[00:00:00] Speaker 1: One of the big concerns, you can tell from just the way the police have been acting here today, with the arrival of the SWAT teams and so on, was to make sure that they could get him in here safely, securely, and they appear to have done that at this point, Caitlin. He is now inside the Metropolitan Detention Center here in Brooklyn, and he begins the process being held in custody until he awaits trial. Of course, we expect that he might be in court for his first appearance or perhaps his arraignment as soon as Monday. Caitlin?

[00:00:36] Speaker 2: Evan, do we know if he's gotten a mugshot, been fingerprinted? Has that already happened, or is that what will happen now that he's inside this facility?

[00:00:44] Speaker 1: Yeah, we're told that some of that happened already at the DEA field office. That's one of the reasons why they brought him when he came in from the Air Force Base. They flew him to that heliport on the west side, which was the closest to the DEA field office, which is on the west side of Manhattan. From there, they brought him back to the heliport and brought him to another helipad, which is at a park just right near this facility, again, right on the Brooklyn waterfront. I think you saw those extraordinary pictures of the helicopter going by with the view of the Statue of Liberty, something that he would have been able to see as he flew over the New York waterfront. Now, at this point, he is inside the detention center in Brooklyn, where he will await his trial.

[00:01:39] Speaker 2: We don't expect to see him tomorrow?

[00:01:44] Speaker 1: No, we don't expect that he'll make any public appearances. Again, this is all up to the judge, but we don't expect that the judge will have any hearings at least until Monday. Again, it's all up to the judge. At this point, we have not yet seen anything on the docket to indicate this, but again, we're waiting to see that. That is most likely when he will make his first court appearance, his first public appearance, and we'll see him here for the first time, the exact charges that he and his wife are facing.

[00:02:20] Speaker 2: I still think one huge question is who is going to represent him? Do we know if they would have the same attorney, Evan, or would they have different attorneys? How does that work?

[00:02:30] Speaker 1: No, we have not yet seen that. We haven't seen any information of who might be representing him. We expect that we're going to see that perhaps tomorrow. We're going to get some information about that tomorrow. Obviously, as Ellie was pointing out, Nicolas Maduro, at least according to the U.S. government, has a lot of resources at his disposal. The U.S., of course, has put a lot of sanctions on those resources, but part of the process here in the United States is that the U.S. government is not allowed to essentially make you not able to afford a defense. That's one of the things that we expect to see argued in the coming days is how does he get to pay for a lawyer, for a legal defense for him and his wife? That's, again, obviously something that's going to unfold in the next few days.

[00:03:23] Speaker 2: Evan, is it safe to say he's now officially a prisoner of the U.S. government now that he's inside that facility?

[00:03:31] Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think he became a prisoner of the United States when the FBI agents who were part of that special operations force that went into Caracas, that's the moment that he was placed under arrest. That process, of course, then they brought him to the Iwo Jima and then to Guantanamo, where they transferred him to a plane. And so it's been a series of different transports in the custody of the United States. So that process began several, several hours ago.

[00:04:07] Speaker 2: Yeah, Evan Perez, obviously, we're going to continue to stay with you as we are watching this play out. And for those who are just joining us, we are watching a remarkable scene play out live before our very eyes here in New York City tonight, where Nicolas Maduro, the man who ruled Venezuela for more than a dozen years, is now a prisoner of the U.S. government as the almost 34 million people who lived under his reign are left wondering who is running their country. The president says for the time being, it is going to be the United States that is running Venezuela, he says, with a group. A lot of questions about the details of what that's going to look like. But we've been watching the former leader of Venezuela, the ousted leader, just outside New York City, helicoptered inside Manhattan tonight, then to the Brooklyn facility where he is going to be held for the foreseeable future. As you are seeing a heavy, heavy police presence that has been escorting him around the city, whether it's by motorcade, which is what took him to the Metropolitan Detention Center here, or by helicopter, as we saw earlier after he deplaned here in New York City. Eli Honig, I mean, just this moment, something that, you know, there have been real questions of what was going to happen. The president said earlier that he shouldn't have been surprised, Maduro or anyone else, because of the large U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean. And now we're seeing this moment where he is in U.S. custody, and he'll be before a U.S. judge within a matter of days, if not hours from now.

[00:05:31] Speaker 3: Well, I think what's so unexpected, Caitlin, is that it would play out this way. Obviously, there was this military buildup happening around Venezuela, but that our government made the decision we're going to go in, we're going to seize Maduro by force and his wife, we're going to bring them to the United States and subject them to trial in our civilian criminal courts is really a remarkable decision made by the president. And I think there's debate around it politically. But one thing I think we've learned over the years is that our criminal courts are fully capable of handling a prosecution like this. Now, this will be different because we're talking about a former president of a sovereign nation, but we have seen trials in these federal courthouses in New York and the Southern District of the leaders of the most dangerous narco groups, terrorist groups, mafia groups, you name it. Our courts have shown that they're capable of this. And, you know, just historically speaking, there was a heated debate in the early 2000s about whether some of the terrorists associated with the 9-11 attacks associated with Al-Qaeda should be tried in our criminal courts. And ultimately, the decision was made not to try them in our civilian criminal courts, and they were left to languish for decades in military prisons to really unsatisfying endings. So this is a monumental decision that's been made by Donald Trump, by his administration. I think history will show that it's a correct decision in terms of the legal way this will play out to give these people their day in court, give them the rights that our criminal defendants are due, give them a trial by jury and see what the outcome is.

[00:07:06] Speaker 2: Yeah. And as we're watching this play out, Evan reports that he is now inside that facility where you're watching this massive police presence. It's not far, just a couple of miles from where we are broadcasting right now. And Rahm Emanuel, as you're looking at this, and we're talking about the legal process and what plays out, and Ellie says the U.S. courts are perfectly capable of handling this. You can see the massive crowd that has been gathered outside there that Evan was reporting on earlier. The other question is, is the U.S. military capable? Is the U.S. itself capable of running Venezuela as the president has put it? I mean, what does that look like to you?

[00:07:46] Speaker 4: Well, when you look at the heads of states, whether it's Gaddafi, Noriega, whether you look at Hussein in Iraq, you look at all the people, heads of states that we've docked up, we're pretty good at that or taking them. We're not very good at nation building or nation administrating. I mean, the complexity of Venezuela doesn't compare to Libya, doesn't compare to Iraq, doesn't compare to Panama. So the scorecard here is very uneven in that sense of what our reputation is and our capability. And Panama is just a tenth of the size of Venezuela, a much more complex Venezuela. And I also think that it's not just military, it's political, which is why I think the president of the United States, having thrown the democratic government basically under the bus, made a mistake. This is not a strong suit of the United States. It's not also what you want as a detour of our resources, given what we have to deal with in Ukraine with Russia's war, Gaza Strip in that area, that now the same people are going to be running this. This is going to be a massive undertaking for a president of the United States that ran under the banner of America first and no nation building.

[00:08:56] Speaker 2: Yeah, and we saw that. It's a huge test. I mean, I don't think anyone knows what the next 24 hours, 48 or year looks like on this. But I want to show you, because we saw that remarkable picture of Nicolas Maduro on board the USS Iwo Jima earlier. He was wearing the sweatsuit, the blinders, the noise insulating headphones. We now just have a video of Maduro inside U.S. custody. I want everyone to just stop and watch that for a moment. I mean, Rahm Emanuel, you're watching this video where Maduro is being transported through. You can see the DEA carpet that he's walking across going very slowly. He seems to say something. It's not totally clear what. And a little bit of a smile almost at one point as he's walking. Rahm Emanuel, what do you see in this?

[00:10:01] Speaker 4: Your guess, I got to be honest, Caitlin, your guess is as good as mine. I think this is an attempt by the United States to project here's what we've done to this leader. I think what you're looking at is a guy who's basically being used in this moment to send a message to the American people and also not only American people, the worldwide, that if the United States wants to act, we can act and we can literally go into a country, take somebody out in that effort. So I think it was basically- I mean, I think he's saying Happy New Year there at the end as I watch this as he's walking through. Yeah. I mean, I got to be honest. I can't tell what he's saying. I think the reason the United States wanted to film this and then put it out is for the very purpose to send a message around the world as well as the domestic audience here. That is a political decision of why to communicate that. What he said, your guess is as good as mine.