An updated indictment against the Venezuelan president no longer includes the claim that he is the head of a cocaine cartel.
Meredith Kile, People || During the arraignment of deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Monday, Jan. 5, President Donald Trump‘s Department of Justice quietly dropped a claim about Maduro’s alleged cartel involvement.
The DOJ’s January 2025 indictment accused Maduro of heading up “a patronage system run by those at the top —referred to as the Cartel de Los Soles or Cartel of the Suns, a reference to the sun insignia affixed to the uniforms of high-ranking Venezuelan military officials.”
However, a 2020 indictment against the Venezuelan president — which was written during Trump’s first administration — made many more explicit references to the Cartel de Los Soles as an actual cartel.
Naming Cartel de Los Soles 32 times, as opposed to two, the old indictment described the cartel as “a Venezuelan drug-trafficking organization comprised of highranking Venezuelan officials who abused the Venezuelan people and corrupted the legitimate institutions of Venezuela — including parts of the military, intelligence apparatus, legislature, and the judiciary — to facilitate the importation of tons of cocaine into the United States.”
According to experts in Latin American crime and narcotics issues, the term “Cartel de los Soles” is used as slang in reference to officials corrupted by drug money, The New York Times reported. The outlet noted that the term was an invention of the Venezuelan media, which coined it in the ’90s.
Elizabeth Dickinson, deputy director for Latin America at the International Crisis Group, told the Times following the arraignment, “I think the new indictment gets it right, but the designations are still far from reality.”
Dickinson added, “Designations don’t have to be proved in court, and that’s the difference. Clearly, they knew they could not prove it in court.”
Despite the language change by Attorney General Pam Bondi — who was not leading the DOJ at the time of the 2020 indictment — some members of the Trump administration are still claiming that Maduro is the head of an actual cartel.
During a Meet the Press interview on Sunday, Jan. 4, Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted, “We will continue to reserve the right to take strikes against drug boats that are bringing drugs toward the United States that are being operated by transnational criminal organizations, including the Cartel de los Soles.”
“Of course, their leader, the leader of that cartel, is now in U.S. custody and facing US justice in the Southern District of New York,” he said. “And that’s Nicolás Maduro.”
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were arraigned in a New York City court on Monday following their capture and removal from Venezuela by the U.S. military over the weekend.
Maduro was charged with four counts: narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices. He entered a plea of not guilty on Monday.
“I am a decent man. I am still the president of my country,” he said, via an interpreter. “I consider myself a prisoner of war. I was captured at my home in Caracas, Venezuela.”
Flores, 69, was charged with cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices. She also pleaded not guilty.
President Donald Trump confirmed the removal of Maduro and his wife, as well as a “large-scale strike” on the capital city of Caracas, in a Truth Social post on Saturday, Jan. 3. He said that the U.S. plans to “take control” of the country in the interim.
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