They don't have an extradition treaty so they took him. What Maduro was doing was illegal in Venezuela too.

If you can give me an argument about why it's illegal or improper to try Maduro in a USA court for crimes he committed against the USA, like drug trafficking, I would love to hear it.

If you think the extraction itself was illegal - under what law? What do you think a military is for? If you have a military to defend your country and capture a criminal who you then try for laws that he broke - this seems like a good reason to have a military.

Under normal circumstances - diplomatic relations can solve this, but the consequences of breaking diplomacy is that the only way to get criminals into court is military/CIA. It's not diplomacy or nothing, that's not the world I want to live in, that's Neville Chamberlain theory.

"Might is right", pretty much.

I guess somehow the US will argue that Maduro was directly responsible for smuggling drugs to the US, and that he has broken US laws. Or acts of "drug terrorism".

The second someone without US jurisdiction as much as investigates US servicemen abroad, or Israel for that mater, they are sanctioned by the US. See ICC judges that have been sanctioned for doing exactly those things. The US argues that ICC does not have any jurisdiction to do so.

When it comes to US geopolitics, there's a wafer-thin line between taking the moral high ground, and straight up hypocrisy backed up by "who's gonna stop us?"

Indeed:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jan/03/caracas-e...

Or in the words of DJT (quoted in article):

> "We have the greatest oil companies in the world, the biggest, the greatest, and we’re going to be very much involved in it."

May the liberation of Venezuelan oil fields commence!

Maybe Trump captured Maduro just so he could pardon him? This would be a joke but comedy died when that man was elected, and this might actually be the case.