Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro to face trial next June in NYC on narco-terrorism charges

Molly Crane-Newman, New York Daily News on Jul 22, 2026

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NEW YORK — Deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro is tentatively set to go on trial before a jury of New Yorkers in about a year from now, a Manhattan judge ruled Wednesday.

Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein put the court date — June 1, 2027 — on the calendar at a brief hearing attended by the ousted Latin American president and Cilia Flores, his wife and codefendant, conceding any number of complications could later see it pushed back.

The judge said he would next hear oral arguments on Nov. 17 and consider a yet-to-be-filed motion from Maduro seeking to have the narco-terrorism case thrown out on sovereign immunity grounds in the coming months.

“We believe that that first category of motion should be resolved first,” Maduro’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, said in court of the sovereign immunity bid. He noted that, if successful, Maduro would not be required to litigate any aspects of the prosecution brought by the Trump Justice Department.

Wearing beige prison scrubs and eyeglasses, the towering Maduro, 63, was smiling and appeared in good form as he was escorted into the courtroom by U.S. marshals just after noon, jovially greeting his attorneys with handshakes.

Maduro has pleaded not guilty to four drug-trafficking, weapons and narco-terrorism charges accusing him of corrupting his country’s government institutions for decades to export cocaine into the U.S. in collaboration with cartel leaders. He maintains he is a prisoner of war and that the U.S. government toppled him in violation of international law in pursuit of Venezuela’s colossal oil reserves.

Flores, who married Maduro in 2013, is accused in the indictment of aiding her husband’s crimes, including by pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to broker a sit-down between a Venezuelan government official and a drug trafficker. She has pleaded not guilty.

Scores of protesters gathered outside the courthouse early Wednesday, some bearing signs calling for the authoritarian leader’s release and others for Maduro to “rot in prison motherf—er.”

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U.S. special forces captured the couple at home in Caracas on Jan. 3 in a deadly overnight raid that claimed at least 100 lives, according to Venezuela’s interior minister.

A soldier who was closely involved in planning and executing the high-profile capture, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, is separately facing charges in a pending Manhattan Federal Court case for allegedly raking in $400,000 on Polymarket after successfully betting Maduro’s reign would end by Jan. 31. He maintains his innocence.

The couple is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park, a notorious federal jail temporarily home to other high-profile inmates like Luigi Mangione, the suspected killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

The rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine, upon his release from a brief stint there in April, bore a SpongeBob SquarePants toy that he claimed had been autographed by Maduro with the message “Venezuela forever.”

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