trial in a federal detention facility in Brooklyn, their residence nation has been grappling with a humanitarian catastrophe following a pair of highly effective back-to-back earthquakes in June, killing not less than 5,278 individuals.
The Trump administration has quickly warmed up its ties with Venezuela underneath appearing President Delcy Rodríguez, restoring diplomatic relations and loosening sanctions on the nation.
Final week, President Donald Trump, in a primetime tackle to the nation, accused Maduro’s regime of rigging Venezuela’s 2020 elections utilizing instruments Trump alleged may very well be utilized in the USA.
The paperwork launched by the White Home contradicted these claims, concluding that the nation lacks the flexibility “to control the result of an election exterior of Venezuela in a predictable vogue.”
The federal case in opposition to Maduro doesn’t embrace any allegations associated to rigging elections, as a substitute centering on claims that he conspired with traffickers to permit the circulate of medicine into the U.S.
