Trump blocks Venezuela from paying Maduro’s legal fees amid US trial

The Trump administration is blocking Venezuela from paying the legal expenses of the abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, as the pair face a bizarre, Kafkaesque trial in the US over drug-trafficking and weapons charges. Lawyers suggest that it violates the constitutional right to counsel.

Attorney Barry Pollack, in a letter to the federal judge, has said that the US Treasury Department has blocked the Venezuelan Government from paying the legal fees that it is required to pay for Maduro and its first lady, Cilia Flores, by law and custom. The mail was entered into the public record on Wednesday.

Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were abducted from his country in a dramatic midnight raid in early January. He was then paraded in an open vehicle throughout New York City, and then placed on a trial where both of them pleaded not guilty. On February 9, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control granted permission to Venezuela's acting President Delcy Rodrigues for the payment of the legal fees of Maduro and his wife. But within 3 hours, it cancelled the authorisation granting license “without explanation”, though maintained the license for Cilia Flores.

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The next hearing for the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is scheduled for March 26, 2026. The trial itself is bizarre, a bureaucratic exercise that lies outside the jurisdiction of the US federal law. US authorities at first tried to frame it as “war on drugs”, blaming a certain “Cartel de los Soles”. Caracas has questioned the legitimacy of these charges, recalling that an original indictment against Maduro for leading the so-called “Cartel de Los Soles” was withdrawn due to a lack of concrete evidence.

Now the US is charging the President of a state who is eligible for diplomatic immunity under federal law with drug-trafficking and weapons charges. The 25-page indictment still accuses Maduro and his wife of facilitating drugs into the US and kidnapping, murdering those who owed them money. The US prosecutors understood that allowing the Venezuelan government to pay the legal fees of Maduro would make their case weak, under the argument that his capture was illegal and that, as the foreign head of a state, he is immune from prosecution under US and international law.