Former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife will go on trial on drug trafficking charges next June, a judge said Wednesday, as their lawyers proceed to object to the U.S. military motion that snatched them from power.
Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein set the June 1 trial date on the request of lawyers on either side. Under the approved schedule, defense lawyers will begin filing requests in early September to challenge the indictment and the couple will return to the courtroom Nov. 17 for oral arguments on the motions.
Maduro, 63, and his wife, Cilia Flores, 69, have been held at a Brooklyn jail since U.S. forces seized them from their Caracas home in a middle-of-the-night raid and brought them to Recent York in early January.
Neither spoke during Wednesday’s 15-minute hearing as each sat individually at a defense table, surrounded by their lawyers. Each have pleaded not guilty. They face potential life prison sentences if a jury agrees that they were a part of a conspiracy to send cocaine into the U.S.
As he was led into the courtroom, the bespectacled Maduro greeted the judge’s staff and shook hands with lawyers for him and his wife. Noticeably thinner in a tan jail suit and along with his thick mustache, he seemed upbeat, smiling and chatting along with his lawyer. He listened to a Spanish interpretation of the proceeding through headphones and clasped his hands in front of him in a prayerlike gesture. He had a black pen wedged in his right fingers and sporadically jotted notes on a white pad.
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As deputy U.S. marshals led him out, he waved to someone within the gallery.
President Donald Trump’s administration has defended the raid to capture Maduro as a “surgical law enforcement operation” in a criminal case first brought six years ago. Maduro has called himself a prisoner of war and his capture a kidnapping.
U.S. prosecutors say Maduro carried out a conspiracy to maneuver 1000’s of tons of cocaine into the U.S. by colluding with Venezuelan law enforcement to assist drug kingpins.
“I’m not guilty. I’m an honest man, the constitutional president of my country,” he said in Spanish at his arraignment in January.
Maduro’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, has said he expects to contest the legality of Maduro’s “military abduction.”
During Wednesday’s hearing, Pollack said he’ll first challenge the indictment on sovereign immunity grounds because if that’s successful, Maduro won’t must proceed litigating the case.
The lawyers have said there are complex legal defenses that the court must address before a trial can begin.
Maduro and Flores haven’t asked to be released on bail.
© 2026 The Canadian Press