State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel denied on Monday that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden offered amnesty to Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro.
Patel’s remarks come after a recent report published by the Wall Street Journal claimed that, according to anonymous sources, the United States discussed with Maduro regime officials the possibility of issuing pardons to Maduro and to other top members of his authoritarian regime indicted by U.S. authorities.
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Maduro, and other members of his top brass, are actively wanted by U.S. authorities on multiple narcoterrorism charges and the socialist dictator has an active $15 million bounty on himself for information that leads to his arrest and/or conviction.
In exchange for amnesty, the report claimed, Maduro would have to give up power following the July 28 sham presidential election, which the dictator claims he “won” despite the continued refusal of the Venezuelan electoral authorities — controlled by Maduro — of publishing voter data.
Patel, in a Monday press briefing, described the WSJ report’s claims as “not true”:
We’ve not made any offers of amnesty to Maduro or others since this election. … Let me just say that in – as it relates to Venezuela, we reject the increased violence, the unjust mass incarceration, and the repression directed at Venezuelans, including members of the democratic opposition.
I’m certainly not going to read out the tea leaves of the process. As Secretary Blinken has said, now is the time for the Venezuelan parties to begin discussions on a respectful and peaceful transition in accordance with Venezuelan electoral law and the wishes of the Venezuelan people. The U.S. is considering a range of options to pressure Maduro to return Venezuela to a democratic path and will continue to do so, but the responsibility is on Maduro and Venezuela’s electoral authorities to come clean on the election results.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also denied the report’s claims in her own press briefing on Monday.
Maduro is presently attempting to cling to power for a third six-year term. Several regional countries and international organizations have publicly rejected the dictator’s claimed “victory” in the July election, while the Venezuelan opposition has contested the “official” results published by the country’s electoral authorities.
The Venezuelan opposition published vote tallies obtained on the day of the election that it claims can prove that its candidate, 74-year-old former diplomat Edmundo González, defeated Maduro by a landslide and that therefore the CNE’s claim of Maduro’s victory is fraudulent.
The sham election and Maduro’s claimed “victory” sparked nationwide peaceful protests against the dictator. Maduro responded to the protests by unleashing a brutal persecution campaign that has resulted in at least 24 deaths and more than 2,000 arbitrary detentions as of this week. Maduro claimed that the protests are part of an “international Zionism” plot to overthrow his regime.
The Wall Street Journal report, which U.S. officials have now refuted, claimed that the alleged negotiations for amnesty in exchange for the dictator stepping down occurred online between the head of the National Assembly Jorge Rodríguez, who is also Maduro’s top negotiator, and Daniel P. Erikson, who directs policy toward Venezuela at the White House National Security Council.
The report explained that Maduro’s attempt to hold onto power “stacks the odds” against President Joe Biden, whose administration spent an extensive amount of unsuccessful effort into convincing Maduro to allow “free and fair” elections in Venezuela.
Maduro ultimately chose to trash previously agreed-upon deals with the opposition signed in Barbados under the observation of Secretary of State Antony Blinken in October 2023, leading to the events of July 28. Every element of the election was orchestrated for Maduro to remain in power – down to the date, as it marked the birthday of his predecessor, late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez. The dictator threatened Venezuelans with a “bloodbath” if he was not the “winner” of the sham election.
The failed efforts of the Biden administration saw Biden grant several concessions to Maduro and his rogue socialist regime over the past two years, including the release of Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and Francisco Flores de Freitas, Maduro’s convicted drug-trafficking nephews more commonly known as the narcosobrinos (“narco-nephews”). The pair were arrested in November 2015 by DEA authorities in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on charges of attempting to transport 800 kilograms of cocaine into U.S. territory.
The Biden administration also released Alex Saab, Maduro’s alleged top money launderer and financial brain, while he was undergoing trial proceedings at a U.S. court facing money laundering charges. The White House claimed that Saab’s release would allegedly help curb the large flow of Venezuelan migrants entering the United States by addressing the “root causes of migration.”
Maduro also received sanctions relief from the Biden administration, including a presently active license granted to California-based Chevron in November 2022 that allows the company to resume oil production and exports from Venezuela to the United States. The Biden Administration removed another of Maduro’s nephews, Carlos Erik Malpica Flores, from the United States’ list of sanctioned individuals.
Malpica Flores, who once served as the dictator’s treasurer, was sanctioned by the United States in 2017 for his alleged involvement in the disappearance of $11 billion from the state-owned oil company PDVSA between 2004 and 2014.
As part of the agreements signed in Barbados in October 2023, Maduro received a six-month oil and gas sanctions relief package from Biden that allowed his regime to freely sell its oil in U.S. and International markets, opening new revenue streams for the authoritarian regime through its April 2024 expiration date.
Biden offered the sanctions relief in exchange for Maduro’s vague promise of holding a “free and fair” election in Venezuela sometime during the second half of 2024. Maduro failed to uphold the terms of the agreement and doubled down on his persecution of dissidents.
The Wall Street Journal observed in its report that Biden “has five months” to pull off a deal with Maduro before January 2025, when a new presidential term is slated to begin in Venezuela. Additionally, the Wall Street Journal suggested that former President Donald Trump would not be open to authorizing an amnesty agreement for Maduro should he be elected in the upcoming U.S. presidential election.
The report also claimed that the Biden administration had previously made a similar amnesty offer to Maduro during private talks in Doha, Qatar, in 2023 between Jorge Rodríguez and Juan González, Biden’s former top Latin America adviser. According to the report, Maduro “declined to discuss arrangements where he would have to leave office” at that time.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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