NEW YORK/MIAMI/WASHINGTON ¨C Trump administration officials had been in discussions with Venezuela¡¯s hard-line interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, months before the U.S. operation to seize President Nicolas Maduro, and have been in communication with him since then, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
The officials warned Cabello, 62, against using the security services or militant ruling-party supporters he oversees to target the country¡¯s opposition, four sources said. That security apparatus, which includes the intelligence services, police and the armed forces, remains largely intact after the Jan. 3 U.S. raid that captured Maduro.
Cabello is named in the same U.S. drug-trafficking indictment that the Trump administration used as justification to arrest Maduro, ?but was not taken as part of the operation.
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