Fourth Reich Archaeology - #077 - Emergency Dispatch - Illegal Business

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

This week we are dropping our episode early because there is just too much going on for us to sit on the sidelines until Friday.  Recorded on Sunday, January 4th, 2026, in this episode we weigh in on the outright violation of international law that occurred in the dead of night on Saturday, January 3rd in Caracas, Venezuela, when Nicolas Maduro and his wife were kidnapped by the United States Military Industrial Complex and brought to the center of empire to answer to federal charges of narcoterrorism. Even though we (and the rest of the world) knew this was a long time coming - and we predicted it in our Geopolitik 7 episode - the actual event was still a shock when it happened. Whatever happens next, this invasion marks the entry into a new era of U.S. world policing, one in which the United States will straight up go out and bag any head of state it dislikes, under cover of darkness, in order to get what it wants.  This is a violation of international law. It is a violation of domestic law. And beyond strongly worded letters and statements, the international community seems to be okay with letting it go unanswered.  At least for now, it seems like the United States’ policy of “might makes right” is going to carry the day. Meanwhile, the U.S. mafia-state under the helm of King of K-K-Krime Donald Trump is wearing its criminality like a mink coat. U.S. friendly drug dealers like the recently pardoned ex-Honduran kingpin/president Juan Orlando Hernandez, Ecuadoran billionaire/president Daniel Noboa, and crypto fraudster/torture-dungeon-master Nayib Bukele laugh their way to the bank. The empire’s reasons for flouting the law are beyond transparent, they are blatant and brazen. Under the laughable pretext of curbing drug trafficking into the United States, the Trump administration has openly asserted that the reason they took Maduro was to open up the Venezuelan oil and mineral market to multinational corporations. It’s all so basic. It’s all so annoying. We have come back to the 19th Century policy of going out and taking control over places and peoples simply so that we can extract their resources to enrich our psychotic rulers. And at this point, the default is that the billionaire class, the powers that be, and whatever hangers on who worship that group are just going to keep doing mafia shit to consolidate capital as long as everyone else goes along with the shakedown racket.Let’s get digging. 

Hey everyone, Dick here, co-host of your favorite noided leftist lawyer parapolitical podcast, Fourth Reich Archaeology. We are going to get right into this week's episode, which is of course about the kidnapping slash seizure slash arrest or whatever you want to call it of Nicholas Maduro and his wife in just a minute. But before we do, I just wanted to give an update on the news that has come out in the intervening time between when we recorded this episode on Sunday, January 4th, 2026, and when we are releasing it today, Tuesday, January 6th, 2026. Now, a lot has happened in just these 48 hours, and things are developing rapidly, but I am going to be brief about it. So, Nicholas Maduro was arraigned yesterday in New York City, and he has pled not guilty

to the charges brought against him. The judge, the federal judge assigned to the case, is senior U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellestine, the infamous 9-11 judicial cover-up artist. And Christy Noem, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, now says that Venezuelans living in the United States under temporary protected status, or TPS, while they can apply for asylum.

This is despite the fact that the Trump administration has moved to end TPS and has moved to halt the asylum process. And there is outright chaos within the administration where Secretary of War Pete Hegeseth, Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and the White House Deputy Chief of Stash slash Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller have all taken the airways and made conflict. public statements, possibly yacked out of their minds, about who will be running Venezuela. So just wanted to give you that update as we are doing all of this in real time. As you know full well, Don and Iowa, we are just two humble dudes doing this project in our free time when we are not otherwise working our full-time jobs and we're doing our best to bring you some truth. Enjoy the show.

Colonialism or imperialism, as the slave system of the West is called, is not something that's just confined to England or France or the United States. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. So it's one huge complex or combine. Either you are with us or you are with the table. where you were with the terrorists. And this international power structure is used to suppress the masses of dark-skinned people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources.

We found no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic, the Warren Commission of science. I'll never apologize for the United States of America, ever. I don't care what the facts are. In 1945, we began to require information, which showed that there were two wars going. His job, he said, was to protect the Western way of life. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders the more easy victims of a big lie than a small law. For example, we're the CIA. He has a mile.

He knows so long as a die. Freedom can never be secure. It usually takes a national crisis. Freedom can never be secure. He's secure. Pearl Harbor. A lot of killers. You've got a lot of killers.

Why you think our country's so innocent? This is a war with the C.I. I'm a global. And I'm Dick Fort Reich is coming. Indent Fort Reich is coming. Archaeology. This is a Fourth Reich archaeology. I'm Dick.

And I'm Don. Welcome back. listener for what we are calling an emergency dispatch based on all of the news that has been coming out down South America way. That's right. The United States has invaded Venezuela. Well, I should say it's more of an arrest of the leader of that country, Nicholas Maduro and his wife. And they've extradited him to New York City. This is all happening in real time. Today is Sunday, January 4th, 2026, just four days into the new year. And here we are doing some real dirt. When I say we, of course, I mean the United States government. And yeah, not not dick and

Don, to be clear. No, we're digging through the dirt. Do not participate and do not condone. In fact, condemn. I think we can say that we condemn what's been going down. down. At this point, I'm sure all of you have seen the videos that have come out of the night raid that happen on, what was it, Saturday night, early hours of Saturday morning, I would say over the evening of Friday and into Saturday. And it's been, sadly, not unexpected, of course, in our geopolitic episode seven, we sort of called it that something like this was. going to happen and that we were going to engage in a hot war with the Venezuelan government. But before we get into it, and of course, in this episode, we're going to try something new.

We're going to try and give you just our initial thoughts, our initial reactions to what has been happening in the last 48 hours or so of the news cycle. And before we get into all of that, I just want to say, as always, thank you. very much for tuning in. Thank you very much to all of you who continue to tune in week after week. Thank you for all of our friends on Patreon for all of your generous support. We do have a Patreon for those of you who did not know, and we are actively and openly seeking financial support from those of you who truly believe in this Fourth Reich Archaeology message, one that unfortunately with every new cycle seems like we are just dead on right about and i invite all of you

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email. You can always email us at 4thrikepod at gmail.com. Once again, thank you, thank you, thank you for all of you who are continuing to support this program. Now, Don, let's get

right into it. Maybe you want to tee up and kick off this episode, which is really, I think we've done episodes like this in the past, but I don't think we've done anything as such in real time as we're going to be doing today. Yeah. And look, it's a new year. It's a new opportunity for us to dip our toes into some new experimental formats for presenting information to you, our much beloved listeners. And so here we are calling this episode provisionally illegal business, right? Because it's all about that illegal business. It's all about that mafia war.

You know, we've been talking for a long time about the Debordian analysis, the Marxist point of view of the factions of capital. their captive nations that serve their interests as mafia and as battles and conflicts between factions of different mafias. And I think that the latest attempt to really take over, I mean, no use sugarcoding it, right? Trump said it himself, take over and control and expropriate. the property of the country of Venezuela, it doesn't get any more mafia than that.

And so in this episode... Well, I should say it's even worse than that. It's like, he said, what did you say in the press conference? He said, it's going to be the guys behind me. They're going to be running it. And that's like such a mafioso thing to say. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, seriously, it's grim. It's grim, folks. it's looking really, really bad and, you know, we find ourselves, again, kind of pissing into the wind here in so many ways, not any different than in 2003, right? You know, millions of people in the streets then, now millions of people don't even bother taking the streets because it's like these fuckers are just in control and they're going to do whatever the fuck they want to do. What are we going to do? What are Dick and Don going to do right now as we record this episode? Well, let me give you a little preview. First, we are going to talk about what is the only conclusion, the obvious conclusion,

and the very straightforward conclusion that, yes, indeed, the actions taken by the United States military in invading the sovereign country of Venezuela to execute an arrest warrant were indeed illegal under international law. So we're going to talk a little bit about that, talk a little bit about what some of the other actors in the international community have said with respect to that criminal act by the United States. And then we are going to, you know, we're not fucking CNN, right? But we are lawyers.

And we do have the ability to read and analyze legal documents and to convey the contents and to convey the contents and the implications of those legal documents in a digestible, hopefully a digestible way to you, our listeners. So then we are going to talk about the substance of, of the indictment against Nicolas Maduro, against his wife, against his co-defendants in this criminal prosecution in the Southern District of New York, the federal court there. And we are also going to talk about the guy who signed his name at the bottom of that indictment. I'm not talking about the jury, the grand jury foreman whose identity is, of course, like all contents of grand jury proceedings secret and unknowable talking about the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york a little feller and i will call him little and i will call him just a little

Feller, Walter Joseph J. Clayton the 3rd. That's right. Jay Clayton, U.S. Attorney for S.D.N.Y. and a veteran of every, every communoid's favorite big law firm. That's right, folks. It's the Dulles Brothers Shop. It's Sullivan and fucking Cromwell. So we are going to dig a little bit into his dirty, dirty past and see, you know, how smoothly that onramps onto the very dirty work that he is doing in the interests of this big old illegal business known as the United States Empire. Be not dismayed, listener, because the blatantness, the brazenness, the cavalierness of the criminality on full display, you have got, and we have got, collectively, to take it as a sign that these people are

letting their guard down, they think they can get away with just about anything. And Dick, I don't know about you, but God damn it, if I'm not going to do just about whatever little piece I can do to make it my life's work, to see to it that these fuckers do not get away with this absolutely heinous gangster shit. Absolutely. It's heinous, it's gangster, cavalier, brazen. And there's one thing I think you left out. It's also so fucking hypocritical. It's so fucking annoying at this point. Every day you hear this same administration talk about fucking Russia, talk about fucking Iran, talk about all of the shit that's going on that they don't like, right?

They're calling Russia. They're calling Putin a dictator who is reaching beyond what he's allowed to do as a head of state. They're saying the same thing about Iran. And meanwhile, look at this fucking shit that we are doing day in and day out. And tell me that's not some serious hypocrisy. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's right there on the surface.

What do you say? Shall we say the old magic words and kick this baby off? Let's get digging. This night and early today at my direction, the United States armed forces conducted an extraordinary military operation in the capital of Venezuela. I'm not at the bar, whatever the pub, you to see it. Still they're sending me these bottles above you to see it. But I will open the minds of thugs, you to see it.

Who you think really bringing the drugs, you to see it. Overwhelming American military power, Air, Land and Sea was used to launch a spectacular assault. It was an assault like people have not seen since World War II. We have a force against a heavily fortified military fortress in the heart of Caracas to bring outlaw dictator Nicholas Maduro to justice. As the president said, our adversaries remain on notice. America, America can't protect our will anywhere, any time. The coordination, the stealth, the lethality, the precision, the very long arm of American justice, all on full display in the middle of the night.

Nicholas Maduro had his chance, just like Iran had their chance, until they didn't and until he didn't. He facked around and we found out. Venezuela. Well, it's largely going to be for a period of time, the people that are standing right behind me. One of the biggest problems of Venezuelans have is they have to declare independence from Cuba.

They tried to basically colonize it from a security standpoint. So yeah, look, if I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I'd be concerned at least. Are you putting up the oil flow of Cuba from Venezuela? Well, the President already announced a week ago that anything that's sanctioned, it's sanctioned oil, not going to be allowed to get there. So that's an increase. What's next year? What's next year?

Put down your money and take it all of that. You're the club, baby, calling me back. You're to see. I'm never sure. What's the message? Who did you have in mind when you said f-round and find out globally? Well, I referred also to the Iranians and their nuclear capabilities. The president said they will never get a nuclear bomb.

The Iranians didn't believe it? He acted. He said the same thing about Induro. He acted. He said the same thing with the Houthis. He acted. Southern border acted. We're going to do something about drugs. He's acting. We're acting with striking drugboats. This is a president of action. And you don't get peace in this dangerous world without strength. Is the United States now a United States now a war with Venezuela.

There's not a war. I mean, we are a war against drug trafficking organizations. It's not a war against Venezuela. We are enforcing American laws with regards to oil sanctions. We have sanction entities. We go to court, we get a warrant, we seize those boats with oil, and that will continue. And we continue to reserve the right to take strikes

against drug boats that are bringing drugs towards the United States that are being operated by transnational criminal organizations. criminal organizations, including the cartel Bill of Souls, of course, their leader, the leader of that cartel is now in U.S. custody and facing U.S. justice in the Southern District of New York, and that's Nicholas Maduro. So we're made of a big progress in that regard. Mr. Secretary, who is in charge? Are you running Venezuela right now? Yeah, I mean, I keep people, you know, fixating on that. Here's the bottom line on it is we expect to see changes. Venezuela. Changes of all kinds, long-term, short-term. We'd love to see all kinds of changes, but the most immediate changes are the ones that are in the national interest of the United States.

That's why we're involved here, because of how it applies, it has a direct impact on the United States. Okay, business control America, the oil business control America, KRS-1 still causing hysteria. Okay. So, as promised, we are going to start with the basics, the foundation, the very charter of the United Nations. And Article 2, Section 4 of that charter, well, it pretty clearly sets out, I'll just read it, the organization and its members in pursuit of the purposes stated in Article 1, namely, of course, the creation of the United Nations, right, to maintain global peace and security in the wake of what we all know as the greatest conflagration and

disaster of the 20th century, World War II, you know, tens of millions of deaths, all that shit, of course. So in pursuit of those purposes, all of the members shall act in accordance with the following principles. And we're going to skip principles one through three and go straight to number four. Number four says, all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity

or political independence of any state or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations. What do you think, Dick? I mean, to me, this sets a very, clear bar and even in the gross international criminal conduct that we have both witnessed in our lifetimes, we can kind of trace how this principle has played out in the conduct of both, you know, international relations and even in war crimes. But what's your sort of first cut on it?

To assume that the United States would abide by any of this, I mean, we've seen it, we saw it in the asylum space, we're seeing it here. To assume that they would approach this in good faith, I think that is not a very safe assumption. And I, for one, think at this point, this UN charter, all of it, even though it is, it has been ratified by the United States Congress, it has become the law of the land here in the United States. It is basically right up there with the U.S. Constitution in terms of how the force and effect, that it has domestically in this country, which all of our politicians, all of our people have to abide by. Despite all of that, it's pretty clear to me at this point in our historical

timeline that this document is but toilet paper for the powers that be nothing but something that they can take and use to wipe their dirty shit. shitty buttholes. Yeah. It reminds me, in fact, of the famous quote by John J. McCloy, of course, a member of the Warren Commission, a former big law partner himself for both Kravath, Swain, and Moore, as well as the Millbank Tweed, Hadley, and McCloy. No, it's Cadwaller. He was there, too. Also, yeah. Yeah, yeah, Cadwallader, Wickersham, and Taft as well, and then, you know, Millbank, Tweed, Hadley, and McCloy, where he eventually rose so high in the ranks as to get his name added to the masthead there, to the letterhead. John J. McCloy, of course, while he was working under Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary of War

during World War II, famously when defending the internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps said that if it's a question of the United States national security, or at least the purported national security of the United States, why the Constitution to me is just a piece of paper. And I think that your insertion dick of toilet paper, your slight modification of McLeod's quote, is apropos of what has been the, you know, violence that has been wrought upon the words on the page of the UN charter, the U.S. Constitution, and any other number of legal instruments that are supposed to constrain the conduct of state actors in international affairs. Nevertheless, it does bear mentioning that at least in the illegal invasion of

Iraq, right, the United States at the very least sought U.N. authorization for that invasion. In the invasion of Afghanistan, the United States sought and obtained the UN's acquiescence in that totally trumped up and bogus justification for invasion, you know, less so with the continuous drone wars being fought in places like Pakistan, Somalia, in Niger, whatever you say. where this, again, this article has been pretty brazenly violated, but I think it's a foregone conclusion that the quote-unquote police action that the U.S. carried out in Venezuela over the weekend was, doubtless, a violation of this black letter international law. It was called out as such by Mexican president, Claudia Scheinbaum, very immediately after the news broke on Saturday.

And it's been called out by a number of legal scholars and observers and other states. a recent announcement by a six, you know, Mexico was joined by five other nations, Chile, Uruguay, Spain, and Colombia, and Brazil, in rejecting and declaring illegal the U.S. action. But that's about as far as anything has gone, at least as of this. recording. I think most of these guys at this point are so fucking scared that the boogeyman's going to come after them, right? In the dead of night, come and snatch them and take them away. The United States has pretty much shown that it's willing to do it and has even said it in that press conference that was yesterday morning, right? They Hague Seth said, fuck around and find out. And Rubio said, Cuba, you better, if I were

Cuba, I'd be damn worried right now. And it's, it's, it's quite scary. to think that this is, you know, the new game, the new, uh, the new lay of the land where the United States is willing to pretty much say, you know, we're not going to invade your country. We're not going to go to an all-out war. We're just going to snatch your head of state and bring them to, bring them to New York City where they will be brought to justice. And we'll put a bag over their head. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, with respect to all these countries that joined in this statement, they're all presumably on the chopping block. And the U.S. has shown no qualms about not only using force, but also, as was the case recently

in Argentina, when Mille and his governing coalition were up for re-election, and the U.S. basically blackmailed the country and said, we'll give you a show. shitload of money, but only if you vote the way that we want you to vote. And then if you don't, we're going to take that money away and your already shitty economy that has been inshittified by the horrible libertarian nonsensical policies of your chainsaw-wielding psychopath of a president is going to go even further deep, even deeper into. the shitter. Yeah, this is racketeering, right? This is, this is, uh, bribery. This is extortion. This is all of the shit that the mafia does. Yeah. Yeah, there is no line between

international relations and mafiology at this point. Uh, and, you know, meanwhile, you see in statements like the European Union, which basically says like, well, we already said that Maduro was an illegitimate dictator, and we're just going to wait and see and hope that it's a democratic transition of power. And that's kind of repeated across the world. I think Macron in France made a very similar statement, much to the chagrin of the French people who took the streets of Paris in protest. But, you know, the powers that are the powers that the people, that be, right, the needed global massive solidarity, not just at a popular level, but at the state level that would be required to coordinate actions and actually put a stop to the wanton

criminality of the American Empire, the same level of coordination that was required and that failed to stop the wanton criminality of the Amerisraeli genocide over the past two and a half years, well, we're not seeing that and it really doesn't look like that is going to come anytime soon. What we have are these six governments that their statement is more strongly worded, to be sure, but that's still all it is, right? there's not a, for example, a boycott of American goods, a blockade against the American economy, a exodus from NATO, some of the few steps that I think are the bare minimum of what our comrades outside the United States should be demanding from their governments

in order to put a stop to actually make it hit the U.S. where it hurt. in the pocketbook to bring this criminality into check. And I think if that's not a clear sign of just the U.S. global hegemony, like how the awesome power of the United States is just gone unchecked year after year, I don't know what else can show that. Like we literally go into the dead of night, go into a country, snatch its leader, snatch that leader's wife, bring them back to the center of of our empire and say we're going to bring him to justice.

That's some fucking 1938 shit, you know? That is some fucking crazy shit that we're seeing, and it's just going completely unchecked. Now, I have some faith left in me in the justice system, and I'm hoping that the courts get it right, and I'm hoping if this does go before a jury, the juries get it right, and they say, you know, this is actually pretty fucked up,

and you can't do this. And we'll see. We'll see. But I, you know, I think odds of that happening are low. Yeah. I think they're low. I mean, look, it does recall the days of 1938. It also recalls as, I mean, shouldn't be a surprise to anybody listening. It's been all over the news. But the 1989 action in Panama that, you know, George Bush, George H.W. Bush, old poppy, he double-crossed his old drug-dealing buddy, Manuel Noriega, who was on the CIA payroll as a drug trafficker for years before, you know, he decided that he actually wanted to get a little something for him out of the deal. He wanted to have a little political

legitimacy in his role as a result of his playing along with Uncle Sam's drug dealing game. And that was obviously way too big for the britches assigned to him by his handlers, foremost among them, the great drug dealer George H.W. Bush. And, I mean, Panama, you look on the map, right? Yeah, they've got. the canal, but it is teeny tiny. I mean, as we will talk about later, right, Panama was a part of Colombia, and it only broke off into a separate nation because the clients of the law firm Sullivan and Cromwell wanted to control the Panama Canal and to turn it into a secure, passage for their goods that would not be at all subject to the jurisdiction of anybody

with a national interest divergent from that of the owners of capital. And Venezuela, by contrast, is a much bigger country, a much bigger economy, sits on, obviously, the world's largest oil reserves, massive amounts of gold, other minerals, et cetera, et cetera. And another country where a similar snatch-and-grab job was completed in recent memory, of course, is Haiti, where Jean-Bertrand Aristide was evacuated, so to speak, kidnapped from his country on similar trumped-up charges when, in fact, of course, the waiting replacement government, the collaborationist government, the quote-unquote moderate rebels waiting in the wings to take over Haiti from Aristide were, in fact, the ones that were guilty of drug trafficking on a massive scale.

The same is true of Honduras, with the ouster of Juan's. Manuel Celaya, and the rise eventually of the now pardoned, but once convicted international cocaine kingpin Juan Orlando Hernandez, who's now, of course, Trump's good buddy, who is treated very unfairly by a guy by the name of Joe Biden, just like another guy named Trump was also very, very unfairly persecuted by Joe Biden. I was happy to hear or not hear Joe Biden's name during the press conference yesterday. I don't know if they did mention his name,

maybe later down. In the Q&A. Yeah, it was in the question about Orlando. Yeah, it was like Q&A, yeah, yeah. But, you know, I was expecting it to come out the gates. He was teasing it early on about other presidents and other administration's failures, but he never called him out by name in his official statement.

But the point you're making, you're absolutely right. This isn't about drugs. This isn't about cocaine. This isn't about... And by the way, I thought this whole thing started because of fentanyl. I thought those submarines and ships were carrying fentanyl. I thought that Vice President J.D. Vance was concerned about the fentanyl that was coming in and not cocaine um but it's not about cocaine and you know it's not about cocaine because what like five minutes

six minutes into his official statement president trump does that 180 turn and starts talking about oil and starts talking about how the venezuelan government is totally wasting the opportunity to extract oil and just uh totally uh missing this opportunity and that the united states needs to go in and get the oil for the world? It's like so transparent at this point. I mean, we are back in the 19th century with that rationale. Seriously. It's just the white man's burden

what he is alluding to. It's no different than British Imperial Apologia from the likes of fucking Cecil Rhodes. It's so disgusting. It's disgusting. But I'm glad that you mentioned. It's just one thing. It's just so annoying at this point because there's a lot of people out there that are like,

and a lot of pundits, like, why are we doing this? This is so absurd. What's going on? Why is this happening? He's a despot. He's a authoritarian. Trump's, you know, he's a loose cannon. We don't understand it.

And it's like so fucking simple, guys. It's so fucking basic at this point. They are extracting resources from this resource rich country. That's it. Yeah. Speaking of annoying. You know, you mentioned J.D. Vance, who he tweeted. Fucking raccoon-eyed motherfucker.

Yeah, yeah, the eye shadow. Robert Smith from the cure-looking bitch without any of the swag. He tweeted yesterday that, and a PSA for everyone saying this was quote unquote, illegal, Maduro has multiple indictments in the United States for narco-terrorism. You don't get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas. So that is what the great Yale law graduate, fucking, what is that guy's real name again? Like David Haynes or something?

Which one? J.D. V. Not even as well. How many names has he had? Yeah, this fucking guy, piece of shit, fucking Peter Thiel puppet with, you know, Silicon Valley's collective hand up his ass making him talk. Fuck you, J.D. Vance, and the horse that you rode in on. At least when we were going after Escobar, Pablo Escobar, like the actual fucking drug kingpin of the 80s or 90s or whatever, you know, the U.S. was giving, offering technology, offering intelligence. had some role, of course, the DEA and, you know, special forces or whatever,

but it was the Colombian police. It was the Colombian, what was it, search block. It was the people within the country that actually did the dirt, you know? At least we had that decency. Same with Hernandez, exactly the same with Juan Orlando Hernandez in Honduras. I mean, the guy was out of office. His party lost the election, and the arrest was carried out by the Honduran police with U.S. collaboration or whatever, but it was an internationally orchestrated operation in respect to Article 2, Section 4 of the United Nations Charter, right? because it was conducted with respect to national sovereignty

that all these right-winger pretend to give so much of a shit about it. And that's what I would say to Mr. Vance is like, hey, listen, motherfucker, what you're talking about, it's a real appealing power. If we can just go out and grab someone like this, it's very attractive power. I wonder why we've never done it before.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. By the way, another tweet from J.D. Vance that speaks to your point about fentanyl? Yeah. He says, you see a lot of claims that Venezuela,

or sorry, you see a lot claims sick that Venezuela has nothing to do with drugs because most of the fentanyl comes from elsewhere. I want to address this. First off, fentanyl isn't the only drug in the world and there's still fentanyl coming from Venezuela, or at least there was second there was okay when it's like who cares it's not in the indictment as we're going to talk about in a minute second cocaine which is the main drug trafficked out of venezuela

is a profit center for all latin america cartels if you cut out the money from cocaine or even reduce it you substantially weaken the cartels overall also cocaine is bad too Yeah, why don't you ask fucking Don Jr. Tell that to Marco Rubio. Yeah. All these fuckers that are coked out of their minds. Why don't you ask the fucking Delta Force freaks that actually carried out the rage is how bad cocaine is?

Why don't you ask the Fort Bragg cartel how bad cocaine is? The Delta Force guys that did the raid, dollars to donuts, I would say maybe one or two out of every five of them was yaked up out of their minds. Absolutely. no doubt. Fucking ask Naib Buckele how bad cocaine is.

Ask your dear ally, the president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, how bad cocaine is. Ask the CIA how bad

cocaine is when they were selling that shit and ramped up the entire fucking operation of the

international cocaine traffic throughout the critical decades of the 1970s and 80.

that made the drug what it is today for fuck's sake you fucking piece of shit lying sack of shit yale law peter teal bitch boy god i hate that james fucking james david hamill james david alkins james donald bowman motherfucking ass mother fucking can't get his name right motherfucker just the last point just to drive at home this is not about drugs It has never been about drugs because to your point, Don, we need the illegal drug trade. The United States absolutely needs the illegal drug trade. The intelligence community needs the illegal drug trade. The banking industry needs the illegal drug trade.

I don't know off the top of my head what percent of the international finance community is based off of this black market. but it's a lot. It's a whole lot. And there is no reality in which our government will do anything to actually curb that trade. Yeah. And just to keep with this absolutely clown-ass tweet of JD to just finish it out. So he says, fourth, I see a lot of criticism about oil. About 20 years ago, Venezuela expropriated American oil property, and until recently, used that stolen property to get rich and fund their narco-terrorist activities.

I understand the anxiety over the use of military force, but are we just supposed to allow a communist to steal our stuff in our hemisphere and do nothing? Great powers don't act like that. thanks to President Trump's leadership is a great power again. Everyone should take note. I got to say, you're J.D. Vance, you do some great impressions. Your J.D. Vance, probably the worst one you've done, but it's somehow my favorite one because it's so perfectly captures his vibe. Yeah, it's much more of a vibe-based.

It's like Anthony Hopkins as Nixon, you know, in the Oliver Stone film. He's not trying to do an impression. He's trying to capture an essence. And that's what I'm going for. Yeah, exactly. It's like my Earl Warren impression is just like a dopey guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, man. You see it right there. I mean, you know, it reads exactly, exactly like. what Sullivan and Cromwell managing partner John Foster Dulles and his little brother Alan Dulles put out in the 1950s when they, on behalf of their client United Fruit Company, on whose board they also sat, went and toppled the government, the democratically elected government in what they Guatemala in 1954, that the communist Arrins had illegally, according to them, stolen, again, according to them, U.S. property by nationalizing and remember, listener, in any process of

nationalization, even dating back to the 1950s in Guatemala, it was not a theft. It was compensated. There was a payment to any claimant on a piece of property for that property. In the case of Guatemala, of course, the United Fruit Company was very unhappy because they were underreporting the value of their properties and their holdings in the country in order to avoid taxes. And so they, you know, they said, oh, yeah, this land that we own, it's worth. whatever, pennies on the dollar. And then when the government said, okay, here's those pennies on the dollar, then they were like, what do you mean? Come on. That's a theft. So nothing was stolen from America. And to the extent that anything was undercompensated, the

quote unquote victims of that under compensation, of course, are the rapacious and planet destroying fuchs of the international oil cartel, the privatized manufacturers and distributors of oil who have steered global policy towards oil dependency in the detriment of humanity. itself, not to mention, of course, the people of Venezuela who are getting nothing but fucked by the presence of these oil companies in their country. All right. Before we go into the next segment, there's something I've been meaning to talk about. This whole thing is obviously, to me, a huge distraction from all the Epstein shit that is going down, right? Like, no more are we going to hear about any of this Epstein stuff,

because Venezuela is going to be front and center for I don't know how many other news cycles in the future. But it's, you know, you're a big fan of Nathan Fielder, I know. I'm a huge fan of Nathan Fielder. Next, I had an idea for a tearless way to tell a child that their pet has died. To be an upsell service for an animal hospital, the concept was to make a video of the pet while it's still alive, telling the child it's an animal heaven now. I hired the only voice actor that responded to my Craigslist ad to be the dog,

But when we showed it to the owner's child... Oh, it's me, Maddie. I'm in heaven now. So sorry, I died. I miss you so much. I'm happy here, so I'm not coming home. I miss so... Wait, doesn't talk like that.

No, she doesn't. Aww. Goodbye. It's okay. He hated his dog's voice. Another flubbed idea. And this sort of feels like a Nathan for You episode where it's like, we need to get the media to stop talking about Epstein.

The plan is to go into the dead of night and go in to extract Maduro, bring them to New York City and bring them to justice, just so that the news media stops talking all this Epstein bullshit. Oh, yeah, big time. And again, it's the same cast of characters that have surrounded. founded Epstein forever, right? So obviously Donald Trump, the longtime BFF of Jeffrey Epstein, a guy who several women have claimed is on film committing heinous acts of sexual assault against young women, of course,

talking about the president of the United States here, allegedly, and a guy who is up to his eyeballs in this scandal and can't get away from it. And, you know, it actually, to just harken back one more time to the 1989 invasion of Panama and the capture of Noriega, you know, we were talking a little bit about this before we hit record that in order to grease the skids and to manufacture a legal cover, for that operation, none other than Trump's former Attorney General William Barr, who is, of course, Attorney General when Epstein was arrested, and who may or may not have visited Epstein close in time to his untimely demise, and whose father, Donald Barr, as

headmaster of the Dalton School in Manhattan gave Jeffrey Epstein his first job as a math teacher despite not being any good at math where he despite not having a degree yeah yeah but he nevertheless was able to hone his skills in fucking underage girls in that role under the watchful eye of Donald Barr well William Barr in 1989 as Poppy Bush's Attorney General penned another little legal memo that essentially said if the U.S., it essentially gave the J.D. Vance view, right? International law doesn't matter if the U.S. wants to arrest somebody outside of its territorial jurisdiction, basically saying like, forget the Constitution, forget the supremacy clause that places the U.S.'s treaty obligations as the supreme law of the land,

something we discussed at length in our down-by-law episode on asylum. Forget all that. Basically, the U.S. will do whatever it wants, might make's right, and the rest of the world can, as J.D. fans put it, take note. So this criminality, this mafocracy that has been ruling the country, you know, it's not new and it's not even the new people all across the board. It's drawing from the same talent pool of absolute snakes, serpentine, fucking reptilian people. Not in the sense that they are, you know, reptilian DNA, but in the sense that their humanity seems to have absented itself from their bodies. And if they ever had any of their souls.

Yeah, exactly. They're just pedophiles. They're rapists. They're rapists. They don't know the meaning of consent. And this has now spilled over into our national policy. Yep. that's basically it

that's basically what it boils down to you know when you say it makes right I think that's it right there it's like these people are fucking sick freaks who don't know the meaning of consent and so that plays of course in the bedroom

for them in the child's bedroom no less but it also plays out on this international stage where it's like we will do whatever the fuck we want I think that's a very good transition to talk about the guy who has his name on the indictment against Maduro. Because like we teased at the top of the hour,

Jay Clayton, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, he was a partner at Sullivan and Cromwell, the same law firm that broke Panama off from Columbia in order to facilitate the corporate rape of that nation. that national area, the same law firm that pushed for and executed the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Guatemala on behalf of United Fruit. And speaking of United Fruit, that is not where the sort of connections, the continuity ends. And here on Fourth Reich archaeology, continuity is our watchword. That is the word that, you know, if I were into

tattoos, I would have it tattooed across my chest because that is what we see everywhere we look. So, a quick bio sketch of Jay Clayton. And, you know, forget his privileged upbringing. Nobody really cares. Let's fast forward for the interest of time, right to his work at Sulkram, as it's known. So who were some of his clients? Well, you know Goldman Sachs is on the list. You know Deutsche Bank is on the list. You know that Bear Stearns, Jeffrey Epstein's employer, right? Bear Stearns was on the list of Jay Clayton's clients while at Sullivan. and Cromwell. And that's just to name a few. He also advised Barclays in their purchase of Lehman Brothers following the sacrificial offering of Lehman Brothers to the god of the market,

right? That was really the ritualistic sacrifice that marked the 2008 financial crisis. And he also represented Goldman at the same time. So a guy who was in a lot of these smoke-filled rooms, proverbially speaking, at one of the still to this day watershed moments of the 21st century, you know, we kind of forget about the 2008 financial crisis. we really never should. We really ought to remember it as a model for everything that has come since of, you know, utter criminality, just absolute disregard for the rules and the regulations by the richest and the most powerful companies and an massive extraction of wealth from the taxpayers, from the working class, in order to bail out all of those fuckers so that they can keep their little casino going

and keep the spectacle of a free market economy inflated and on the screen for all of us little consumers to brainwash ourselves out of consciousness to. Shall I keep going with some of his other clients? The thing that gets me about this guy, the thing that gets me about this guy is he's registered, he's not registered with either party, he's an independent. And over here at Fourth Reich Archaeology,

I think it's safe to say is when someone is neutral, they're like the worst of the worst, right? They're willing to play both sides. Whoever's in power, they're willing to serve? That's like the dirtiest. Yeah, as though registering with a political party meant fucking anything at all. So, all right, besides those clients, he also represented UBS, of course, the Union Bank of Switzerland, a massive, massive player in the money laundering game. There's that neutrality again.

I'm telling you, man. The Swiss are always suss, too, by the way. That's another Matt Farwell, friend of the pod, bug bear. He's always on about the Swiss, and he's right about them. Carney also represented the soft bank group, which is, of course, the Japanese investment firm run by Massa San, which is now become kind of of just a front for Saudi money, talked a little bit about SoftBank as one of the real leaders and members of this Operation Stargate that Trump has launched for taxpayer-supportive

Data Center imperialism across the United States. And SoftBank consistently making bunk investments, just losing all sorts of money, right? the we work investment comes to mind where it's just an absolute just an utter failure uh time and again yes totally and you know those are only what we might say are the ethically upright clients that carney that sorry that Clayton worked for um you know when you start to get into the ethically gray area, you'd find his clients included the likes of the Weinstein company, everybody's favorite rapist, Harvey Weinstein, of course, Pershing Square Capital Management, which is, of course, the corporate front for the epic poster, epic Twitter

poster, Bill Akman, who, you know, loves genocide on. almost as much as he loves money. And, you know, the real icing on the cake here, what I think sort of completes the circle is a client that Jay Clayton represented so well and so much that just like United Fruit did with the Dulles Brothers, it placed him on their board of directors. And the company that I am talking about now is Apollo Global Management. Apollo Global Management is, of course, the firm founded by,

and run for most of its existence by, the dear, dear friend of Jeffrey Epstein, Leon Black. Now, we're not going to do a full deep dive on Leon Black here. You can absolutely check out Whitney Webb's extensive reporting on Apollo, on Leon Black, and on both of their ties to Epstein, which, I mean, they are extremely, extremely closely connected. But the one fact that I do want to point out just for its poetic value here is that Leon Black's father, and this is something that I posted about a little while ago on Twitter when

I found out about it because it just blew my mind. But Leon Black's father was at one time the managing director of the United Fruit Company. Damn. We've said it before. We'll say it again. It is a damn small world for these fucking Nazis. It is a damn small world. Time is a flat circle.

You know, to quote Dave Emery's favorite passage of William Faulkner, right? The past isn't dead and buried. it isn't even past. We are still living under the United Fruit Company global empire, which in turn was the British East India Company global empire, right? It is, we are the only ones that can sell drugs around here. And if any of you fuckers even gets an idea, even an inkling to mess with our game in any way we will fucking string you up for all to see. This is all that is happening

right before our very eyes and yet knowing the history of the East India Company, knowing the criminality of all of these past cases, we are equally powerless as were our ancestors it seems to do anything about it. And that is where, you know, we collectively should really think very seriously about how we can go about refusing to commit the same mistakes, refusing to acquiesce in the same ways to this utter, mafocracy that is driving not only the western hemisphere, not only the United States, not only Venezuela into the abyss, but the entire planet Earth.

Because the rapacious exploitation of the world largest oil reserves in Venezuela by these greedy corporations, you know, the environmental consequences, which it doesn't seem that anybody is really talking about, are going to just be catastrophic. I mean, civilization ending catastrophe, which the fucking sociopaths that run our entire society, our entire quote-unquote civilization, have acknowledged that the climate goals are not going to be achieved. Therefore, let's just put all of our chips into AI and hope that a computer can figure it out because we humans can't figure it out. And what they really mean is, let's put all our chips and AI so that we can create a computer system that will totally surveil and

control the activities of all of the plebeians on the planet Earth and protect us the select few, the billionaire class and whatever hangers on to the coattails of those epic fucking dick shits. And also, let's just put all our chips behind AI because we need a whole new market. This market we got right now is getting stale. We got to come up. We got to gin up some new Fugazi, some new make-believe thing to put all our coins behind. And a new method to keep people under our thumb. And meanwhile, I mean, Jay Clayton represents the ethos of these planet.

destroying criminals in the highest capacity. He is in lockstep with their worldview just to read a quote. You know, before he was the U.S. attorney in SDNY, of course, he was the chairman of the SEC. And in that capacity, when he was nominated by President Trump during his first term, Trump said, you know, that he was appointing Clayton because, quote, we need to undo many regulations which have stifled investment in American businesses and restore oversight of the financial industry in a way that does not harm American workers. And, of course, when he was talking about American workers,

he was really talking about American billionaires. and by restore oversight of the financial industry, what he meant was, of course, to put the fucking fox back in charge of that henhouse. Yeah. Basically, the words he was saying, the opposite of what he was saying, right? Restore oversight, he meant remove oversight.

Yep, that's about it. I think maybe we move on to the indictment and actually talk about the document, the charging document, because at the end of the day, this was effectively an arrest, right? It wasn't, we didn't go in and overthrow the Maduro government. In fact, the person in charge right now is Maduro's vice president, right? It was effectively us going in the dead of night and arresting a president and bringing him into the jurisdiction of the Southern District of New York in Manhattan and bringing him to,

bringing him to, quote, justice. Maybe, Dick, you know, we like to offer our listeners without assuming any baseline knowledge of the legal system and understanding that the mainstream media often generalizes things in a misleading way. You want to just tell the folks what an indictment is and how it's brought about? Yeah, I'll try my best. So in the Southern District of New York, so a criminal charge can be brought. in a couple of ways. In this case, it is a indictment. And the way an indictment is brought about is

the prosecutor will present evidence, will present facts to what's called a grand jury. I don't know what it is in SDNY. Usually it's like somewhere between 16 or 23 people, something like that. And it's just a group of people, just like what's called a petite jury, which is the actual jury that during a jury trials, the jury's deliberating and deciding, you know, the outcome of the case, the facts of the case. A grand jury is just like that. It's just everyday ordinary people that are pulled in and they are part of this process. And the proceedings, the grand jury proceedings are done. They're done under seal. They're confidential. The process can take weeks maybe months, right? It can take quite a bit of time for the evidence to be gathered and presented

before the grand jury. So you have these people coming in and effectively just evaluating the stuff that the prosecutor is saying and deciding whether or not, okay, we're going to bring this charge. We're going to say that, you know, in this case, Maduro, there's enough evidence that we can bring this indictment to say that he's violated some law. Now, the standard is a much lower standard than you would have to actually prove someone is guilty of a crime. Many of you will already know in the United States, when you have a criminal trial, a criminal jury trial, in order to prove that someone did something,

that standard is beyond a reasonable doubt. So that's like, what would you say, Don, like 99%, right? Like we know beyond a reasonable doubt, we think that this guy murdered someone or, you know, was a drug trafficker or whatever. Yeah, they like to say, it's not beyond any doubt. It's beyond any reasonable doubt. So it's the certainty you would have when making,

maybe this jury instruction has since been declared unconstitutional. I can't remember. But when making a very important decision in your life, it's the level of certainty that you would want to have before taking that decision. I would hope that jury instruction is not around anymore. but so that's a very high standard for a conviction for a criminal conviction what we're talking about are just a grand jury charge it's a much lower threshold and that is it's the standard is one that

I'm sure you all you are all familiar with when I say it but it's called probable cause and I put probable cause at I don't know 25% maybe like a 30% like this is a crime and probable cause is something that we've heard often in the context of when a police makes a police officer makes an arrest because that's the other way criminal charging documents can be brought to a court right if a police officer sees you do something that's illegal you don't need to go to a grand jury the police officer just on information will say okay well this person had a gun on him when he shouldn't have in that you know that's probable cause that it's you know you know that he's committed a crime.

Smelt like weed. Yeah, exactly. Green vegetable matter was found on the person's. So it's a very low, low bar. What is this the saying? There's a saying about how prosecutors can indict a ham sandwich. Yeah. So it's not.

It's also one-sided. It's totally one-sided. Oh, right. Yes, right. So during the grand jury, again, it's common. It's under seal. So it's not like the target of these charges will even know that it's happening, much less their lawyers being able to be present to defend whatever it is the prosecutor is saying. So it's very much the prosecutor putting up their case, gathering all of this evidence that they have and presenting it before this group of, I don't know, I'm going to say 16 to 23 people. And I don't think there needs to be a majority. Actually, I shouldn't say that. I don't know what the voting. breakdown needs to be um do you know i don't at least 12 grand jurors must vote in favor that there is probable cause in the southern district of new york so the grand jury consists of 23 right so it's a

simple majority simple majority okay so that and that makes sense whereas for a conviction right it's got to be unanimous but but those are grand jury proceedings and that's what comes out of that if the prosecutor is successful in convincing the grand jury to get 12 out of these 23 people to say okay well there's probable cause here that this guy in this instance it's Maduro and his wife and his immediate family that they are responsible for these allegations that are in this document and And then, and only then, can the prosecutor bring the, what's called the indictment. And so that's what happened here with respect to Nicolas Maduro, his wife, and a handful of other co-defendants that are named in this indictment for the charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession. of machine guns, conspiracy in furtherance of the other two criminal conspiracies.

And despite the like flowerly language about narco-terrorism and all that bullshit, it's basically these are the same statutes that are brought when it's just drug trafficking, right? It's like you're trafficking drugs and you're using guns to do it. You're using machine guns to do it, right? That's what it really breaks down to. Yeah, exactly. There's not there, the terrorism thing is, you know, akin to a material support for an organization that's listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, which, of course, we all know since February of this last year, 2025, Donald Trump famously with much fanfare named the cartels as, you know. terrorist organizations so there's that piece of it and then the cocaine importation all the actual charge says is that more than five kilos or five kilos or more of cocaine were imported into the

united states as a result of this conspiracy but dick and i have read this indictment and really It's a lot of innuendo is how I would characterize it. It's a lot of description about a very long period of time. I mean, dating back to like 1964 when the FARC, the Fuerces Armadas Revolutionaries Colombianas were created in Colombia to fight against the U.S. back dictatorship in that country at that time all the way till the present. It's a lot of like conclusory statements,

what we call conclusions or speculations or just flat out statements where there's no real support for this statement in the document. They're just saying it, like they'll just say that he illegally obtained authority and they don't really explain what they mean or they just say that he's like transported thousands of tons of cocaine, but they don't really go into those details.

It's a lot of that. It's very much, you know, I would say a slap dash job, a shoddy job. Yeah, exactly. I mean, to kind of give an overview of just walking through section by section, and you can look at the unsealed indictment, but just the reading like the table of contents, sort of the section headings gives you an idea of what's in there. So first, you know, it talks about after giving an interest. it talks about who are the defendants and you know it's it's maduro it's maduro's wife it's the

minister of the interior justice and peace diosado cabello rondon it's this guy ramon rodriguez chasin who is a former minister of the interior injustice from 2002 to 2008 And remember, Maduro doesn't take power until 2012, 2013 after Chavez's death. So it's interesting just how much of the actual specifics of any conduct that are laid out in this indictment take place before Maduro was even in power. And then they name his son as well and this guy, Ector Ruthensford, Guerrero, Flores, a.k.a.a. Niño Guerrero, who this indictment alleges has been either the leader or co-league leader of the so-called Tren de Aragua gang for over a decade. So the next headings in the indictment, the next one is the narco-terrorist organizations working in partnership

with the defendants. And that's where they give this very kind of CIA really Jack Ryan, if, uh, I know it's been circulating on social media, like the fucking, um, what's that guy's name? Yeah, he's in the, yeah, he's in the lecture hall. John Chris. Yeah. It's John. Jim from the office, motherfucker. What would you assume is the most major threat on the world stage? Definitely Russia. Definitely Russia. Who else? China. Stop yelling at me, but China is a good answer to her. Venezuela, anybody? Everybody's cool with Venezuela? No. threat? Okay. Which one of these places can claim to have the largest oil deposit on the planet?

More than Saudi, more than Iran. Wow. Okay. What about things like gold? More than all the mines in Africa combined? Venezuela is arguably the single greatest resource of oil and minerals on the planet. It's crazy how they have, I mean, I'd say what you will about this media conspiracy or whatever, but how they've just been laying this groundwork against Venezuela in the popular culture for years and years and years now where we can just go back when this shit actually hits the fan, we could just go back and pluck segments from major TV shows and say, oh yeah, they were talking about this five years ago. And I will say, you know, having studied a while ago international relations at a major

United States University, the sort of linear timeline approach of giving the facts that you have to regurgitate for the exam and that, you know, end up forming sort of the baseline understanding of history for the bulk of your classmates. Like, the falsity and oversimplification and just outright distortions in that timeline, which is what appears in this indictment for, you know, a number of pages running, is so alarming. And it's like, man, they really, really are banking on a motherfucker not opening up a goddamn book that's that's in any way critical of the official narratives. And the minute that you do, the entire edifice of this historical framework just falls down like a house of cards. It's so offensive really to the

intellect that, you know, far from being liberal bastions, right, American universities more than anything are purveyors of a simplified, propagandistic vision of post-World War II history, especially in what came before too, for sure, but, you know, especially the post-war history, because that's the American century, right? That is the sort of onward. ramp to the present moment in which these universities are training people to be actors on the world stage and shit like that. And, you know, this is the result, right, that these bureaucrats, these people in the Justice Department can put their name on this shit with a straight face. And I mean, a guy like Jay Clayton given his bona fides as a board member for fucking Apollo global management,

you know a long time connected guy to Leon fucking black obviously that guy is not going to have really a care for accuracy because he's bought in in a way to this pedophile jihad in you know deeper than most but the lower level people because you can bet your ass that many people had their fingerprints on this document and all of those other careerist people who if you know any of them tell them please to read a fucking book to open their eyes to get off of the ferris wheel of shit that is going to spin off of its axle any one of these days now and send them flying in a direction that they do not want to go in. But those people are, you know, brainwashed into believing all of this absolute horseshit. The next section of the indictment is the one that actually makes some factual allegations.

This one is called the defendant's corrupt drug trafficking and connections to narco-terrorist groups. So maybe take a quick moment to just. lay out the basic elements of the criminal offense of conspiracy, right? So you need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, again, that one, that there was a conspiracy or agreement between these people, at least two or more people. And two, that as to each defendant, in order to convict him or her, you must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they took some action in furtherance of the conspiracy. So, you know, and that, of course, the conspiracy either attempted to or did complete the underlying criminal offense. So, you know, whether it's material support for

terrorism, importation of drugs or possession of firearms, those are the three sort of underlying criminal offenses which are in their own right like easy enough right for sure some cocaine came from Venezuela at some point in time I don't think that anybody in their right mind would deny that but the rest of it is where the razzle dazzle the spectacle comes into play and that's where all of this shit you know these this section especially really build sort of inference upon inference and assertion upon unsupported assertion. Same with the next section, which is the overt acts in furtherance of the defendants, drug trafficking, and narco-terrorism conspiracies.

So that's where you get to this stuff. You know, it talks about actions between 2006 and 2008, talks about actions in 2007. You know, there's a couple of guys that were indicted and convicted in New York for conspiracy to import cocaine, who this indictment claims were recorded by a DEA informant in 2015. But the only connection that they actually have to Maduro that's set forth in this indictment is that they referred to him as their father. and that they are allegedly related in some way. And I don't know about you, Dick,

does that remind you of anybody? Reminds me of the Trump boys, for one. Yeah, both the Trump boys and Hunter Biden, corrupt Hunter Biden. Yeah, and I mean, it's a trope at this point. It's like rich kids be referring to their. daddy all the time, right? It's the fucking move, the TV show succession, right? It's like the Rupert Murdoch's family. It's like, it's fucking par for the course. This is just how it's done at this level. I don't see anything super out of the ordinary there. Yeah. And to be clear,

it's not referring to the actual son of Maduro on the DEA tape, right? These are just two other guys that it doesn't actually say what is their family relationship. If any, it just says that they are apparently related and that they referred to them having connections in the government. But, you know, that's it. So it's, you know, we'll see what if any evidence is actually presented. We'll see what if any of these charges can stick. But, But maybe, you know, I think that's all about all. Did you have anything else to talk about the indictment before we kind of move on to talk very briefly about sort of what the next legal steps are going to look like here? No, I mean, the only other thing is like after this paltry sort of factual recitation, they just go right into the statutory allegations, right?

And we already covered those, which is just this idea of like narco-terrorism conspiracy, conspiracy to traffic drugs, conspiracy to use machine guns in furtherance of the sort of narco-terrorism, drug trafficking bullshit. And then that's it. The only other part is the asset forfeiture, too, right? We got to talk about how I think that's a sort of a typical thing that happens in these charging documents where they say that the assets of these people are hereby forfeited until we figure this out.

until we figure this out. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Classic, classic case. What does that mean? Does that also cover, like, the oil fields that Trump is apparently handing over to U.S. oil companies? Is that part of the asset forfeiture? It's a good question, yeah.

Is the government of Venezuela part of the seized assets? It's like, is there a tax revenue and asset forfeiture? Because, I mean, according to this indictment, you know, since Maduro doesn't have electoral power, right? Like, they also swallow the line that Maduro lost the elections, not just the 2024 elections, but way back to, was a 2018 elections with the whole Juan Guaido, PariPé. that's a Spanish word meaning charade effectively you know so according to them the government of Venezuela since 2018 has basically been this cartel criminal organization so they're the United States is going to compensate itself and seize all of the proceeds of the Venezuelan government over the last seven years like the

open questions that are left by this indictment, if taken to its logical extreme, could really bring forth a new era in imperial conquest and domination. Once again, as long as the international community doesn't do anything about it, It doesn't do anything real beyond strongly worded letters and statements about it. And that is, I mean, truly should be frightening to not only, you know, Americans who will, at the end of the day, right? Like, as an opponent of the American Empire who happens to be an American, you got to hope for the worst for the imperial pursuits of these evil, evil fuchs. And, you know, if that means getting bogged down in like a jungle war in South America,

like the Avatar cinematic universe, right, there's that part in Avatar too, where the guys referring back like, yeah, I lost my legs in Venezuela, those were some, that was some thick bush, right? Like, referring to some horrible disastrous war in Venezuela, I think James Cameron certainly had clocked on to that possibility, and, you know, you just hope for the worst. You hope that the worst is prevented, first of all, but then, you know, to the extent that they're going to commit to military conquests, like, gee whiz, wish them absolute failure in every single turn because it has no justification.

And we are not nationalists here on Fourth Reich archaeology. We are firmly internationalists for the liberation of all mankind. So, yeah, we are all one. And we, I mean, it should not be controversial at this point in our history. We are all God's children. for Christ's sakes, people. Yeah, it's a truth that is becoming more and more marginalized. I mean, before too long, it may well be illegal to state that simple fact that appears there

on the first fucking sentence of the fucking declaration of independence. You know, all men, men and women. all peoples and I think before we wrap it up let's just get into some process because you know you mentioned Declaration of Independence I'd like to talk a little bit about the U.S. Constitution and some of our bill of the amendments there too the Bill of Rights which I would like to think is very much still in effect in the United States but in terms of what comes next for Maduro right what would be the next thing I think it would be his arraignment, right? He's now in custody. He would think that he would be put before a court probably as early as this week to be arraigned by a judge. Yes. Yeah, arraignment is where

the charges are read to the defendant and the defendant enters his plea of guilty or not guilty. and presumably he will plead not guilty on all charges. And at that arraignment, he is entitled to a lawyer, right? Yes. And then there, it's, you know, off to the races, so to speak, right? Then you start your criminal discovery and you sort of work towards the trial, and you are entitled to a speedy trial under the Sixth Amendment, another part of the Sixth Amendment says that you're entitled to a public trial

and you're entitled to an impartial jury of the state or the district where the crimes are being brought, right, where the crimes have been committed. So presumably... I mean, the Sixth Amendment actually says a jury of your peers, which... Well, I think what you're thinking of is the Magna Carta, which says that, you know, you're entitled to a jury by your peers, and of course the Sixth Amendment was written in the spirit of the Magna Carta and has been interpreted to mean that you are entitled to a jury of your peers. But the text says impartial jury, which is based on this idea of being judged by a jury

of your peers. I would argue, you know, to actually effectuate that language that they should bring in some Venezuelans for that jury. As long as we're fucking making a mockery of international and domestic constitutional law, we might as well, you know, actually bring in a jury of his peers. His peers are not a bunch of random New Yorkers. His peers are going to be his countrymen, but that's just, you know, not going to happen, obviously. I'm, speaking half in jest, but also leveling a critique at just how poorly the Sixth Amendment is effectuated in the criminal injustice system of the United States today. I mean, one of the Black Panther Party's 10 demands way back in the 60s was that a jury of

one's peers for black criminal defendants under the racist, police state of that time was not just a random sampling of community members that might skew majority white, that a jury of their peers would be black and reflect their experience in order to sit in judgment upon their conduct. So when I make this comment, I'm drawing upon you know the panthers right but to me the the idea of an impartial jury in this instance is very important that's a critical point here for me because it's like you know they the the southern district of new york the u.s. attorney can bring all the charges he wants but if the jury that's deliberating the case if they decide that it's all bullshit then then maduro's free to go

right he doesn't have to he doesn't have to be held up in manhattan for for something that he's not convicted of right he gets to go back to venezuela and then what exactly and like you said before for a petty jury conviction you need unanimity and that means that one person who refuses to vote for conviction can preclude this injustice from being meted out upon the head of Maduro and the rest of these co-defendants. And, you know, like we said before, or maybe it was before we started recording, and if it was, you know, in these types of trials without getting into the case law that supports this principle, the rule is that the legality or illegality of the arrest and of the military

operation to capture Maduro, this goes back to kind of rhyming with that William Barr memo around the arrest of Noriega, the jury doesn't actually get to be informed about or have any point of view on the legality or illegality of the capture and kidnapping of Maduro in order to bring him into the court's jurisdiction. So that is totally outside of the jury's purview, except, you know, to the extent that a juror and listener, it could be you, you know. it just like we see our statistics right i think new york city is our biggest listening block so if you are there nullify that motherfucker nullify the jury if you get jury service could be you show up go and serve on the jury whenever you are called to a jury it is one of the few

opportunities that you actually have to have a say in the way that things work even if it just affects one person's life. So I think, you know, we don't care that much about voting in this fake-ass spectacle of democracy. But yeah, jury service for sure. We both very much care about jury service. And I think you just made the case for our next down-by-law episode, which will be jury nullification. I think maybe if it's not the next one, but we should do one before this trial. Because it's true, another part of this impartial jury that, like, how are you going to find someone in New York City who isn't glued to the news media these last couple of days, who isn't apprised of how Maduro came to be in the jurisdiction of the Southern District of New York? How are you going to do that? You can't. You literally can't.

Yeah. And, I mean, it's, it's rhymes with so much that we've talked about up to and including the Charles Manson trial, right? Where Richard Nixon famously put his thumb on the scale by declaring Manson guilty on TV before he was convicted. You know, and when it comes to actual human beings sitting in the jury box, they're going to be thinking about what they saw on TV. And if they see fucking Jake Crapper sit there and say, well, people of Venezuela are thrilled to see their dictator go and you know every other talking head getting paid by the companies on whose boards j clayton is going to return to as soon as he leaves government fucking service right the well is being poisoned by the forces of empire as we speak and so it's important it's crucial

that in your daily lives that this is something that you speak upon and you know really if you if you get on that jury you know go through the motions they'll ask you can you be neutral do you have an opinion on this the answer is always yes you can be neutral no you do not have a preformed opinion on this get your ass on the fucking jury and nullify that motherfucker. It's your constitutional right. It's one of the last few rights we have. And there's actually a very profound and storied tradition in jury nullification dating back to the age of enslavement of peoples where you had abolitionists get on to juries and say, you know, when they're faced with the case where someone's day runaway, what they were called so-called runaway enslaved people. there were juries that would say so what the very system of slavery is morally reprehensible and so we find this person not guilty of doing this crime so called crime of running to their freedom so please maybe that's a good place to say you know do our sign off but please please please if you are ever invited onto a jury take that response

Yeah, because you know who's never going to be indicted for the murder that they committed just in the last 48 hours against 80-year-old Rosa Gonzalez and who knows how many more people? This was a woman whose home was bombed by the United States military, and she was killed. and other people were gravely wounded. Other people surely were killed as well and we'll maybe learn their names in the future. Maybe we won't. But what we know for a fact...

Homes destroyed. Yeah. And we can... Not just killed, you know, they're homes. They're the place, the most safe haven that anyone can have, just reduced to rubble. For what? For what?

For pushing some cocaine? No. No, it's worse than that. It's to protect and distract from the involvement of the president of the United States and his cronies in a massive pedophilic human trafficking and child rape ring and from the mass human trafficking and child torture that's being conducted as we speak right now by the United States own Gestapo, the fucking ICE. And, I mean, it's, they are, as Bannon said they would do, as he has recommended that they do from day one, pulling out of the Nazi playbook, flooding the stream, popping up moles all over the little game board so that your attention gets drawn from one to another, and you can never focus enough to actually do anything. about it because you're so overwhelmed. Well, guess what? Don't be overwhelmed. Get your mind right. Get your eyes on the fucking prize because we have a world to win and we have our humanity to lose. It's that big of a stake and we, Dick and Don, we are honored to be in

this struggle with all of you, our listeners, and we humbly hope that. hope that by sharing our thoughts on this, that we can help somebody somewhere do something about the hell that we collectively inhabit. What do you say? Time for the sign off? Let's do it. Thank you so much for tuning in yet again. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program, and if you didn't, go suck a toe, go educate yourself, go read a book, and then come back.

And in the meantime, I'm Dick. I'm Don. Saying farewell. And keep on digging. all right folks it's that time again it's time to give credit where credit is due thank you so much to all of our doctoral candidate and research assistant patreon members and thank you specifically to david to fern to caleb to frank thank you to dolly farton and simply anchovy and john and mike thank you to wizard of choice and Annie and Kelly.

Thank you to Al, McGee, Raven, Dave, Bick, Cornelia, St. Grumbles. And last but not least, thank you to Stephen. And thank you to all of you for tuning in this week. We'll catch you next week. With this English, me to be enough to precarious, to gritty with force and with reason

and with criteria revolutionario. Yankee Godon. ...me... ...me... ...me vast with my voice nationalist ...to exigued with firm decision and with reasons anti-imperialist... Yankee...

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