Trump Accidentally Gave Maduro a Way OUT

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1:29Ben Meiselas:Donald Trump's support of the authoritarian leader in Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, and Trump's recent so-called deal with Delcy Rodriguez regarding the United States' 100-year exploitation of Venezuelan oil fields to the tune of 65 billion barrels of hypothetical oil reserves. Well, this is all blowing up in Donald Trump's face in profound ways. Of course, it's blowing up in his face with the backlash he's getting from all Venezuelan people other than the Delcy Rodriguez regime. Delcy Rodriguez regime, of course, sees this as a way to further entrench her power, since if she ever is not in power, then this so-called deal with the Trump regime is going to go away.

2:17Ben Meiselas:So it further solidifies her desire to never give up power and the Trump regime's desire to never let her leave power. But it's also backfiring in a more profound way in terms of the legal maneuverings taking place. Because as I've suggested, Nicolas Maduro, who's still recognized today by the Rodriguez regime as the rightful leader of Venezuela, despite the fact that the United States invaded Venezuela at the beginning of the year, kidnapped Maduro and put Maduro in a prison in Manhattan where he's currently standing trial. I always said Maduro's just going to say, I get head of state immunity and he's going to file a motion to dismiss in order to dismiss the criminal case against him in federal court.

3:05Ben Meiselas:And that's precisely what he just did. Moments ago, he filed a motion to dismiss for head of state immunity saying, I'm the lawfully recognized head of state in Venezuela. Still, the Delce Rodriguez regime is my regime. She was my vice president. She still recognizes me as the leader. I'm the leader of Venezuela. The Trump regime just did a deal with my regime regarding oil in Venezuela, 65 billion barrels. You can't be doing deals with my regime, my VP, my lieutenants, my henchmen, my people, and then still claim that I'm not the head of state and that I'm somehow illegitimate. That's, and I'm somehow illegitimate.

3:47Ben Meiselas:That's what he's arguing in this motion. The Trump regime is still recognizing the Maduro regime in power right now in Venezuela. Delcy Rodriguez was basically my vice president. Delcy Rodriguez was my number two. So the Trump regime can't be doing deals with my government. Granted, I'm not the one in power. And then arguing I'm not the legitimate leader when the person they're doing a deal with Delcy says Nicolas Maduro is the legitimate leader of Venezuela. So I'm not sure if you've seen these photos that were leaked out of Nicolas Maduro recently from prison. He's wearing another outfit that he does these stylish photo shoots.

4:32Ben Meiselas:It's a bizarre thing to see, but he looks happy as can be. And I've always been saying it's because he's got the best case. If there's ever such thing as head of state immunity, he's got the best case for it because the argument, if you were going to prosecute Maduro, the purported democratic argument, if you will, small d argument when you prosecute Maduro is actually it's Maria Machado and Machado's party that won the election in Venezuela. The opposition party should be in control right now. Thus, the current regime is not an actually a lawful regime. Maduro's part of that unlawful regime. Thus, he doesn't get head of state immunity because they stole an election that the opposition party won and hence no head of state immunity.

5:27Ben Meiselas:But if you just kidnap the president and the president's vice president is in power and the vice president, Delcy, says Maduro is actually the president and I'm still a placeholder. That's what Delcy is saying right now. And then you do deals with this government, with the Chavistas and with all of these people. Well, then what do you think is going to be the argument by Maduro? Maduro is going to say, I'm still the head of state. And this is the precisely the document that he filed. Here it is folks. And here's the main line from it. Adam Klassfeld, who does reporting with LegalIF, he quotes from it directly.

6:01Ben Meiselas:No American court has ever presided over the criminal trial of a foreign leader who was recognized by their own country as the sitting head of state at the time the charges were brought. At the time the charges were brought, you, and by the way, still to this day, Delcy and the regime say that they want Nicolas Maduro back to this day. And so let's take a look at this filing right here. And by the way, you may be saying, well, what's the Trump regime? I think the Trump regime actually wants Maduro to win the case. I think they, this way, they can just think about it from the Trump regime's perspective.

6:43Ben Meiselas:What does Donald Trump always do? Blame the judges, unfair judges, liberal judges, Democratic appointed, Clinton appointed judge, Judge Hellerstein's a Clinton appointed judge. And this is so unfair. But he enables by doing this deal, he enables Maduro to get out, get off and claim immunity. And then Trump can just blame the judge. That's what's going on behind the scenes right here. Let's take a look at the motion that Maduro just filed. President Nicolas Maduro has pled not guilty and vehemently denies the allegations against him. If this case were to proceed to trial, it would be apparent that he has been falsely accused.

7:27Ben Meiselas:But Maduro is not permitted to test the evidence at this stage. And the proceeding. Then it goes on to cite the federal case. Courts may not consider the sufficiency of evidence on a pretrial motion to dismiss. That's what was filed by Maduro, this pretrial motion to dismiss. Rather, this motion demonstrates that because the allegations fail as a matter of law, the case must be dismissed. So you get the procedural posture right now. Maduro's filing a motion to dismiss. He's saying this is a pre-trial matter. I'm not allowed to yet show all of the evidence that I can show at trial why this case should be dismissed.

8:05Ben Meiselas:But for purposes of this motion to dismiss, I have immunity. I have head of state immunity. I don't even need to show what the evidence is going to be yet because I'm the leader of Venezuela. You're doing deals with the Rodriguez regime, which is me. Those are my people right there. If you are going to argue that Machado was the one in power right now, then you can make the argument I'm illegitimate, but you just kidnapped me. You can't do that. And then keep my regime in power and then do oil deals to exploit the oil within my country. I want to bring this point out as well. Could you this? Let me be clear.

8:47Ben Meiselas:This case is never going to trial. I want to be very clear. Could you imagine what this? Imagine all the information Maduro knows about the CIA operations in Venezuela, how the United States has been involved or knowledgeable of the drug trade taking place. the Trump regime's corruption in Venezuela. Who do you think Maduro's witnesses would be? It'd be Delce. It would be the other enforcers over there. It would be all these people. And what do you think they're going to testify? Could you imagine what that trial would actually look like? And then the Trump regime is going to object to all of the witnesses that Maduro would necessarily need to call, which would also potentially result in this case being dismissed for the fact that the Trump regime is not going to allow Maduro to call the witnesses Maduro needs to call.

9:40Ben Meiselas:Let's keep reading this motion to dismiss. No American court has ever presided over the criminal trial of a foreign leader who was recognized by their own country as the sitting head of state at the time the charges were brought. This is not an accident of history. It reflects a rule of old. It reflects a rule older than the common law. Heads of state are exempt from the criminal process of any national court but their own. The immunity flows not from goodwill that can be withdrawn on a whim, but from the perfect equality and absolute independence of sovereigns. Thus, this court lacks jurisdiction with respect to Mr.

10:16Ben Meiselas:Maduro, who is recognized by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela as its head of state. Further, even if Mr. Maduro is not entitled to sovereign immunity as the head of state, this case against him nonetheless would need to be dismissed since he is also entitled to conduct based sovereign immunity from the charges against him. The fourth superseding indictment bases its charges on official acts he took on behalf of the government of Venezuela in his capacities as a member of the National Assembly, Foreign Minister, Vice President and President. The official character of these acts, such as issuing diplomatic passports, deploying the military and announcing Venezuelan foreign policy is apparent from the face of the indictment.

11:02Ben Meiselas:Because these actions were undertaken in his official capacity on behalf of a foreign sovereign, he may not be required to respond in this court to the indictment's characterization of his motives and intent in taking these actions. Just as this court has no jurisdiction to require a foreign government to justify its actions, this court equally lacks jurisdiction to require an official of that government to answer for his acts on behalf of that government. There is no reason to depart from the foundational rule of sovereign immunity. This court cannot defer to the executive branch's apparent view that Mr.

11:42Ben Meiselas:Maduro is not entitled to sovereign immunity, either status or conduct based. Although the Second Circuit has held that the executive branch is entitled to complete deference in immunity decisions that are consistent with common law. It has explicitly declined to hold, nor has any other court held that courts must defer to the executive branch where its immunity determination would be in derogation of common law. Because this unprecedented prosecution violates the absolute immunity from criminal jurisdiction to which heads of state and foreign officials acting in their official capacities have been entitled for hundreds of years, the executive branch's immunity determination is entitled to no deference.

12:29Ben Meiselas:This court lacks jurisdiction based both on head of state and conduct-based immunity, and accordingly, the case against Mr. Maduro must be dismissed. And again, here's the thing, where you would normally give deference What that meant is giving deference to the executive branch would be deference in a case where the individual is not recognized as the sovereign by their country when the prosecution was brought. Usually what will happen in these cases is a government will be replaced with another government. There may be either an overt regime change that takes place or there's a democratic election.

13:17Ben Meiselas:an authoritarian may be trying to stop the democratic process. A democratic election takes place. And then the authoritarian says, I was entitled to all of this immunity as the head of state. I mean, you can go and look at numerous examples of authoritarians trying to claim that type of immunity. But then in those cases, the argument is you're not the legitimate head of state. You behaved illegitimately. Your behavior does not get the deference of head of state. What Maduro is saying is, look, the current government, I'm the head. You didn't bring in Machado. You're doing deals with my VP, Delcy.

14:01Ben Meiselas:You just didn't deal with her. You did this fake oil deal where you say you're going to exploit 65 billion barrels of oil. You did the deal with Alejandro Bentercor, who's one of the bully chicos who we propped up. We propped up that guy and the deals ultimately with the state run Venezuelan oil entity as well that I run. And you can't just get at me and then keep my vice president in power. And so what's the Trump regime going to argue? Actually, the Delci regime is the regime that's legitimate, but with Maduro in it, it's not legitimate. I mean, all of the things, Delcy was viewed as somebody who was involved in the narco trafficking.

14:47Ben Meiselas:All of the allegations that were made against Maduro were made against Delcy. And lots of people actually thought that Maduro was more of a figurehead for people like Delcy and Cabrero and all these other people, all these other chavistas in the Maduro regime, and that Maduro was the dancing guy. He was the, you know, he was the goofy guy, you know, who was the, who came from the, you know, the, the, the working unions movement over there and gained popularity, but that there were the people behind the scenes who were pulling the power levers with Maduro as kind of the figurehead. They're the ones running the country right now.

15:28Ben Meiselas:And they just did an oil deal with the Pentagon. So let's just play this out too. Let's play this out. And by the way, you know my analysis where I've just debunked this oil deal. There's a reason why private companies don't want to invest in it, why the Defense Department is creating a Trump oil company to do the investment in Venezuela, because private companies view this as uninvestable and the type of oil underneath Venezuela is very tarry and sour. It doesn't go into our strategic reserves. It'll take a decade to decades to actually extract this stuff. It's all part of Trump's market manipulation play.

16:05Ben Meiselas:It's corrupt as hell. He has a Qatari bank account where lots of this Venezuelan money is going that has been made so far. Venezuela's oil production is basically the same as the prior year. Even since the Trump regime has taken it over, it's just diverted some money. I'm not even talking about the oil underneath in the reserves. I'm just saying the oil production right now is the same as last year. But play this out. Let's say the case doesn't get dismissed based on this motion to dismiss for sovereign immunity, head of state immunity. What happens next? This case goes to trial. If I'm Maduro, I'm subpoenaing the Qatari bank account, right?

16:48Ben Meiselas:I'm subpoenaing what Trump taking the money. My witnesses are Delcy. My witnesses are other people in the regime. And they're going to go up there and say, yeah, he's the head of state. He's the head of state. Or what are they going to say? We worked with the CIA on this. Here are. What are you going to do? And so this case ain't going to trial. I believe at some point Donald Trump is either going to dismiss the charges or pardon him or do something. But this case, you know, or this is all just one big setup to give Maduro the best head of state immunity case possible for a motion to dismiss. and then blame the judge.

17:28Ben Meiselas:Oh, it's the judge's fault. While the judge is following the law, I don't know. It's the most clear cut case of head of state immunity that there is. I'm not saying this to endorse Maduro in any way, but Trump's working with the current regime. Anyway, let me know what you think. Hit subscribe, let's get to 7 million subscribers. Thanks for watching everybody.

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