KMAG DAILY THREAD 20260218 & VENEZUELA

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This IS VERY MESSY! I was going to include Colombian President Gustavo Petro because he shares the drug trafficking problem with Maduro However this article got way too long. So I will save him until next week. I am starting with a video by Gordon aka Ghost (GhostofBasedPatrickHenry) since it gives a look at the background. It is long 1 ½ hours but the 15 minutes from 19:45 to around 32 minutes gives a decent summary.

The Book of Trump Chapter 42: Hugo Chavez Pt. 2

THE HIGH POINTS:

19:45 — Ghost mentions Fake news Bloomberg, can’t keep its lies straight and later shows what he means.

21:30 — Sec of State Rex Tillerson as CEO of Exon starts the anti Chavez & Madero lies (2006), Exon Mobil Current president gets tossed by Trump.

23:00 — Ghost says he fell out of the chair. He found a Business Insider article describing how Exon went into arbitration and LOST getting a much lower award, in line with what Venezuela originally offered.

24:30 — Chavez negotiates successful buyouts with 22 oil companies. They get paid for assets nationalized when they refused to renegotiate the contracts. Chevron stays & gets new deal.

Exon then pulls the dirty using English Guyana by drilling off shore in waters considered to belong to Venezuela but claimed by Guyana too. on Nov 23, 2023 Paramilitary move into Venezuela from Guyana possible connected to Israel – Gaza mess. The whole goes back to Tillerson and when he was CEO of Exon.

Prior to that in June there was a court ruling against Exon dealing with Chevron buying out Hess. Exon had an option to buy rights to oil in Orinoco Belt but the entire company is sold not just that contract.

Trump gives Chevron special exemption from sanctions.

32:31 – Ghost starts picking apart a recent Bloomberg’s video & explains what actually happened.

PDVSA was formed in 1976 when Venezuela nationalized it’s oil. It negotiated concession agreements like those used for renting out farmland. Most of the contracts were written for 1% the largest was a 16% royalty. Also included is an additional amount based on net profit. However the companies cheated by creating subsidiaries which were paid mucho $$$ for services so the ending net profits were very low.

34:45 — Ghost goes into the differences between the Saudi model & the Venezuelan model.

1:28:00 — The law firm Sullivan & Cromwell (more about them later) devised the Holding Company. It allows monopolies and vertical integration to become a legal form of corporation. He then goes into the following information:

Nicolás Maduro and Juan Guaidó became rival claimants to the Venezuelan presidency following the 2018 presidential election, which the opposition and many international observers deemed illegitimate.Trump had originally supported Guaidó. “U.S. law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP will be the lead counsel for Venezuela’s opposition as it seeks to restructure the country’s foreign debt,opposition leader Juan Guaido’s overseas legal representative said on Tuesday” REUTERS LINK

Please note Guaidó was not the actually president and therefore had no authority.

POTUS stopped the money grab in January 9, 2026 — Executive Order 14373: Safeguarding Venezuelan Oil Revenue for the good of the American & Venezuelan People

With that as a background, let’s start with this tweet & video from Mike Benz. It agrees with Colonel Towner’s information about color revolutions in Latin America. They are fomented by the CIA on behalf of the big corporations.

Which is backed up by this video (6 minutes) I found at The CIA-Soros Partnership. And there is NED again, The National Endowment for Democracy.

Also see:

The British Intelligence Hand Behind the NED and Modern Color Revolutions

Now I want to add a bit of history:

Allen Dulles and his older brother John Foster Dulles both worked for the Wall Street law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson appointed John Foster Dulles, a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell,  as legal counsel to the United States delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference where he served under his uncle, Secretary of State Robert Lansing (WIKI) This would be WWI and the treaty whose terms were so harsh it set Europe up for WWII and Hitler.

History | Sullivan & Cromwell LLP

Domestic and international finance has been at the core of the Firm’s work since its inception. Before World War I, S&C represented European bankers and bond syndicates in financing the development of America’s railroads and industrial infrastructure. William Cromwell himself proved instrumental in paving the way toward the construction of the Panama Canal.

Heading into the 20th century, as international capital flows diversified and increased, the Firm responded by opening branch offices in Berlin and Buenos Aires…

MORE @ Grokipedia

And finally from BRAVE AI Sullivan & Cromwell’s current business.

Sullivan & Cromwell LLP has been involved in multiple high-profile legal matters related to ExxonMobil’s claims against Venezuela, particularly in the context of sovereign litigation and arbitration enforcement. 

• The firm has represented ExxonMobil affiliates in a long-running ICSID arbitration case concerning the nationalization of oil assets by Venezuela under Hugo Chávez and later Nicolás Maduro. 
• In October 2025, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled in favor of ExxonMobil affiliates, awarding $985.5 million plus interest and legal fees, after Venezuela failed to appear in enforcement proceedings. 
• Sullivan & Cromwell is also working with ExxonMobil on Supreme Court proceedings related to the enforcement of the ICSID award, including a petition filed in December 2024 (No.  24-699).
• The firm previously served as lead counsel for Venezuela’s opposition (under Juan Guaidó) in 2019 in efforts to restructure the country’s foreign debt, highlighting its deep involvement in Venezuela’s political and financial legal landscape. 

These engagements underscore Sullivan & Cromwell’s central role in resolving complex international disputes involving Venezuela’s oil sector and foreign investment claims.

Followed by a couple interesting moves by POTUS Trump.

Trump says he might keep Exxon out of Venezuela after CEO called it ‘uninvestable’

AND

Why the Trump administration is holding millions of dollars from Venezuelan oil sales in a Qatari bank

…The funds were sent to Qatar, rather than being held in US banks or sent directly to Venezuela… Venezuelan banks have started advertising cash, suggesting the oil proceeds have arrived in the country… Venezuela has been sanctioned by Western governments across the globe, essentially cut off from the global banking system for years. Its authoritarian government seized oil assets over the past decades for which foreign energy companies have demanded compensation…

Fear all ye men who sail the Caribbean!

So why do I bring all this up? Because we know we will not get the true story from the Mockingbird Media. So how true is that highlighted sentence? Is it ALL energy companies or just ExonMobil. Are those two moves by POTUS Trump AGAINST Exon for a reason?

And most important, is Maduro a prisoner or is he a protected witness?

Ghost and others dig up information NOT covered in Mainstream Media reports. Ghost is the first to acknowledge he has no way of determining if his conclusions are correct, however the information is certainly interesting. That is why I am bringing it here.

Above, I started by documenting the CIA – Sullivan & Cromwell – State Department – ExonMobil ties because Ghost brought up former CEO, Rex Tillerson’s long, troubled history in Venezuela.

Oil facilities at Venezuela’s western Maracaibo lake November 5, 2007.

I am going to use Badlands News Briefs and Some of Ghost’s videos as well as MSM clips. The briefs have the advantage of having clips of the actual documents Ghost uses. Click on his name to go to each different article.

Jan 05, 2026 GhostofBasedPatrickHenry:

Let me start by saying that I have long believed that we would see the extraction and “arrest” of President Maduro by the US military. Here I am on October 7th predicting as much, right down to Maduro willfully surrendering.

So nothing about this development is a total surprise, nor does it contradict any of my speculation that Nicolas Maduro is working in cooperation with President Trump. In fact, when I read that Maduro’s wife was also “arrested” (extracted) by US Special Forces and indicted as a narco-terrorist, it all but affirmed the theory that we are witnessing a cooperating witness/informant being brought into protective custody — not the toppling of a foreign ruthless dictator…

First off, the CIA apparently leaked the details of the operation to the New York Times and Washington Post so they could have the articles written and ready for publication.

WTF???

There was then widespread speculation about who would be taking over as leader, until President Trump clarified that President Maduro had appointed Vice President Delcy Rodriguez as Acting President, and Trump said he would be honoring the appointment. (Because that’s what one does when arresting a ruthless narco-terrorist dictator.)…

I do think that this was a negotiated surrender between Maduro and Trump, not because Maduro is some ruthless dictator, but because Maduro is actually a cooperating witness who needs to be protected. I also think that Trump’s claims of the oil companies paying to rebuild the infrastructure of Venezuela could be reparations that are legitimately owed related to the lawsuits that were filed back in 2018 against dozens of the world’s most powerful oil executives, accusing them all of corruption and stealing Venezuela’s wealth. The lawsuit was filed by the Venezuelan oil company, PDVSA.

Obviously, this story still has plenty of plot lines to develop.

So now we have dueling lawsuits.

Jan 07, 2026 GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: 

For those that may be new here, or otherwise unfamiliar with my research on both Nicolas Maduro and Colombian President Gustavo Petro, here is a 10 minute clip that provides a decent summary.

[It is a clip of Colonel Douglas Macgregor on Tucker talking about the idiocy of regime change, how unsuitable Maria Corina Machado would be given the 8,000 columbian drug criminals in the hills around Caracus.]

…Then there is this little factoid: Eric Prince of Blackwater went to Venezuela and met with Delcy Rodriguez six years ago. Many analysts are [wrongly] pointing to this as the moment that Rodriguez betrayed Maduro…

What if the Maduro “arrest” subverted the civil war plot? [To install regime darling Maria Corina Machado.Note that she visited Trump and got the side door treatment. 😂 -GC]

A SIDE TRIP INTO MARIA CORINA MACHADO

Maria Corina Machadowas a 2009 Yale World Fellow, a prestigious program at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs that brings emerging global leaders to Yale for a four-month residency. During her time at Yale, she studied at the School of Management and engaged in cross-cultural dialogue with other international leaders, including Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny. — Brave AI

Alexei was Killed by Russia with frog toxin, 5 European governments say. And if you believe that I have a bridge to sell you. Remember he died just after a visit from his wife.

Back to Ghost’s Article

I even joked that Trump’s reaction was basically, “Yeah, we’ll probably leave the side door open for her, or something… And then the Mad Man actually did it. He forced Maria Corina Machado to enter the White House grounds through the guard gate like all the other tourists. Nobody came outside to meet her….
Even when Maria Corina Machado was departing, nobody could be bothered to see her out to her vehicle. They just ushered her out of the door and slammed it behind her.

Badlands team

Following Maduro’s removal, a group of U.S. lawmakers reportedly expressed support for Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado as a potential future leader of the country. Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee are said to have unanimously endorsed Machado after a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill, praising her long opposition to Maduro’s government and calling for free and fair elections. The lawmakers’ backing comes despite Trump previously dismissing her prospects as Venezuela’s leader and reflects a degree of congressional support for the opposition figure’s role in shaping the country’s post-Maduro political landscape. (rt.com) —

>>>>>>>>>>

Now Trump is promising to turn his crosshairs on Colombian President Gustavo Petro— whom I have demonstrated in the video above is at the tip of the spear of the war against the cartels. Yet Trump insists that Petro is a cartel drug lord, just like he accused Maduro of being.

…It is also worth noting that Petro held a rally after Maduro’s arrest, where he said that “a clan of pedophiles”— specifically, “friends of Epstein”— were attempting to take over Colombia and Venezuela and must be stopped. — Ghost

Later on Jan 12, 2026 GhostofBasedPatrickHenry said

…The plan had been negotiated through the Qataris, with Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions Ric Grenell acting as intermediary, and approved by President Trump.

The Miami Herald reported on this rumor back in October.

Nicolás Maduro Guerra, spoke at a rally over the weekend and affirmed… they were following the directions left by his father.

…I have since stumbled onto new information that I think further validates the move, and it has to do with Scott Bessent’s announcement to imminently lift the sanctions President Trump imposed on Venezuela during his first term, so that oil sales could begin resume, as normal.

As I have detailed in this news brief and on stream countless times, President Maduro was given a laptop in March 2017. Maduro lawyer, David Boies, said: “In terms of the quality of the evidence, the extent of the misconduct, the amount of money, this was right at the top of anything I’ve seen in my career. It really demonstrated a long-running, massive and very sophisticated conspiracy.”

One year after Maduro was given the laptop (by the scorned wife of one of his corrupt officials), Boies filed civil lawsuits in the District of Southern Florida against 42 oil industry executives. He also filed those lawsuits in Geneva, Switzerland, where the companies involved all had offices. The Swiss authorities immediately raided the office of Helsinge, seizing computer servers that would launch a number of additional investigations, leading to countless arrests of industry officials in subsequent years.

Three months after the raid on the Helsinge office in Geneva, the Helsinge office in Miami was raided, and German-national Matthias Krull was arrested and charged with laundering $1.2 billion that had been stolen from PDVSA. A month later (August 2018) Krull pled guilty, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, though the judge advised that if Krull fully cooperated with authorities, he could have his sentence reduced.

Krull complied, and thus began “Operation Money Flight,” spearheaded by the Southern District of Florida’s International Narcotics and Money Laundering Section in cooperation with law enforcement in London, Rome, Madrid, and Malta, with the mission “to identify, investigate and prosecute high-level members of drug trafficking enterprises, bringing together the combined expertise and unique abilities of federal, state and local law enforcement.”

Simply put, this was the operation that would connect the white collar cartel (oil/energy/minerals) to the traditional cartel that trafficked drugs, guns, and humans, and Matthias Krull was the key to unlocking the case.

Krull, who was responsible for laundering the money that was being stolen from the Venezuelan government by the cartel, mapped out the financial network for authorities, demonstrating how the embezzled funds moved from Venezuela to the US and Europe. He helped secure plea deals from two other defendants, and the information led to Swiss regulators sanctioning the Swiss bank Julius Baer. For his cooperation, Matthias had his ten year sentence reduced to three and a half years, which is the largest sentence reduction ever granted by a US federal judge.

Krull’s information provided the road map for sanctions imposed on Venezuela by President Trump, which were strategically crafted and issued in a layered sequence that allowed for asset forfeiture and to ultimately crush the corruption ecosystem.

  But the sanctions did something else that I had not fully appreciated before now.

I have previously relayed that because of Executive Order 13850 that President Trump issued in November 2018, which targeted entities doing busy with PDVSA by freezing bank wires and Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), the defense attorneys for the 42 oil officials were able to convince the judge that proceeding with discovery would violate national security. The judge agreed, and dismissed the lawsuits filed in Southern Florida.

 What I didn’t realize was that what this meant wasn’t that the case was over. What it meant was that the case was paused, due to the sanctions, and would resume as soon as the sanctions were lifted. Meaning that discovery to pursue that evidence will still be viable.

Not only that, but as soon as Scott Bessent lifts those sanctions, and the [now lawful] bank wire transfers proceed from PDVSA operations, the regulators who monitor those transfers will quickly begin to notice discrepancies between how the money is flowing now versus how it was flowing prior to the sanctions, triggering new SARs that will likely lead to new investigations.

When the information from the discovery from PDVSA’s 2018 lawsuit is coupled with the information that was seized in the Helsinge raids, not to mention any new intel that is generated from newly filed SARs, that is going to create a massive web of conspiracy that will surely implicate a number of individuals and corporations.

I plugged the lawsuit filings into ChatGPT (which provides a list of alleged embezzlers) and asked it to run scenarios of how this could play out. It speculated that a single banker cooperating could lead to multiple companies being exposed. It speculated that, given the information already publicly available, that the private banks involved (Julius Baer Group, EFG International, Credit Suisse) were almost certain to cooperate first, along with the compliance officers and internal auditors. It then ran through the whole list of defendants, gauging their likelihood to cooperate in exchange for reduced time.

While many of the senior executives will likely avoid prison time (though plenty have already been prosecuted), given the countless loopholes and insulation from the criminality, in these situations the real goal is the asset seizure.  However, what makes this case unique is the fact that certain PDVSA officials do have ties to the traditional cartels, and those entities have been designated terrorist organizations by the Trump administration. So things could get very interesting very quickly, if this plays out the way that it should.

So to answer Jon Herold’s question, “Why did Maduro have to initiate COG and remove himself from power?”

So that the optics would allow Scott Bessent to lift the sanctions against PDVSA, and open up the floodgates for discovery via lawfare, which should ultimately link banks and oil companies to the cartel.

Checkmate, Deep State.

A SIDE TRIP INTO JULIUS BAER

Julius Bär – About us

…the renowned Swiss private bank with origins dating back to 1890…

For more than 130 years, we at Julius Baer have managed our clients’ wealth and served them as trusted, truly personal and holistic advisors…. Julius Baer is present in around 25 countries and 60 locations. Headquartered in Zurich, we have offices in key locations including Abu Dhabi, Bangkok, Dubai, Dublin, Frankfurt, Geneva, Hong Kong, Lisbon, London, Luxembourg, Madrid, Mexico City, Milan, Monaco, Mumbai, Santiago de Chile, Shanghai, Singapore, Tel Aviv, and Tokyo. Our client-centric approach, our objective advice based on the Julius Baer open product platform, our solid financial base and our entrepreneurial management culture make us the international reference in wealth management.

If we are talking CIA and Drug trafficking you can not leave out the BANKS needed to launder the money.

Feb 09, 2026 GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: 

Last week we had a story break about the Swiss bank, Credit Suisse, about old Nazi bank accounts and may others related to human trafficking and drug trafficking.

Now we have a story about UBS, which was forced to purchase Credit Suisse in 2023 by the Swiss government, when it became clear that Credit Suisse was facing insolvency.

Nothing about any of this feels organic.

We also had Colombian President Gustavo Petro, in his press conference (entirely in Spanish) following his meeting with President Trump, where Petro said that he had talked to Trump specifically about joining forces to go after all of the bankers who were the “bosses of bosses” in charge of the cartels.

An excerpt from his remarks:
PS – I managed to get the transcript of his statements and translate them into English, and read through the remarks during my show on Friday.

The Swiss Have a (Nazi) Banking Problem  — Badlands Team

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced that an independent investigation uncovered 890 previously undisclosed accounts at Credit Suisse with potential links to the Nazi regime during World War II….

The probe, conducted by U.S. lawyer Neil Barofsky, also found that Credit Suisse expropriated funds from accounts belonging to Jewish individuals during the Nazi era and transferred them to Nazi clients.

Additional details emerged regarding the bank’s involvement in schemes to assist Nazis in fleeing to Argentina after the war… Barofsky had initially investigated Credit Suisse as an independent entity, but was fired after the bank allegedly obstructed his efforts.

Following UBS’s government-brokered acquisition of Credit Suisse in 2023, UBS rehired Barofsky to continue the voluntary review.

GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: 

This is where things get very spicy, and very interesting. It’s also where the narrative “cloud of war” seems to benefit a White Hat plan.

Allow me to explain.

This Congressional investigation into Credit Suisse was initiated by Democrat Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.

You may recall that Whitehouse was the insufferable prick who viciously excoriated all of President Trump’s Cabinet nominations last year.

The reason Whitehouse opened the investigation was to determine whether Credit Suisse had helped Nazi SS officers flee Germany and escape to Argentina by providing them banking services with extreme discretion. Whitehouse was first put up to this task in March 2020 by the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), a Jewish human rights organization named for a famous Nazi hunter.

In 2021, Credit Suisse hired former US prosecutor Neil Barofsky to act as an independent ombudsman to conduct an internal investigation into the bank’s Nazi-era accounts. A year into his investigation, the bank pressured Barofsky into limiting the scope of his inquiry, ultimately firing him in December 2022— just months before Credit Suisse would face insolvency and be forced by the Swiss government to be acquired by their competitor, UBS Bank.

By this time, Whitehouse and the co-chair on this committee, Chuck Grassely had heard that Credit Suisse had likely fired Barofsky in an attempt to conceal the depth of the scandal, they intervened, demanding that Barofsky be reinstated— which he was, by UBS Bank, after the acquisition was completed in 2023.

I will remind you that Credit Suisse’s insolvency was most likely triggered by massive asset forfeiture that was conducted by the DOJ’s Operation Money Flight, which had arrested investment banker Mathias Krull in July 2018, after determining that Krull had laundered $1.2 billion worth of funds embezzled from Venezuela’s oil company PDVSA. While investigations into PDVSA’s stolen funds had been underway for years prior to Nicolas Maduro filing his infamous [though relatively unknown] RICO lawsuit against the oil industry in March 2018, the trove of evidence provided by Maduro created a map that led to multiple raids in both the US and Europe— including Mathias Krull.

If the name Neil Barofsky sounds familiar, that’s because he was the Special Inspector General at the heart of the 2008 financial crisis, appointed to investigate the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP,) but also the [$55 trillion credit default swap] Mortgage Fraud investigation in the Southern District of New York.

It was Barofsky who testified in a Senate hearing that, “It is extremely unlikely that the taxpayer will see a full return on its TARP investment,” referring to the $3 trillion bank bailout.

Prior to these gigs, Barofsky worked as an assistant US district attorney in New York, where he “prosecuted 50 leaders of the Colombian militia group FARC on narcotics charges and successfully argued one of the largest accounting fraud cases in history.”

Simply put, Barofsky understands the corruption of the banking and financial systems as well as anybody, and also has the unique experience of prosecuting Colombian cartel members on narcotics charges.

I share all of this to demonstrate that in this fog of war, we see multiple lines of inquiry coinciding in strange and wonderful ways, with Nicolas Maduro’s 2018 RICO civil action lawsuit running right into a congressional inquiry that was started by a Jewish human rights organization, with both investigations ultimately setting their sights on the Swiss banking system—specifically, Credit Suisse—the irony being that Maduro is the most staunch and vocal anti-Israel world leader of the Trump era, which is why the Zionists have been so eager to see him overthrown.

Digging into articles from the past few years, I found one from Argentina that specifically cites Credit Suisse and PDVSA, while alluding to Credit Suisse’s history with the Nazis going back to the 1940s.

It even discloses that Credit Suisse has over 18,000 accounts owned by both white collar criminals and hardened cartel bosses that total over $100 billion in assets.

Citing criminal investigations— not the Maduro lawsuit—the article states that the PDVSA-related accounts at Credit Suisse, which were used to hide the money that was embezzled and laundered from PDVSA, were all opened between 2004 and 2015. That’s interesting because that is the exact corruption timeline that is cited in the Maduro lawsuit— though the lawsuit did not mention Credit Suisse or any other banking institution.

So would this explain why the Venezuelan economy was completely gutted an collapsing by the time Nicolas Maduro comes into office in 2013, compounded by the artificially crashing of oil prices by the Deep State in 2014, which brought Venezuela’s economy to a grinding halt?

The article names former PDVSA official Nervis Villalobos, who was arrested in Spain in 2018.

In a separate article that I found that was published around the same time (2022) by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, look who shows up and gives insight on Villalobos:

That’s our guy, Mathias Krull, who became a cooperating witness for the DOJ in exchange for clemency on his 10 year prison sentence.

 The point is that the global banking system is being exposed—through multiple different tracks—for the fact that it is the actual cartel.

Reuters —Trump touts good relations with Venezuela, says oil magnate Sargeant does not represent US

And back to the start with Sullivan & Cromwell entering the picture.

GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: 

I recently learned that the Venezuelan opposition, operating out of the United States and led by Juan Guaido, among others, retained the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell back in 2019 to prepare to restructure the $60 billion in debt that Venezuela had

For those who aren’t familiar with this firm, I would implore you to look into them—listen to any of the many podcasts we have done on the subject here at Badlands—but the short version is that they were the CIA before there was a CIA. (Both of the Dulles brothers maintained employment there throughout most of their lives.)

It’s clear that when President Trump signed his recent Executive Order that intends to protect Venezuela’s oil profits from creditors and other vultures, Sullivan and Cromwell was at least one of the “targets” of the EO.

I would also recommend that you take a listen to last night’s episode of The Book of Trump—Hugo Chavez, Part Two—where I explain that it was ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson who started the Deep State’s crusade against Venezuela in 2007, ten years before he would become President Trump’s first Secretary of State.

Tillerson flexed on Maduro during Trump’s first year, leaning on Steve Mnuchin to issue sanctions against him. President Trump then fired Tillerson in March 2018—the exact same month that Maduro’s famous lawyer, David Boies, filed those infamous lawsuits against 42 entities related to a RICO-styled corruption case.

Boies filed in both the District of Southern Florida and in Geneva, Switzerland. Within days of this filing, the Swiss authorities raided the office of the lawsuit’s primary defendant, Helsinge. Four months later, Trump’s DOJ raided the Helsinge office in Miami, arresting banker Mathias Krull and charging him with laundering over $1.2 billion for not just the oil companies and banks, but also for the cartel. Meaning Krull is the keystone, along with Executive Order 13850.

So in spite of Delcy Rodríguez’s theatrics, all of the evidence suggests that she and Maduro are working with Trump against the Deep State/CIA, MI6, and Israel/Mossad.

Badlands Team

Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, publicly said she has had “enough orders from Washington” and called for Venezuela’s internal conflicts to be resolved by Venezuelan politics without foreign interference in her first public address since Maduro was removed from power.

“Enough orders from Washington on politicians in Venezuela. Let Venezuelan politics resolve our differences and internal conflicts. Enough of foreign powers,” Rodríguez said, according to AFP…

The CIA Is Moving Back to Venezuela (If They Ever Left)

See: CIA plans quiet establishment in Venezuela, CNN reports

Badlands: Rubio Warns Force Remains an Option as US Presses Venezuela’s Interim Government

Secretary of State Marco Rubio 

said the Trump administration is prepared to use force to secure cooperation from Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, while signaling that the United States expects compliance through political and economic leverage before taking further action.

Trump Unveils Coordinated Trade, Energy, and Arms Moves Across India, Venezuela, and the Middle East — Badlands Team

As part of the agreement, India committed to halting purchases of Russian crude oil and shifting imports toward US suppliers and Venezuelan crude. Trump also stated that India agreed to reduce tariffs and non-tariff barriers on US products, describing the goal as moving toward zero, resolving the 2025 US–India trade dispute tied to Russian energy imports.

In parallel, Trump said the United States welcomes Chinese and Indian investment in Venezuela’s oil sector, making the remarks to reporters aboard Air Force One around January 31–February 1. He stated that China “is welcome” to make deals in Venezuela, and that India is “coming in” to buy Venezuelan oil. Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves, but production has been constrained for years by sanctions and political instability; Trump characterized the current approach as allowing third-country investment and purchases as part of broader energy realignment.

The Badlands team reported this:

U.S. held talks with Venezuelan hardliner Cabello months before Maduro raid

January 17, 2026 By Aytan Shukurova, Reuters

Trump administration officials held months-long discussions with Venezuela’s hardline interior minister Diosdado Cabello before the U.S. operation that led to the seizure of President Nicolás Maduro, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

The communications, which continued after the 3 January U.S. raid, were aimed at preventing instability inside Venezuela, the sources said. U.S. officials warned Cabello against using the security forces and ruling-party militants under his control to target opposition figures…

And Ghost added:

There is a clear continuity of the Maduro plotline between the first and second Trump administrations, with Ric Grennel meeting Jorge Rodriguez— the brother to now acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez— in Mexico City in late 2020. That story was even reported at the time as Grennel trying to secretly negotiate an exit for Maduro, though I am unconvinced that was the real intent.

Ric Grennel then reunited with Jorge Rodriguez in January of last year, after President Trump was sworn in, when Grennel went to Caracas to meet Maduro and bring home six Americans who had been imprisoned. We now have this story about Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello being warned about using private security forces against political opposition. What’s interesting is that Erik Prince appeared on Steve Bannon’s show last week to explain why it was important that the US not repeat the same mistakes we made in Iraq, and allow Delcy Rodriguez to contract directly with any private military contractor that may be needed to shore up security.

What’s interesting is that Erik Prince secretly traveled to Caracas in November 2019 to meet with Delcy Rodriguez, and it was even speculated at the time by the MSM that this was President Trump’s attempt to establish a backchannel with the Maduro regime, despite the fact that the Trump administration officially supported the opposition leader, Juan Guiado, in their public rhetoric.

About an hour or two after Prince appeared on Bannon’s show, President Trump took a few questions from the media while leaving the White House. When asked why he was supporting Delcy Rodriguez over Maria Corina Machado, he responded, “‘If you ever remember a place called Iraq where every single person was fired—the police, the generals, everybody was fired and they ended up being ISIS… I remember that.”

So Trump is simultaneously disclosing that the US State Department created ISIS when it hired all those private military contractors to run Iraq, while asserting that installing Maria Corina Machado as Venezuelan President would effectively yield the same result?

Based.

We are also learning that Machado brought with her to the White House an advisor who once publicly called President Trump, “an idiot,” for accusing former US President Barack Obama of spying on him.

Trump & Wright: America is Bullish on Relations with Venezuela — Badlands Team

As Energy Secretary Chris Wright toured infrastructure in Venezuela Thursday, President Trump took to Truth Social to talk progress in the embattled nation:

“Relations between Venezuela and the United States have been, to put it mildly, extraordinary! We are dealing very well with President Delcy Rodriguez, and her Representatives. Oil is starting to flow, and large amounts of money, unseen for many years, will soon be greatly helping the people of Venezuela. Marco Rubio, and all of our Representatives, are doing a fantastic job, but we speak only for ourselves, and don’t want there to be any confusion or misrepresentation. There is a story about a man named Harry Sargeant III in The Wall Street Journal….

WIKI

Harry Sargeant III (born December 30, 1957) is an American energy and shipping magnate from Florida. A former officer and fighter pilot in the United States Marine Corps, Sargeant operates an expansive, multibillion-dollar conglomerate of private global enterprises consisting of aviation companies, oil refineries, oil trading operations, alternative fuels development, and oil and asphalt shipping, his father’s company, Sargeant Trading, being the largest fleet of asphalt tankers and barges in the world. He is also the owner of International Oil Trading Company (IOTC), a company that supplies aviation fuel to the U.S. Military in Iraq…

A Pentagon audit has found that the federal government overpaid Harry Sargeant III by as much as $204 millionon several military contracts worth nearly $2.7 billion. The audit by the Defense Department’s inspector general estimated that the department paid the oilman “$160 [million] to $204 million more for fuel than could be supported by price or cost analysis.” The study also reported that the three contracts were awarded under conditions that effectively eliminated the other bidders. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who led the probe, asserted in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that Sargeant had won the three jet fuel contracts, despite having among the highest bids, because he had an effective monopoly over the routes. Waxman accused Sargeant and his company of price gouging and “engaging in the worst form of war profiteering.”

Makes you wonder if Sargeant is another one of the oil Execs who ripped off the Venezuelan people.