Inside Trump's secret Maduro mission and how a 200-year-old doctrine gave him cover to pull off the historic raid
SOURCE:Daily Mail
Behind the scenes secret planning for the raid had been going on for weeks in case it ultimately came to regime change.
The astonishing nighttime capture of Nicolas Maduro from his own bed was the culmination of a years-long, high-stakes standoff with the United States.
Behind the scenes, secret planning for the raid had been going on for months as President Donald Trump toyed with an idea he once furiously railed against: Regime change in a foreign country.
Trump has long been enraged by the flood of Venezuelan migrants crossing America's southern border and the narcotics trafficking fueling the crisis.
But a military strike on a sovereign nation always carried enormous risk.
The president's 'America First' base would undoubtedly cry foul over a foreign intervention. European allies would almost certainly accuse him of violating international law.
In the end, Trump found his justification in a dusty 200-year-old policy that previous presidents had invoked sparingly: the Monroe Doctrine.
Introduced by President James Monroe in 1823, the doctrine boldly asserts American dominance over the Western Hemisphere – effectively giving Washington the right to police its own backyard.
For Trump, it was the cover he needed to pull the trigger.
An explosion rocks Caracas in the early hours of Saturday morning during a US military operation which resulted in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro
Notably, on December 2, the anniversary of the doctrine's founding, Trump issued a message from the White House.
He said: 'Today, my Administration proudly reaffirms this promise under a new “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine: That the American people - not foreign nations nor globalist institutions - will always control their own destiny in our hemisphere.'
Just days later, planning for a potential military raid to capture Maduro began.
At his press conference after Maduro's capture, President Trump was even clearer on how the Monroe Doctrine is influencing his strategic foreign policy.
He accused Venezuela of stealing 'massive oil infrastructure' and being guilty of a 'gross violation of the core principles of American foreign policy, dating back more than two centuries. All the way back dated to the Monroe Doctrine. And the Monroe Doctrine is big deal.
'But we've superseded it by a lot, by a real lot. They now call it the Donroe document.'
The President added: 'We sort of forgot about it, very important but we forgot about it, we don't forget about it any more.
'Under out new National Security Strategy, American dominance in the Western hemisphere will never be questioned again, wont happen.
'We will never allow foreign powers to rob our people and drive us out of our hemisphere.'
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Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and wife Cilia were both seized by a US military unit in the early hours of Caracas, with Maduro now set to face drugs and gun charges in the United States
President Donald Trump hailed his government's 'brilliant' capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in the early hours of Saturday
Maduro, a 63-year-old former bus driver, was handpicked by the dying Hugo Chavez to succeed him in 2013.
He has denied being an international drug lord and claims the US is intent on taking control of his nation's oil reserves, which are the largest in the world. Trump indeed nodded to his thirst for the country's oil reserves in his press conference on Saturday.
'We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure and start making money for the country,' Trump said.
In September, the Pentagon began air strikes against drug boats, arguing the profits from the shipments were being used to prop up Maduro's regime.
The death toll from the strikes on drug boats ultimately topped 100 and to observers the killings were seen as clear sign of mission creep.
US forces built up in the Caribbean to pressure Maduro, and Trump sent the world's biggest aircraft carrier the USS Gerald R. Ford.
The US also seized two oil tankers off Venezuela’s coast and imposed sanctions on four others it said were part of a shadow fleet serving Maduro’s government.
In a new escalation last week the CIA carried out the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil, a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by drug cartels.
A woman, with a flag on her back reading "Freedom", lifts her son, after U.S. President Donald Trump said that the U.S. attacked Venezuela and deposed its President Nicolas Maduro, in Santiago, Chile January 3, 2026.
A bus with its windows blown out is seen in Caracas in the early hours of Saturday
Maduro had continued to accept flights carrying Venezuelan deportees from the U.S.
That led to speculation that the White House could seek to negotiate with him and not ultimately resort to regime change,.
Maduro publicly offered to talk, and Vice President J.D. Vance later revealed he had been offered various 'off ramps' to end the standoff, but didn't take them.
Behind the scenes, U.S. spies were watching Maduro and the Pentagon was preparing to strike.
General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, revealed that Operation Absolut Resolve, to capture Maduro, was ready to go by early December.
Over the New Year period, it was repeatedly delayed by bad weather for four days.
At 10.46pm US Eastern time, President Trump gave the order, telling those involved: 'Good luck and God speed.'
The astonishing raid involved over 150 aircraft, in what one military analyst called a 'ballet in the sky.'
Planes took out defense systems clearing a path to the Caracas military base where Maduro was holed up.
Helicopters skimmed over the water at 100ft and delivered the Delta Force extraction force, who came under fire but captured Maduro before he could make it to a safe room behind a huge steel door.
'We watched, we waited, we remained prepared,' said Gen. Caine. 'This was an audacious operation that only the United States could do. It required the utmost precision.
'The weather broke just enough, clearing a path that only the most skilled aviators in the world could move through.'
President Donald Trump speaks at his Mar-a-Lago club, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026, in Palm Beach, Fla., as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth listens
his image posted on US President Donald Trump's Truth Social account on January 3, 2026, shows what President Trump says is Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro onboard the USS Iwo Jima after the US military captured him on January 3, 2026
The Venezuelan dictator had already survived a 'maximum pressure' campaign toward the end of Trump's first term.
He was indicted in 2020 in New York, although it was not previously known that his wife had been.
The Justice Department charged that Maduro had effectively converted Venezuela into a criminal enterprise at the service of drug traffickers and terrorist groups as he and his allies stole billions from the South American country.
There were indictments against 14 officials and government-connected individuals, and rewards of $55 million for Maduro and four others.
Bill Barr, the Attorney General at the time, branded called the Venezuelan regime 'corrupt,' including the Maduro-dominated judiciary and the powerful armed forces.
One indictment by prosecutors in New York accused Maduro and socialist party boss Diosdado Cabello, head of the rubber-stamping constitutional assembly, of conspiring with Colombian rebels and members of the military 'to flood the United States with cocaine.'
The legal authority for the strike, and whether Trump consulted Congress beforehand, is not immediately clear.
The stunning, lightning-fast American military action, which plucked a nation's sitting leader from office, echoed the U.S. invasion of Panama that led to the surrender and seizure of its leader, Manuel Antonio Noriega, in 1990, exactly 36 years ago .
It was Washington's most direct intervention in Latin America since that 1989 invasion of Panama.