Judging Freedom - *** [SPECIAL - Venezuela ] - Anya Parampil : US Murders on the High Seas.

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

*** [SPECIAL - Venezuela ] - Anya Parampil : US Murders on the High SeasSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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That's an equivalent to $15 a month. Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited. plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, September 4th, 2025. We welcome back our dear friend, Anya Parenthold. Anya, always a pleasure, my dear friend.

And thank you so much for sharing your time with us and allowing me to pick your brain and your expertise, which, among other things, is Latin America. is Nicholas Maduro the lawful, valid, legitimate president of Venezuela? If you ask the vast majority of UN recognized nations over two-thirds of them, or you ask any Venezuelan government institution, or if you measure the country by any barometer, by which you would measure who is the government in a country or who controls the country, who governed the ministries, who the military answer to, and who control the borders, it's very clear that, yes,

Nicholas Maduro is the president of Venezuela. And this is despite the fact that for over five years now, the United States under a policy initiated under Trump One have recognized a rotating cast now of characters as government of Venezuela. This began in 2019 when the U.S. recognized Juan Guaido, an opposition candidate or an opposition lawmaker in the country's National Assembly as the president of the country. He's now in Miami, a grad student. Then they recognized a figure named Edmundo Gonzalez who ran against Maduro last year. And he's in Spain now.

And so they've recognized another woman, Maria Crina Machado, as kind of the president. She is someone who has been receiving or has received USAID money and grants since the beginning of the revolution that brought Venezuela out of foreign and neoliberal rule into sovereign rule that it currently enjoys. And she, from the very beginning, over 20 years ago, yes, was one of the leading recipients of USAID funding in order to destabilize that government and return it toward a Washington-oriented leadership. And so, but even she is in the background now. And the reality is the Trump administration itself has acknowledged in its own way that Maduro runs the country by sending its.

own special envoy, Richard Grinnell, to the country earlier this year, for direct talks with Maduro. He was received by the president in the presidential palace with American flags and Venezuelan flags displayed for a meeting. And as a result of that meeting, Grinnell got some U.S. prisoners that were held in Venezuela for a variety of crimes, released and sent to the United States and he helped reach a deal that has seen the U.S. and Venezuela since then, since earlier this year, conduct multiple flights a month in order to return Venezuelan migrants and detainees back to the country. People that came here likely under Biden are now going back. But that's only because we have an agreement with the Maduro government,

not because of anything these other figures that the U.S. has recognized as the president of Venezuela have done. So the U.S. is walking a silly line here that's also very dangerous, as we've seen, in the last week with the escalations in the military realm that have come to light. Before we get to what happened on the high seas, what is truly behind the American animus toward Latin America? American and Latin America in general and Venezuela in particular. And how much is of this is the family background of Marco Rubio? This is a very good question. Marco Rubio is a central character, I believe, in the escalation we've seen occur against Venezuela. Recently, he's someone that under Trump One was agitating from within his roles the Senate at the Senate-Born Relations committee against the country. But now he occupies a very significant role, not just as Secretary

of State, but as Trump's national security advisor. And unfortunately, Marco Rubio is someone who doesn't act according to America first when it comes to Latin America. Not that he's someone who's known for being brilliant when it comes to Europe or the Middle East or China either. He's until he joined the Trump administration, someone that was rightly considered a hawk. neoconservative, classic neoconservative who agitated for more confrontation with Russia is very much in bed with the Zionist pro-Israel lobby. And on the Americas is someone who acts according to the interests of an expat community in Florida that is dominated by Cuban and now Venezuelan exiles who want the United States government to act toward Latin America,

particularly toward their home countries, not in a way that makes sense for the United States. Venezuela being a great case because it's a home to some of the or to the largest oil reserves in the world. Sanctions have damaged its production capability in recent years, but China and Iran and other major countries are now working in Venezuela to recuperate its oil production capacity. and our entire relationship with Venezuela for almost 100 years since oil was discovered in the country has been based on the U.S. shipping that oil here. It fueled quite literally our battle in World War II. The U.S. military was very overwhelmingly reliant on Venezuelan oil in order to literally fuel its military.

And so this infrastructure exists. It should be something that we easily turn on if we're really putting America first. We could have cheaper gas, for example, if we weren't cut off from this supply south of the border. And yet we sanction the country and refuse to import their oil thinking that we're going to make the country weaker. And so there's this interest. Yeah, you could say that it's about the oil because we just want to get it by force. But in reality, we could get the oil if we wanted to just have normal relations with the country. And people like Marco Rubio want us to set those interests aside and for ideological reasons, want to weaken the Venezuelan state, just focus on demonizing it as a socialist pariah.

And it's very dangerous because they are pushing toward an actual military confrontation in our hemisphere. And so it really doesn't make sense from the perspective of oil, from the perspective of stability. You could have a major migrant crisis even more extreme than we had in recent years if Rubio has his way in the country. When was the last time we had normal, commercial, diplomatic, cultural, political relationships with Venezuela? We did up until the Trump won administration. We had an embassy, a functioning embassy, Venezuelan embassy, in Washington, D.C. Since then, the U.S. used its secret police basically in Washington to seize that building. They kicked the staff that represented that government out. And so now it's an empty, empty edifice in Georgetown with cardboard paper boxes in the window

the last time I checked. And this is a disaster for Venezuelans that are here or that have come here in recent years with the migrant influx because they can't even get services. If they want to return to their country, it's difficult because we've made it that way. And so, but even then, we weren't importing Venezuelan oil, not at the height that we previously had. But until 2019, basically, that's when this extreme policy came down of breaking off relations altogether. And that's when we made the move to cut off our supply of Venezuelan oil imports, which at the time accounted for about 7% of U.S. oil imports.

So between that and the Biden administration's decision to cut off Russian support, oil. We lost about 10% of our typical oil import sources. And so it's no wonder that gas prices are high here. And again, it's just an example of how our policy is not America first at all in terms of, again, the migrant issue or the commercial and economic interests that could be so much stronger and beneficial to both countries if we put away this ideological Miami expat community first driven policy. And that's something I write in my book. I really try to make the point that we should not be making Latin America policy according to the interests of people from the region who have interests there. It's the same thing I think as saying that pro-Zionist

interests shouldn't be crafting Israeli policy. I don't think someone who's solely interested in overthrowing governments in the region because of their family ties has a role to play in crafting America First Policy. And unfortunately, Latin America has always been a blind spot for the president because of Florida and the political weight that these groups that Marco Rubio is aligned with care, because of the way that they carry and the political power that they wield in the court. The first Trump administration, the Justice Department, persuaded a grand jury to indict Nicholas Maduro as a drug kingpin. The second Trump administration has put a $50 million bounty on his head, a number of the likes of which I've never heard from the American

government. Is he stupid enough to have been personally involved in any drug distribution knowing he's got a target on his back? The question of Venezuela and cocaine and drugs is pretty bizarre to me because all you have to do is look at statistics, publicly available statistics from the United Nations and anyone who's tracking drug trafficking to see that Venezuela is not a top producer. It's very clear that Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia account for like 98% of the land that is used to cultivate cocoa leaves and then make that into cocaine and process it. You don't need to go through Venezuela then to get here and bring the drugs north. In fact, it's Ecuador that accounts for 70% of cocaine export pass through Ecuadorian ports.

And what's interesting there is that right now you have a president who won in a very shady election backed by Trump, backed by the United States, Daniel Naboa, who comes from actually a ostensibly banana-producing family, a billion-dollar operation, his family runs the Naboa family in Ecuador. Now, get this. The Naboa family, their company has actually been caught trafficking cocaine to Europe through their banana company. And the reason, I mean, spend enough time in Latin America or Central America, and people will tell you the way that cocaine gets north to the United States is through banana trucks. That's the most effective way to ship it because if you have a truck going through a checkpoint, they're not going to open every single banana truck that passes north

and actually look inside. They scan it and it all just looks like organic material. It looks like fruit if you're scanning for cocaine or for bananas. And so people talk about how this is the main way that they smuggle cocaine. And yet, and we even have evidence that this, ally of the United States was doing it. His family's company was overseeing the drug trade in Ecuador. Same thing as under Trump One in Honduras. We had a closely allied president with the United States, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who's now in a U.S. jail for cocaine trafficking. His family was the top cocaine family in Honduras while we were his ally. While we were helping him steal elections, he served consecutive terms as the president of Honduras, even though

even though that wasn't even constitutionally liable just because we backed him just so that he could run drugs to the United States. So is Maduro's family involved in drug trafficking? I can't say. But what I can say is that these U.S. Allied figures that have a history of running drugs documented to the United States, for some reason, enjoy close relationships with the United States in Juan Orlando Hernandez case until they don't, until they decided to indict him. But it's just goes to show you, again, 98% of the land used to cultivate cocaine is in Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. All you have to do is look at a map of Latin America to see it.

It doesn't have to go through Venezuela. That's not to say that there aren't drug operations happening or there aren't gangs involved in the country. But that's not the way that the cocaine is flowing. It's flowing from those other three countries north. And so it just goes to show the U.S. is not serious about combating drug trafficking. And again, with this latest strike on the boat that we saw taking place. What do you think happened in the high seas the other day? I mean, we see a picture of it so we know these people were murdered.

But what do you think is behind all of this? I happen to think it's just for show, the former head of, of drug interdiction in the Department of Justice said a couple of things to the New York Times. One, Trend de Aragua is not a drug organization has never been known to traffic in fentanyl. Two, anybody trafficking in drugs would have two people on that boat, not 11.

Three, if anything, the boat may have been carrying people who thought they were buying their freedom, getting to another country. And now, without any due process, They were all murdered by the United States Navy. It reminds me a lot of the so-called terrorist meeting in Yemen that the Trump administration released video of before it bombed and killed, who knows how many people earlier this year claiming that it was a terrorist meeting, but it was actually likely a wedding party,

a tribal ceremony in Yemen. It's very, it looks very similar this case because nobody's made an effort to identify those 11 people on the boat to even say that they were drug traffickers. And even if they had, again, like you say, there was no due process, no evidence to presented to show that they are who they who, if they were making claims about who they were, that they are. So it's just absurd to me to see all of these maga sycophants online saying this is what they voted for and this is America first. What that actually is is a step toward war in the Western Hemisphere. And it looks a lot like the war on terror, the war on drugs.

You can just call anyone a combatant or anybody a terrorist, anybody a drug trafficker and kill them, take away their rights. That's not a program that I think I would endorse or that a lot of people who criticize the illegal wars of the past. By the way, Tulsi Gabbard included would endorse. I know that she has made very strong statements in the past about Venezuela, including that saying that, you know, it should be up to the Venezuelan people who elect, who they elect as president, but also that a lot of the instability we experience here in the United States

or issues that we have with the migrant crisis are tied to our continued meddling in Venezuela in the region. She's made those statements in the past. And yet now, as the Director of National Intelligence, she's apparently in the room when these decisions are made. Though I do think this is coming, yes, from the Rubio wing of the administration, and he's apparently gotten quite powerful. Rubio, I think, wants to have a win as well with his base in Florida, because behind the scenes, I will make the point that U.S. Venezuela oil imports are increasing. Reuters just released data that they're at a nine-month high this week. So that might upset people like Rubio and they might want to put on a show for their base and say,

oh, no, look, we're fighting Maduro. We're not, we don't have good relations with him. We're ready for airstrikes, which is shocking, honestly, that they're even discussing this or that I saw, I saw Secretary of Defense Pete Heggseth say that we're ready for whatever military action the president wants to take. I mean, are people really considering what it would mean for there to be a U.S. invasion on the American continent and the level of instability we would experience as a result. I mean, we think Europe after the Middle East wars were bad.

Yeah. Obviously, they don't think about it. Neither Heggseth nor Rubio could provide a legal basis and a legal authority for the decision to execute. Chris put together a little treat for you because we expected you would mention Tulsi Gabbard. You'll like this. Cut number 12, Chris. Because every time the United States, and particularly in Latin America, has gotten involved

in regime change, using different tools to enact that regime change, there have been both short and long-term devastating impacts. The United States should not be in the business of intervening, of picking who should lead their country, and we certainly should not be threatening military action. Venezuela poses no threat to the United States. Congress has not authorized the United States to go to war in Venezuela, and there's no justification for our country to violate the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people. This administration and the neocon warhawks that surround President Trump have made no secret about what their intentions are to further this regime change effort, both in Venezuela as well as in Iran. We do have a situation with a cabinet full of neocon warhawks whose history is very well known in leading our country into one regime change war after the other and to great expense in American lives, to trillions of dollars coming out of our taxpayers' pockets, as well as the lives and the suffering, the devastation of the people in the countries where we've waged these wars.

She sounds like you. I mean, that, of course, was before she became the director of national intelligence. She's changed their mind on so many things. I hope she hasn't changed their mind on this. A couple of more questions. Is it true that the CIA has been involved in drug trafficking from Latin America? Yeah, I mean, this is something that is pretty well documented. We even used narcos in the past as cover for running drugs to various militia movements in the region in order to, you know, there's the whole Iran-Contra affair.

Drugs are always, I mean, that's the thing when you go and you, when you talk to people in Latin America, they say if you want to go after drug trafficking, look at the deal. the CIA. I mean, it's coming over our border at the end of the day. It's coming in through our port. So people, I think also, there's been a lot of talk recently about the heroin trade coming in through Fort Bragg and the drama and intrigue around that base that's very secretive because people are starting to catch on to the fact that none of this could be happening without our government's involvement. Tell us, your book, Corporate Coup, Venezuela and the End of the U.S. Empire? Well, it's something, the point that I make at the end, the end of U.S. Empire, is just to say that

as a U.S. financial source was remarking to me this morning, Venezuela will soon be shipping its oil around and Chinese flagged ships, it tankers. It's built relations with China, Russia, Iran, kind of that rising multipolar world that you saw on display at the V-Day celebration in China recently. Venezuela had a high-level official in attendance there. And so are we really going to pick a fight now with this country where China and Russia have heavy investment, including a military presence, Russian military advisors and joint drills, you see them take place between Russia and Venezuela? The reason, that China and Russia also aren't going to let go of Venezuela so quickly are the same reasons

that the U.S. is interested. This is a country that is very strategically located, has the leading untapped gold deposits in the world, the top oil reserve in the world. And so it's going to be rich in the future. We've beaten them down with sanctions for quite a while, but they're going to rise again. And so in my book, I'm arguing that we should make a decision to, interact with Venezuela and the region cooperatively and based on mutual interests, not on ideology or, you know, we're basically upset that they nationalize their oil reserves and their mineral reserves and don't just allow foreign companies to come in and dominate it. But this is the 21st century. This is 2025. We are not going back to the era of colonialism

and neoliberal domination in these countries. And then the first part of the title there, corporate coup, the major investigation at the crux of my book actually looks at how this recognition of a shadow government in Venezuela provided the cover for the United States to, as they then later did with Russia, but in a more direct way here in the United States, sees all Venezuelan state assets, including their sovereign gold supply, and eventually including Sitco Petroleum, which you might know as a gas station, in the United States. It was actually it is a private, it's a private company, but it's a subsidiary of Venezuela state oil company. It was the gas station that basically pumped

Venezuelan oil all the way through their infrastructure from Venezuela to the pump. And the U.S. courts have seized Citgo as a result of this conspiracy that I document in the book and are now slated to sell it off to the highest bidder. And now we're finally after waiting for years and years discovering who this buyer is that's going to step forward and reap the benefits of the theft of Citgo. And it's going to be Paul Singer at Elliott Capital Management, who happens to be a leading hedge funder, billionaire who backed Marco Rubio his entire career, one of Marco Rubio's leading financial backers, now as a result of this coup policy statement.

And probably the second largest donor after Mrs. Aileson to APEC. Yes, major nine. You have just tied all this together so nicely. Anya, it's a pleasure chatting with you. It's so much more enjoyable to chat with you than your husband. Why can't he be as nice as you are? No, I'm kidding. I love him.

I might like to pick a fight with him over nonsense. No, I know you love it. It's been a real pleasure. good luck with the book, good luck with the baby, and we'll hope to see you again soon. See you soon, Judge. Bye bye. Coming up at 2 o'clock this afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, and then back to back at 3 o'clock, Professor Mearsheimer at 3.30, Colonel Douglas McGregor, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.