Trump Says U.S. Forces Have Captured Venezuela’s Maduro

The United States captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro early Saturday morning after a series of strikes on the South American country, U.S. President Donald Trump announced in a social media post. 

Trump said on Truth Social that Maduro and his wife had been “captured and flown out of the Country” after a “large scale strike” that was executed in “conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement.” Trump also said he would hold a press conference on the operation at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida country club, at 11 a.m. on Saturday. 

Trump subsequently told the New York Times in a phone interview that he would address concerns about congressional approval for the strikes at that press conference. He described the assault as a “brilliant operation, actually” that involved a “lot of good planning and lot of great, great troops and great people.”

Trump’s post came hours after a series of explosions were reported at military bases in Venezuela’s capital Caracas overnight between Friday and Saturday. The Venezuelan government said in a statement that strikes also took place in three other states across the country. 

Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez denounced what he described as “the most criminal military aggression” by the United States.

“The presence of these international troops that are sowing death, grief, and destruction…is responding to the greed for our natural resources,” Lopez said in a public address shortly after the strikes. “They have spread false lies about narcoterrorism and they are seeking regime change at the hands of U.S. imperialism.”

The Trump administration has been ratcheting up its military campaign against Venezuela and Maduro for months, moving thousands of troops and several ships off the country’s coast and conducting multiple strikes on boats that it claimed were being used by drug traffickers. 

Though U.S. military actions thus far had largely been restricted to the Caribbean Sea, Trump indicated on Monday that the campaign had shifted to land strikes, when he said the United States had “hit” a loading dock in Venezuela “where they load up the boats with drugs.” That strike was carried out by the CIA earlier in December, according to a report from CNN.

This is a developing story and will be updated.