Why Nicolas Maduro Faces Trial in Lower Manhattan

The Counsel

Vox Media Podcast Network

News, Politics

4.7 • 861 Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2026

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Elie Honig is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney and co-chief of the organized crime unit at the Southern District of New York, where he prosecuted more than 100 mobsters, including members of La Cosa Nostra, and the Gambino and Genovese crime families. He went on to serve as Director of the Department of Law and Public Safety at New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice. He is currently Special Counsel at Lowenstein Sandler and a CNN legal analyst. For a transcript of Elie’s note and the full archive of contributor notes, head to CAFE.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:05.5	Hey everyone, Ellie here, wishing you a happy not quite Friday. I guess you'll probably hear this on Wednesday.
1:12.5	You always know something big went down if you're hearing this podcast sometime before Friday.
1:18.7	And yes, something very big did go down, the arrest and indictment of the former Venezuelan
1:26.1	leader, the deposed president, Nicholas Maduro.
1:29.6	I will just give you a little behind the scenes.
1:32.2	I got a call very early Saturday morning.
1:34.5	I was completely in vacation between Christmas and New Year's mode, had no inclination
1:40.7	that I might be working at all that weekend.
1:45.7	And the first thing that was said to me was, how quick can you get up, meaning get on camera? And I said, what happened? I was, you know,
1:50.8	my mind started racing. And the producer said, it's Maduro, Nicholas Maduro. And my reaction was,
1:56.7	what does that have to do with me? This is a, you know, I thought it was a military story,
2:01.0	a geopolitical story, not a legal one. Very quickly realized what had happened, that he had been
2:06.5	arrested, and now he faces justice in an American court. As much as what we are seeing really
2:13.0	feels surreal, especially to me, as you'll see in a moment, I know the hallways of that courthouse
2:19.1	and the players in this case very, very well. To see the former leader of a foreign nation
	...

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