🧨 The Trump Administration Just Admitted That It Made Up a Fake Venezuelan Cartel It Claimed President Maduro Was the Leader Of

They used a slang phrase like a terrorist organization, bombed Venezuela, seized Maduro, then rewrote the story after the fact

Jan 07, 2026

The U.S. government spent months selling the public a scary story about Venezuela: that Nicolás Maduro was the leader of a narco-terror “cartel” called Cartel de los Soles. They used that label to justify escalation. They used it to justify violence. They used it to justify the idea that bombing another country and seizing its president was “law enforcement.”

Now, after the bombs have already fallen and Maduro has already been seized, the Justice Department is backing away from the very story it helped build.

That is not a minor correction. That is the pretext falling apart in public.

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Now let’s talk about what just happened, because it reveals the method.

The New York Times reported that the Justice Department has backed off the claim that “Cartel de los Soles” is an actual, structured drug trafficking organization led by Maduro. According to that reporting, experts have long said it’s a slang term—a phrase used to refer to corruption in parts of the Venezuelan military and government, not a cartel with a hierarchy and a command structure like the Sinaloa cartel or the Zetas.

And after the U.S. seized Maduro, the DOJ unsealed a revised indictment that quietly shifted its language. Instead of repeatedly describing Cartel de los Soles as a real organization and calling Maduro its leader, the new indictment describes it as a “patronage system” and a “culture of corruption.” The Times reports that the old indictment mentioned the “cartel” 32 times. The new one mentions it twice.

That is a tacit concession: they knew they couldn’t prove the “cartel” story in court.

One expert quoted in the Times said it plainly: designations don’t have to be proved in court, and that’s the difference. In other words: you can say almost anything when you’re issuing a designation. You can call a phrase a “terrorist organization.” You can attach a name to a narrative. You can use it politically. But when you’re facing discovery and cross-examination, the story has to survive contact with reality.

So the story got rewritten.

And here is the part that should make every American furious: the U.S. government had already designated Cartel de los Soles as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Treasury did it. State did it. Marco Rubio did it. Politicians repeated it. Cable news repeated it. And then the administration used the “narco-terror” framework to justify military actions—boat strikes, seizures, and ultimately, an extraordinary escalation: bombing Venezuela and seizing its president.

Then the DOJ adjusted the legal narrative afterward.

That sequence should terrify you, because it teaches you how empire works:

Label first. Strike second. Rewrite the paperwork later.

And if you’re wondering why this matters beyond Venezuela, here’s why: this is a template that can be used on any country Washington wants to break.

If you can invent an enemy structure, call it a terrorist organization, and then “fix” the language later once you’ve already used the label to unleash violence, then the rule of law is gone. What remains is power.

Now, here’s another part that makes this even more grotesque.

The Times reports that the DEA’s annual National Drug Threat Assessment has never mentioned Cartel de los Soles. It also reports that the U.N.’s World Drug Report doesn’t mention it as a trafficking organization either.

So why was the U.S. government comfortable turning it into an “actual cartel” publicly?

Because that label wasn’t meant for accuracy. It was meant for persuasion.

And Rubio is still repeating it anyway.

According to the Times—and also as reported by Salon—Rubio went on Meet the Press and continued to refer to Cartel de los Soles as an actual organization, still calling Maduro its leader, even after the revised indictment was unsealed. Salon notes that other U.S. officials and leaders have continued echoing the claim publicly.

So the DOJ’s “quiet admission” is not stopping the propaganda. It’s just exposing it.

Let me slow this down and explain something plainly, because this is exactly how modern power launders violence.

A Foreign Terrorist Organization designation is not a court verdict. It’s not a trial. It’s not a conviction. It’s an executive branch tool that can be applied with political convenience and minimal transparency. It carries enormous consequences, and it’s often treated as if it is “proof.”

But it isn’t proof. It’s a label.

And when the label collapses the moment it has to survive in court, you learn what the label was for: it was for the public.

It was to make people emotionally comfortable with violence.

It was to make people say, “Well, if he’s the head of a terrorist cartel, then anything is justified.”

That’s how you normalize things that should never be normalized.

And this is happening in a moment when the administration has already shown a terrifying willingness to ignore constraints—constitutional constraints, international constraints, institutional constraints.

Members of Congress have said the administration did not even provide basic notification before launching these operations. International law experts and world leaders have condemned the actions. And now we see the rhetorical scaffolding falling apart.

The Times also reports that the revised indictment stretched in other ways too—like pulling in the leader of Tren de Aragua as a supposed co-conspirator with Maduro, with experts criticizing the thinness of the alleged connection and saying it reflects Trump rhetoric more than reality.

That matters because it reinforces the pattern: the indictment is being shaped to fit political messaging. It’s not merely a legal document. It’s part of a narrative war.

Family, I want you to connect this to the bigger moral crisis we’ve been living through for over two years.

The genocide in Gaza taught the world something devastating: international law means next to nothing when power decides it doesn’t apply. The U.N. can convene emergency meetings. Courts can issue statements. Investigators can warn. And the empire can keep moving.

Now you are watching that same collapse of accountability expand into a new arena.

This “Cartel de los Soles” reversal is not an isolated legal tweak. It is a window into a world where truth is secondary, and pretext is everything.

And once pretext becomes the engine of state violence, nobody is safe.

Not Venezuela.
Not Mexico.
Not Colombia.
Not Cuba.
Not even U.S. citizens who dissent, protest, organize, and refuse the story being sold.

Because the machine that can invent a cartel can invent a villain. And the machine that can invent a villain can justify almost anything.

That’s why this matters.

Not because anyone needs to love Maduro. Not because corruption is imaginary. Not because drug trafficking isn’t real anywhere.

It matters because the U.S. government used a phrase like a weapon, elevated it to a terrorist designation, and then quietly adjusted the truth when it needed to survive legal scrutiny—after the violence had already been done.

That is not justice. That is manipulation.

And it should make every American ask the one question the propaganda is designed to bury:

If they were willing to lie about the “cartel,” what else are they willing to lie about to justify taking a country apart?

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