By Luc Cohen and Jack Queen
NEW YORK, March 26 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge questioned on Thursday whether the U.S. can bar Venezuela from funding Nicolás Maduro’s legal defense without violating his U.S. constitutional rights, but stopped short of dismissing drug‑trafficking charges against the ousted Venezuelan president facing trial in New York.
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, wore beige prison garb to the hearing in Manhattan federal court more than two months after U.S. military forces captured them in a surprise raid on Caracas and ferried them to New York.
Maduro, 63, and Flores, 69, have pleaded not guilty to charges including narcoterrorism conspiracy and have been jailed in Brooklyn pending trial.
They had asked U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein to dismiss the charges, saying their inability to rely on Venezuelan public funds due to U.S. sanctions on Venezuela was interfering with their right to have a lawyer of their choosing under the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. All criminal defendants in the U.S. have constitutional rights regardless of whether they are U.S. citizens.
Their lawyers have said Maduro and Flores cannot afford to pay their defense fees on their own.
In court, prosecutor Kyle Wirshba said the U.S. sanctions blocking the payments were based on legitimate national security and foreign policy interests. During his first term in the White House, Trump ramped up sanctions on Venezuela over allegations that Maduro’s government was corrupt and undermining democratic institutions. Washington called Maduro’s 2018 reelection fraudulent.
Hellerstein appeared skeptical of that argument, noting that the U.S. had relaxed sanctions on Venezuela since Maduro’s ouster.
“The defendant is here, Flores is here. They present no further national security threat,” said Hellerstein, a judicial appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton. “The right that’s implicated, paramount over other rights, is the right to constitutional counsel.”
Pollack, who previously represented WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, has said he wants to withdraw from the case if Hellerstein doesn’t dismiss the charges and the Venezuelan government cannot pay his fees. It was unclear how much Pollack is charging Maduro for his services. Pollack did not respond to a request for comment.
Earlier on Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters that additional cases would be brought against Maduro, without offering details.
MADURO CAPTURED BY SPECIAL FORCES
U.S. special forces captured Maduro and Flores in a surprise January 3 raid on their Caracas residence and flew them to New York to face drug trafficking charges, an operation detailed in a Reuters examination of the covert mission and its geopolitical fallout.
Prosecutors argue that because the U.S. has not recognized Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate president since 2019, he and Flores should not expect the U.S. government to allow Venezuela to pay their legal fees. The prosecutors say Maduro and Flores can be assigned public defenders if they cannot afford their own lawyers.
Wirshba said Maduro and Flores could challenge the sanctions by bringing a separate lawsuit against the Treasury Department, which enforces sanctions.
Hellerstein asked whether he could order Treasury to modify the sanctions to allow for the Venezuelan government to pay the legal fees. Wirshba said Hellerstein could not because the executive branch, not the judiciary, was in charge of foreign policy.
NARCOTERRORISM LAW HAS HAD LIMITED TRIAL SUCCESS
Maduro faces four felony charges including narcoterrorism conspiracy, which criminalizes drug trafficking that helps to finance activities the United States considers terrorism. The statute has rarely been tested at trial, and two of four trial convictions have been overturned over issues stemming from witness credibility, a Reuters analysis of court records found.
Maduro dismissed those accusations, along with allegations of his participation in drug trafficking, as pretextual justifications for what he called a U.S. desire to seize control of the South American OPEC nation’s vast oil reserves.
Relations between Caracas and Washington have improved since Delcy Rodriguez, Maduro’s former vice president, became interim president after his capture.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen and Jack Queen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Howard Goller)
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