Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro said in an interview this week that White House National Security Advisor John Bolton personally ordered his assassination via drone attack at a military ceremony last year.
In a video interview with far-left journalist Max Blumenthal, the socialist dictator explained how Bolton worked with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and the opposition politician Julio Borges to orchestrate an assassination attempt against him.
“Now, a year ago, it will be a year in August, there was the attempt. I can tell you that today I have proof that the assassination attempt was ordered by John Bolton in the White House,” Maduro explained. “And he waited for the results in the White House. If you dig deeper, you’ll see it someday. The proof will come out how John Bolton, in coordination with then Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. And they gave the task to Julio Borges, a former legislator in Venezuela.”
Maduro alleged that the “assassination attempt” was a disturbance that occurred during a military rally that year that the socialists have long claimed was a drone attack on Maduro. Within days, authorities revealed that they had “identified the people who made the explosives and prepared the weapons and their international links” and made a series of arrests.
Those “international links,” according to Maduro, lead back to John Bolton. He claimed:
We have testimony, we have witnesses, proof. All the material authors of this assassination attempt by drone were captured. Some of the operational and intellectual authors were captured. And it all points to Julio Borges in Bogotá. It all points to Juan Manuel Santos in Colombia. All of it. All the logistics, the institutional support, technical assistance, support from Colombian intelligence. It all points to John Bolton, who has a criminal mentality, a murderer’s mentality. We survived that day.
The 40-minute interview took place in the mountains outside Caracas, with Blumenthal giving Maduro the opportunity to divulge his unsubstantiated claims and socialist propaganda.
Maduro’s comments came just as Bolton unveiled a series of new sanctions aimed at weakening his grip on power. At an international conference in Lima, Peru, Bolton described how the latest round of sanctions, which freeze all the regime’s U.S. assets as well as those understood to be giving the regime material support, would “deny Maduro access to the global financial system and further isolate him internationally.”
“We want to send a message to third parties wanting to do business with the Maduro regime: There’s no need to risk your business interests in the U.S. for the purposes of profiting from a corrupt and dying government,” he declared.
It is not the first time that Maduro has accused senior U.S. officials of planning his assassination. He has repeatedly argued that the Trump administration is trying to assassinate him and made the same claims about his predecessor, Barack Obama. During the Obama presidency, Maduro accused Vice President Joe Biden of planning a “coup d’etat” against his regime.
“The imperial power has entered a dangerous phase of desperation and has been talking to governments of the continent to announce the toppling my government,” he said at a military rally in 2015. “I accuse U.S. Vice President Joe Biden who personally spoke with the presidents and prime ministers about the plan.”
Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.