The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is offering amnesty to Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro — actively wanted by U.S. authorities on multiple narcoterrorism charges — in exchange for giving up power after stealing the July 28 sham presidential election, according to a report published by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday.
The Wall Street Journal, citing three unnamed sources, stated that the United States has discussed with Maduro regime officials issuing pardons for the dictator and for members of his top brass indicted by the Justice Department. One of the anonymous sources said that the U.S. has put “everything on the table” to persuade Maduro to leave before his current term ends in January 2025.
The report also said that, according to another person “familiar,” the United States would be open to “providing guarantees” to not pursue Maduro and his regime figures for extradition.
The talks, according to the Wall Street Journal, have been held virtually between Jorge Rodríguez, the current head of the Venezuelan National Assembly and Maduro’s top negotiator, and Daniel P. Erikson, who directs policy toward Venezuela at the White House National Security Council.
Maduro, who has clung to power for over a decade through several fraudulent elections, has ruled as the dictator of Venezuela since 2013 after succeeding late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez, who died of an undisclosed type of cancer that year.
U.S. authorities have long accused Maduro of being a leading figure of the Cartel of the Suns, an intercontinental cocaine trafficking operation believed to be run by high-ranking members of the Venezuelan military and some leading figures of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).
The Venezuelan regime-led drug cartel has been accused of engaging in “asymmetric warfare” against the United States by trafficking cocaine into United States territory with the intent of undermining America by “flooding” it with the drug.
U.S. prosecutors indicted Maduro and several other leading members of his socialist regime on narco-terrorism, corruption, drug trafficking, and other criminal charges in March 2020. Since then, the United States has maintained an active $15 million bounty for information that leads to the arrest and/or conviction of Nicolás Maduro.
The rogue socialist regime held a sham presidential election on July 28, which the regime-controlled electoral authorities claim Maduro “won,” for a new six-year term that will begin in January. While Venezuelan electoral authorities claim Maduro “obtained” 51 percent of the votes, they have refused to publish vote tallies or documentation that can corroborate the alleged results.
Maduro’s claimed “victory” has been denounced as fraudulent by several countries and international organizations. The Venezuelan opposition has heavily contested the results and claims that its candidate, Edmundo González, defeated Maduro by a landslide. The opposition has published vote tallies obtained on the day of the election online to prove its claims.
Maduro responded to the widespread disgust with his sham election by requesting that the nation’s top court — which Maduro completely stacked with loyalists long ago — “review” his sham election.
The ongoing situation has led to nationwide peaceful protests in Venezuela. The Maduro regime responded to the protests by unleashing a new wave of brutal repression that has so far left at least 24 deaths and resulted in the arbitrary arrest of more than 2,000 individuals as of last week. The detainees, according to the socialist dictator, will be sent to “reeducation camps” in the coming days.
Police aim at protesters demonstrating against the official election results after electoral authorities certified President Nicolas Maduro’s reelection in Caracas, Venezuela, Monday, July 29, 2024, the day after the vote. (Fernando Vergara/AP)
The Wall Street Journal stated in its report Sunday that Maduro’s grip on power “stacks the odds” against the Biden administration, claiming that the United States had similarly made an amnesty offer during secret talks in Doha, Qatar, in 2023. According to “people familiar” with the matter, at the time Maduro “declined to discuss arrangements where he would have to leave office.”
The Biden administration, through Secretary of State Antony Blinken, has expended extensive efforts throughout its tenure on unsuccessfully attempting to convince Maduro to allow a “free and fair” election in Venezuela, granting the rogue socialist regime numerous concessions which ultimately failed, as Maduro decided to hold a sham election in late July.
The Wall Street Journal suggested that former President Donald Trump, currently the Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential election, would not be open to such a general amnesty agreement, so, assuming Trump wins, Biden “has five months before Venezuela’s presidential inauguration to pull off a deal, and much depends on the outcome of the presidential election in November.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, Maduro “mistrusts Washington, no matter who inhabits the White House,” adding that “this includes the Biden administration” despite U.S. President Joe Biden having granted several concessions to Maduro and his regime in the past, such as a generous six-month long oil and gas sanction relief package and the release of Maduro’s convicted drug-trafficking nephews and his top money launderer Alex Saab.
Biden is also reportedly seeking to distance America from a leadership role in the Venezuelan crisis by pushing Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia to “take a tougher stance” against Maduro beyond the current stance of calling for Maduro to present evidence of his alleged “victory,” which all three leftist-led countries share.
Shortly after the Wall Street Journal published its report, an unnamed senior administration official claimed to the Miami Herald that the Biden administration has not offered amnesty to Maduro and members of his regime in exchange for leaving power “since the election.”
“We have not made any offers of amnesty to Maduro or others since the election,” the official, who spoke under condition of anonymity, told the Miami Herald. “We are considering a range of options to incentivize and pressure Maduro to recognize the election results and will continue to do so.”
“The responsibility is on Maduro and the [sic] Venezuela’s electoral authorities to come clean on the election results,” the official added.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
