Jonathan Turley Predicts If Maduro Indictment Will Be ‘Accepted By The Courts’

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, said Saturday that captured Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro is unlikely to succeed in having his criminal charges dropped because of legal precedent dating back more than 30 years.

US military forces carried out an operation that resulted in the arrest of Maduro and his wife early Saturday morning, President Donald Trump announced in a message published in Truth Social, adding that US forces suffered no casualties during the capture. Turley said the case of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, who was deposed in Operation Just Cause in 1989, would likely set a precedent. (RELATED: Trump Teases Next Potential Target for Military Intervention After Capture of Venezuelan Dictator)

“He [Trump] has precedent on its side. What Maduro is going to re-argue is basically the case of Noriega, who we did the same type of operation on in a sort of snatch and grab and then we took him to court in this case in Florida,” Turley said. “He made many of the arguments that we expect Maduro to make and lost. If anything, I think Maduro presents a weaker case than Noriega. I mean, in this case, you have a very complete case and indictment against Maduro in New York. And you know, when the vice president, [Delcy] Rodríguez, in Caracas, says we want proof of life, you will have it. This is called impeachment.

WATCH:

“And he is [Maduro is] “I’m going to be there in a New York court to answer to these charges and the charges are, of course, very serious,” Turley continued. “The United States government has traced various accounts of not only Maduro, but also his cronies, in foreign banks and they have always alleged that Maduro is the head of a drug cartel that is flooding drugs into the country. So, I think that’s going to be legally accepted by the courts, that they had the right to do that.

“There will obviously be challenges and I don’t mean that something can’t be a scare or come up that we will have a problem with, but Noriega sets a powerful precedent for this action,” Turley added.

Congressional Democrats denounced the operation as an illegal use of military force, with some prominent leftists turning to Bluesky to demand Trump’s impeachment. Turley said Maduro’s problem stems from the Biden administration’s refusal to recognize the results of Venezuela’s disputed 2024 elections.

Legally, Trump has the upper hand in this matter. Maduro will replay Noriega’s arguments. However, he presents even weaker arguments on the merits in light of the determining precedent than Noriega did. https://t.co/ylMfum3Jtg

–Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) January 3, 2026

“You’re going to start with preliminary challenges that, as I noted, are going to be a lot like Noriega’s, which is that he was head of state and had immunity,” Turley said. “It’s going to be a big problem because he wasn’t really a head of state if you ask the Venezuelan people, so the United States and other countries didn’t recognize that he was elected.”

“On the contrary, they believed that his opponent was elected and on the contrary, they considered him to be [Maduro] as a usurper and a drug lord,” Turley continued. “So making a head of state argument is not going to be very, I think, very credible in a court of law.”

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent, nonpartisan news service, is available free to any legitimate news publisher capable of delivering a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and DCNF affiliation. For questions about our guidelines or our partnership, please contact licenses@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.