Judge sharply questions U.S. sanctions blocking Maduro's defense

“We’re doing business with Venezuela!” Judge Alvin Hellerstein noted.

Sign offers a reward for Maduro’s capture (Photo by Schneyder MENDOZA / AFP)

Look out for live coverage outside the courtroom following the hearing.

Wryly noting that “things have changed” in Venezuela, a federal judge sharply questioned the U.S. government’s rationale for refusing to let the Latin American country fund Nicolás Maduro’s legal defense.

“We’re doing business with Venezuela!” Senior U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein said.

The deposed strongman and his wife Cilia Flores argue that their drug trafficking cases must be dismissed because the U.S. government refuses to let the Venezuelan government fund their legal defense.

Maduro’s lawyer Barry Pollack said the Justice Department’s refusal to do so violates his Sixth Amendment right to counsel, citing Supreme Court precedent calling it the “great engine by which an innocent man can make the truth of his innocence visible.”

“The government has the right to block the funds, but doing so has consequences,” Pollack said.

Judge Hellerstein, 92, seemed to sympathize that there should be some remedy for the Maduros, but he refused to grant the relief that the defense wanted.

“I’m not going to dismiss the case,” he said sharply.

But Hellerstein’s hands may be tied when it comes to issuing lesser relief.

Prosecutors say that the judge has no power to order the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to issue a license approving the transfer of funds to the lawyers for the Maduros.

More than six years have passed since federal prosecutors first indicted Maduro on drug trafficking charges in March 2020, toward the end of Donald Trump’s first term.

His wife Cilia Flores de Maduro was added to a superseding indictment unsealed on Jan. 3, 2026, the day of the U.S. operation leading to the arrest of the Maduros. Their attorneys argue that financial support from the Venezuelan government, currently barred by U.S. sanctions, is critical for their legal defense.

Whatever brought them here, Judge Hellerstein said: ‘They are entitled to a presumption of innocence and a right to counsel.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kyle Wirshba justified the enforcement of the sanctions on “national security and foreign policy” grounds, but the judge repeatedly cited the changed geopolitical landscape that greeted the raid of the Maduros.

Hellerstein cited the now-”vital” nature of Venezuela’s oil industry, “specifically because of the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz.” The judge added that Venezuela’s current leadership isn’t implicated in the charged conspiracy.

“We corrected that,” Hellerstein said.

Venezuela is now under the control of Maduro’s former vice president Delcy Rodriguez, a loyalist of the same government that the United States and more than 50 other countries stopped recognizing in 2019.

Federal prosecutors have argued that Maduro and Flores aren’t entitled to Venezuelan government support under either country’s law because Maduro illegitimately held onto power following the disputed 2018 and 2024 elections, but the issue wasn’t a pivot point of oral arguments.

Hellerstein ended the hearing without a ruling.

This is a developing story. Check back later for more updates.