By Erin Banco, Sarah Kinosian and Matt Spetalnick
NEW YORK/MIAMI/WASHINGTON, Jan 17 (Reuters) – Trump administration officials held talks with Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello months before the U.S. operation to arrest President Nicolas Maduro and have been in communication with him since then, according to several people familiar with the matter.
Officials have warned Cabello, 62, against using security services or militant supporters of the ruling party he oversees to target the country’s opposition, four sources said. The security apparatus, which includes the intelligence services, police and armed forces, remains largely intact after the January 3 US raid that captured Maduro.
Cabello is named in the same US drug-trafficking indictment that the Trump administration used as justification for Maduro’s arrest, but was not taken as part of the operation.
The communication with Cabello, which also referred to US sanctions and the indictment he faces, dates back to the early days of the current Trump administration and continued in the weeks just before Maduro was ousted by the US, two sources familiar with the discussions said. The administration has also been in touch with Cabello since Maduro’s ouster, four of the people said.
The communications, which have not been previously reported, are central to the Trump administration’s efforts to control the situation inside Venezuela. If Cabello decides to unleash the forces she controls, it could foment the kind of chaos that US President Donald Trump wants to avoid and threatens Acting President Delcy Rodriguez’s grip on power, according to a source briefed on US concerns.
It is unclear whether the Trump administration’s discussions with Cabello extended to questions about Venezuela’s future governance. It is also unclear whether Cabello heeded the US warnings. He has publicly pledged unity with Rodriguez, whom Trump has so far praised.
While Rodriguez has been seen by the US as the linchpin of Trump’s strategy for post-Maduro Venezuela, Cabello is believed to have the power to keep those plans on track or derail them.
The Venezuelan minister has been in contact with the Trump administration both directly and through intermediaries, a person familiar with the conversations said.
All sources have been granted anonymity to speak freely about sensitive internal government communications with Cabello.
Following the publication of this story, the Venezuelan government said in a statement: “We categorically deny the malicious information published on social media about alleged secret conspiratorial conversations aimed at dividing the country’s political high command and attempting to undermine the prestige and revolutionary integrity of Diosdado Cabello.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
CABELLO WAS A MADURO LOYALIST
Long considered Venezuela’s second most powerful figure, Cabello was a close aide to former President Hugo Chavez, Maduro’s mentor, and became a longtime Maduro loyalist, feared as his chief proxy for repression. Rodriguez and Cabello have both been active in the heart of Venezuela’s government, legislature and United Socialist Party for years, but have never been considered close allies of each other.
A former military officer, Cabello wielded influence over the country’s military and civilian counterintelligence agencies, which conduct widespread domestic espionage. He was also closely associated with pro-government militias, particularly the colectivos, motorcycle-riding groups of armed civilians who were deployed to attack protesters.
Cabello is one of the few Maduro loyalists Washington has relied on as interim leaders to maintain stability while it taps into the OPEC nation’s oil reserves during an unspecified transition period.
But U.S. officials are concerned that Cabello — given his history of repression and history of rivalry with Rodriguez — could play spoiler, according to a source briefed on the administration’s thinking.
Rodriguez has worked to consolidate his own power, installing loyalists in key positions to protect himself from domestic threats while meeting U.S. demands to increase oil production, Reuters interviews with sources in Venezuela showed.
Elliott Abrams, who served as Trump’s special representative to Venezuela in his first term, said many Venezuelans would expect Cabello to be ousted at some point if a democratic transition is to be advanced.
“If and when he goes, Venezuelans will know that the regime has really begun to change,” said Abrams, now at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank.
U.S. SANCTIONS AND PROSECUTION
Cabello has long been under US sanctions for alleged drug trafficking.
In 2020, the US issued a $10 million reward for Cabello and charged him as a key figure in the “Cartel de los Soles”, a group the US said was a Venezuelan drug-trafficking ring run by members of the country’s government.
The US has since raised the prize to $25 million. Cabello has publicly denied any connection to drug trafficking.
In the hours after Maduro’s ouster, some analysts and politicians in Washington questioned why the U.S. did not also take Cabello — listed second in Maduro’s Justice Department indictment.
“I know that only Diosdado is probably worse than Maduro and worse than Delcy,” Republican U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar said in an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Jan. 11.
In the following days, Cabello denounced US intervention in the country, saying in a speech that “Venezuela will not surrender.”
But media reports of residents being searched at checkpoints – sometimes by uniformed members of the security forces and sometimes by people in plainclothes – have become less frequent in recent days.
And both Trump and the Venezuelan government have said many detainees who are considered political prisoners by the opposition and rights groups will be released.
The government said Cabello, in his role as interior minister, is overseeing the effort. Rights groups say the releases are proceeding extremely slowly and hundreds remain unjustly detained.
(Reporting by Erin Banco in New York, Sarah Kinosian in Miami and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Editing by Don Durfee, Rosalba O’Brien and Paul Simao)