Venezuelan interior minister — a Nicolas Maduro loyalist — was in talks with US months before raid: report

NEW YORK/MIAMI/WASHINGTON — Trump administration officials had been in discussions with Venezuela’s hardline interior minister Diosdado Cabello months before the US operation to seize President Nicolas Maduro, and have been in communication with him since then, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

The officials warned Cabello, 62, against using the security services or militant ruling-party supporters he oversees to target the country’s opposition, four sources said. That security apparatus, which includes the intelligence services, police and the armed forces, remains largely intact after the January 3 US raid.

Cabello is named in the same US drug-trafficking indictment that the Trump administration used as justification to arrest Maduro, but was not taken as part of the operation.

Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodriguez with Interior Minister