Summoning War Criminals to Venezuela

The recent $50 million bounty the Trump administration put on Nicolas Maduro reeks of war criminal Erik Prince of Blackwater fame

Erik Prince at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland | Creative Commons | Gage Skidmore

On Thursday, the Department of State (State) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that the United States was increasing the reward for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from $25 million to $50 million under the Narcotics Rewards Program (NRP) for information leading to his arrest and/or conviction. The U.S. alleges he violated U.S. narcotics laws.

Last year, after Venezuela’s most recent election, war criminal Erik Prince sought to have the bounty on Maduro increased to $100 million, saying he would lead a violent coup of the Venezuelan government if the Biden administration did so. Prince even recruited Florida Senator Rick Scott and Marco Rubio to lead the efforts to secure the money he was seeking. He even began fundraising from individuals, with no word on where that money is.

Prince became well known after his private military contracting company, Blackwater, committed war crimes in Iraq, and after many of his contractors were executed in the country. His current company, Academi, seems poised to try to overthrow the Venezuelan government. Prince has been salivating at the idea of taking control of the country he refers to as “El Dorado,” for its vast amounts of gold and the largest oil reserves in the world.

While Prince argued that he should be able to invade Venezuela based on last year’s election, it should be noted that in their joint statement, neither State nor the DOJ mentioned the opposition’s data suggesting they won the election. Instead, they only mentioned that Maduro didn’t prove he won. This was the stance State took under Biden after I asked about the opposition’s data not being certified and therefore impossible to validate, the obvious forgeries, and the unsigned tally sheets.

To date, no outlet in the U.S. has been able to authenticate the data provided by the opposition.

“Since 2020, Maduro has strangled democracy and grasped at power in Venezuela,” reads the joint press release. “Maduro claimed to have won Venezuela’s July 28, 2024, presidential election but failed to present any evidence that he had prevailed. The United States has refused to recognize Maduro as the winner of the 2024 election and does not recognize him as the President of Venezuela.”

Despite the statement, the U.S. has validated Maduro as Venezuela’s leader multiple times by negotiating with him and granting Chevron and several other foreign oil exporters licenses to operate in the country twice since Trump took office. However, those licenses come with heavy restrictions, and any oil not sold to the U.S. has been sold to China, putting more pressure on Washington to act against Maduro to secure those shipments for the U.S. market.

It should also be noted that the leader of the opposition, who claimed victory, Maria Corina Machado, was barred from running for president because of multiple failed attempts to overthrow the government and for calling on Netanyahu to invade Venezuela. She was officially charged with corruption. Because of this, she recruited Edmundo González Urrutia to run in her place. Her attempts to provide “evidence” about elections date back years, including when the U.S. tried to install Juan Guaido, with help from the first Trump administration.

At that time, Maduro’s election was validated by the Carter Center, thus exposing that the U.S. and its backed candidates were trying to manipulate the election results. The U.S. has been involved in multiple similar attempts since the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998. Most of those involved Machado at the helm, employing Christian nationalist ideas that are common in the U.S. and growing in Latin America, as seen in El Salvador, Argentina, and Brazil.

Machado’s history of attempting to overthrow the Venezuelan government is extensive. She was present in the presidential palace during a coup of Chavez in 2002, when the Carmona decree was signed. The decree suspended democratic rights and installed Pedro Carmona as the interim president. In 2018, Maduro won, thanks in large part to Machado calling for a boycott of the election. She helped Trump try and fail to install Guaido.

In an interesting turn of events, the bounty on Maduro was increased just days after Venezuela thwarted an alleged terrorist plot. Not only is the bounty an insane number, but the accusations against Maduro are just as crazy. The most obvious of those allegations is suggesting that the Venezuelan president controls Tren de Aragua, especially after U.S. intelligence debunked that claim earlier this year.

“The Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States," reads the intelligence memo. “Maduro and top Venezuelan officials view the gang as a threat.”

With the U.S. government under Trump so willingly lying about so many things, including Latinos, immigrants, Epstein, and so much more, when they invoke a widely known lie to justify putting a hit out on a world leader, everything else about their justification comes into question. Knowing that someone like Prince has been waiting in the wings for a day like today makes it all that much more suspicious.

What happens next in Venezuela remains to be seen. But if anyone thinks they can just walk in there and overthrow the government, they have another thing coming. Considering we have a president who is gleefully profiting from his time in the White House and is unlikely to be deterred from exploiting Venezuela, remember what it’s about and who is already on board.

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Arturo is an independent journalist whose work can be found at Unicorn Riot, The Antagonist Magazine, Latino Rebels, and more. Arturo is also on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, and Threads. To support his work, become a paid subscriber or donate via Venmo, PayPal, or Cash App.