Diosdado Cabello, number two of Chavismo, has been in communication with the United States for months

Trump administration officials had been in talks with Venezuela’s Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace, Diosdado Cabello, months before the US operation to capture President Nicolás Maduro, and have been in communication with him since, according to Reuters.

These same officials warned Cabello, 62, not to use security services or militants sympathetic to the ruling party under his supervision to attack the opposition, according to four sources who have informed Reuters.

That security apparatus, which includes the intelligence services, the police and the armed forces, remains practically intact after the US raid on January 3.

Cabello is named in the same US drug trafficking indictment that the Trump administration used as justification for arresting Maduro, however, he was not captured as part of the operation.

The communication with Cabello, which also addressed the sanctions imposed by the United States and the accusation he faces, dates back to the early days of the current Trump administration and continued in the weeks before the overthrow of Maduro by the United States. The administration has also been in contact with Cabello since Maduro’s ouster, four of the people said.

The communications, which have not been previously reported, are crucial to the Trump administration’s efforts to control the situation in Venezuela. If Cabello decides to deploy the forces he controls, it could foment the chaos Trump seeks to avoid and threaten interim President Delcy Rodríguez’s grip on power, according to a source briefed on U.S. concerns.

It is unclear whether the Trump administration’s conversations with Cabello extended to questions about the future governance of Venezuela. It is also unclear whether Cabello has heeded American warnings. He has publicly pledged unity with Rodriguez, whom Trump has so far praised.

Although the United States has seen Rodríguez as the linchpin of US President Donald Trump’s strategy for post-Maduro Venezuela, Cabello is widely believed to have the power to keep those plans on track or derail them.

The Venezuelan minister has been in contact with the Trump administration both directly and through intermediaries, a person familiar with the conversations said.

All sources were granted anonymity to speak freely about sensitive internal government communications with Cabello.

The White House and Venezuela’s government did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Loyal to Maduro

Cabello has long been considered the second most powerful figure in Venezuela. A close collaborator of the late former president Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s mentor, he became a loyal follower of Maduro for a long time, feared as his main executor of repression. Rodríguez and Cabello have operated at the heart of the government, legislature and ruling socialist party for years, but have never been considered close allies.

Venezuela’s current Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace, as a former military officer, has exerted influence over the country’s military and civilian counterintelligence agencies, which conduct extensive internal espionage. He has also been closely linked to pro-government militias, particularly the Colectivos, groups of armed civilians on motorcycles who have deployed to attack protesters.

Cabello is one of the few Maduro loyalists whom Washington has trusted as temporary rulers to maintain stability while it accesses the OPEC nation’s oil reserves during an unspecified transition period.

But U.S. officials are concerned that Cabello, given his history of repression and a history of rivalry with Rodríguez, could play a key role, according to a source briefed on the administration’s thinking.

Rodríguez has been working to consolidate his own power, installing loyalists in key positions to protect himself from internal threats while meeting US demands to increase oil production, Reuters interviews with sources in Venezuela have shown.

Elliott Abrams, who served as Trump’s special representative for Venezuela during his first term, said many Venezuelans would expect Cabello to be removed at some point if a democratic transition is to move forward.

“If and when he leaves, Venezuelans will know that the regime has really begun to change,” said Abrams, who now works at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

US sanctions and accusations

Cabello has long been under US sanctions for alleged drug trafficking.

In 2020, the United States issued a $10 million reward for Cabello and accused him of being a key figure in the “Cartel of the Suns,” a group the United States says is a Venezuelan drug trafficking network led by members of the country’s government.

The United States has since increased the compensation to $25 million. Cabello has publicly denied any links to drug trafficking.

In the hours after Maduro’s ouster, some analysts and politicians in Washington questioned why the United States did not also arrest Cabello, who is listed second in the Justice Department’s indictment against Maduro.

“I know Diosdado is probably worse than Maduro and worse than Delcy,” Republican U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar said in an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Jan. 11.

In the following days, Cabello denounced American intervention in the country, saying in a speech that “Venezuela will not surrender.”

But media reports of residents being searched at checkpoints, sometimes by uniformed members of the security forces and sometimes by people in plain clothes, have become less frequent in recent days.

And both Trump and the Venezuelan government have said that many detainees considered political prisoners by the opposition and human rights groups will be released.

The government has stated that Cabello, in his capacity as Minister of the Interior, oversees that initiative. Human rights groups say the releases are progressing extremely slowly and that hundreds of people remain unjustly detained.

News in update

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