Lawfare Daily: The U.S. Plan for Venezuelan Oil Revenue
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2026
⏱️ 64 minutes
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Summary
On today's podcast, Executive Editor Natalie Orpett speaks with Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson about the recently announced U.S. plan to take possession of Venezuelan oil, sell it on the world market, and hold the revenue from those sales in accounts based in Qatar. Scott and Lawfare Contributing Editor Alex Zerden recently published an article in Lawfare digging into the complexities of the plan. Scott and Natalie talk through them all—what exactly this plan is, how it’s supposed to work, why Qatar is involved, and all the many challenges in play.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Trump administration, reasonably in my mind, or at least not patently unreasonably, felt that even though it had set up this regime through executive order 14373, it decided to route the initial sale of oil that Venezuela engaged in that it held broker for about $500 million through this Qatar mechanism, |
| 0:21.8 | which is a separate mechanism, which is essentially just routing it through a bank account in |
| 0:25.6 | Qatar. |
| 0:26.8 | It's the Lawfare podcast. |
| 0:28.8 | I'm Natalie Orpat, executive editor of Lawfare, with my colleague Lawfare Senior Editor, Scott R. Anderson. |
| 0:35.8 | There's a real tension in U.S. recognition policy towards Venezuela because the Trump administration |
| 0:40.4 | is now coordinating with the Delci Rodriguez regime in Venezuela. It's basically the Maduro |
| 0:44.8 | regime, but just stands Maduro with his deputy now in charge. But that government |
| 0:49.3 | hasn't been the U.S. recognized government of Venezuela since at least 2019, I believe that's the year President |
| 0:56.0 | Trump said, I am recognizing Juan Guido as the interim president of Venezuela. |
| 1:02.0 | Today we're talking about the recently announced U.S. plan to take possession of Venezuelan oil, |
| 1:07.0 | sell it on the world market, and hold the revenue from those sales in accounts based |
| 1:11.7 | in Qatar. Scott and Lawfare contributing editor Alex Zerdin recently published a piece in |
| 1:17.4 | lawfare digging into the complexities of the plan. Scott and I talked through them all. |
| 1:22.5 | What exactly is this plan? How is it supposed to work? Why is Qatar involved? And what are all of the many |
| 1:29.7 | legal challenges in play? So Scott, you and Alex Zerdin just published a really extraordinary |
| 1:37.6 | piece in law fair that digs into this series of questions that is, I think, truly mind-boggling to most of us, which relates |
| 1:46.6 | to Venezuelan oil. So first of all, I'm going to really commend it to our listeners to go to our |
| 1:53.5 | site and read it because we will get into it as much as we can orally here, but it is, man, is it |
| 1:59.3 | complicated. That it is, Yeah. So the piece is called |
| 2:03.6 | unpacking the Trump administration's plans for Venezuela's oil revenue. Like I said, |
| 2:08.5 | you can find it on our site. So, Scott, to get us started, I wanted to just do a little bit of |
... |
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