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Justice Dept. Drops Claim That Venezuela’s ‘Cartel de los Soles’ Is an Actual Group (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 4 days ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/news@beehaw.org

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The Justice Department has backed off a dubious claim about President Nicolás Maduro that the Trump administration promoted last year in laying the groundwork to remove him from power in Venezuela: accusing him of leading a drug cartel called Cartel de los Soles.

That claim traces back to a 2020 grand jury indictment of Mr. Maduro drafted by the Justice Department. In July 2025, copying language from it, the Treasury Department designated Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization. In November, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and President Trump’s national security adviser, ordered the State Department to do the same.

But experts in Latin American crime and narcotics issues have said it is actually a slang term, invented by the Venezuelan media in the 1990s, for officials who are corrupted by drug money. And on Saturday, after the administration captured Mr. Maduro, the Justice Department released a rewritten indictment that appeared to tacitly concede the point.

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[–] TehPers@beehaw.org 6 points 4 days ago

what fucking authority did Donnie have to do this to begin with?

You see, he hates brown people, and doesn't care if they come from Latin America or the Middle East. So I guess that's his authority.

To his credit, that has worked before with previous presidents too.