Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is expected to appear for the first time in court tomorrow, and his legal team is likely to argue his arrest violated international law, CNN senior legal analyst and former prosecutor Elie Honig said. In an extensive military operation in the middle of the night, United States military personnel captured Maduro and his wife from the president’s compound in Caracas and brought them to the US. Regardless, Honig said it’s unlikely the judge will throw out the case because of existing precedent that gives the executive branch power to make decisions about military actions. Maduro is being prosecuted in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. “It has a very long history of trying the world’s most notorious gangsters, terrorists, drug traffickers.”

Source: CNN January 04, 2026 13:41 UTC