The U.S. reportedly seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s official airplane and flew it to America on Monday, marking a major escalation in the standoff between Washington and Caracas just weeks after the Biden administration accused Mr. Maduro of essentially stealing the country’s July presidential election.
Citing two unnamed U.S. officials, CNN reported that American law enforcement seized the plane — a $13 million Dassault Falcon 900 — while it was in the Dominican Republic. It was flown to Florida on Monday, the news outlet said.
Seizing the official airplane of a foreign head of state is rare. It’s not clear what the U.S. will do next, though CNN reported that the administration will pursue formal forfeiture of the aircraft, meaning Mr. Maduro’s government can file an official petition to get it back. U.S. officials reportedly said the U.S. believes the acquisition of the plane was in violation of longstanding American sanctions on Caracas.
In March 2020, the U.S. charged Mr. Maduro and other Venezuelan officials with narco-terrorism, corruption, drug trafficking and other offenses. Then-Attorney General William Barr said at the time that Mr. Maduro and other officials tried “to use the U.S. banking system to move their illicit proceeds from South America” and that they were responsible for “tons of cocaine” entering the U.S.
The charges against Mr. Maduro came at a unique moment. A little more than a year earlier, in January 2019, the U.S. and some of its allies formally recognized Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, not Mr. Maduro, as the rightful president of Venezuela. But Mr. Maduro never lost his grip on power, and the gambit to install Mr. Guaido as president ultimately failed.
More recently, the Biden administration argued that Mr. Maduro, the political protege of longtime Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, appears to have falsified July’s presidential election results. The U.S. said it believes that former diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez, not Mr. Maduro, rightfully won the election.
Mr. Maduro’s government said he received more than 50% of the vote, compared to about 44% for Mr. Gonzalez. But government agencies failed to produce the physical vote tally sheets to confirm those numbers.
An Associated Press evaluation of voting sheets found that Mr. Gonzalez received 6.89 million votes, nearly half a million more than the government says Mr. Maduro won. The tabulations show Mr. Maduro received just 3.13 million votes.
That’s a massive discrepancy from the official government figures, and that discrepancy is what has led the Biden administration and other governments around the world to reject the official results.
It’s not clear whether seizing Mr. Maduro’s plane will have any impact on the election controversy or the future of the Venezuelan presidency.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.