The Trump administration has quietly instructed federal prosecutors in Miami to avoid pursuing criminal investigations into Venezuela's acting President Delcy Rodriguez, a longtime target of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, according to current and former U.S. law enforcement officials, in the latest sign of warming relations between the White House and the oil-rich nation.
It's unclear whether prosecutors had implicated Rodriguez in any crimes or whether investigators were moving toward an indictment. A Justice Department spokesperson said in an email "there was never an investigation into her to shut down."
But DEA records obtained by The Associated Press earlier this year show she consistently surfaced on the radar of federal law enforcement dating to at least 2018, though she has never been criminally charged in the U.S. like several other senior Venezuelan officials.
The directive to pause scrutiny into Rodriguez was meant to avoid upsetting the administration's efforts to stabilize Venezuela after the capture of her predecessor, Nicolas Maduro, among other reasons, the official said. It was not clear whether the White House, which deferred comment to the Justice Department, was involved in the decision.
"Everybody has been told to stand down," one of the former officials said.
The former officials, who had been briefed on the development, as well as the current official all spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss internal deliberations.
Rodriguez, a U.S. attorney representing her and the Venezuelan Communications Ministry didn't respond to requests for comment.
The move eases pressure on Rodriguez Removing the threat of potential indictment, even temporarily, eases pressure on Rodriguez as the Trump administration seeks to work with the acting leader to stabilize Venezuela after Maduro's ouster and open the country to U.S. investment.
President Donald Trump praised Rodriguez as a "terrific person" shortly after the U.S. military took Maduro and his wife to New York to face federal narcotics charges. Both have pleaded not guilty.
In recent months, the U.S. has lifted sanctions against Rodriguez and recognized her as Venezuela's sole head of state, allowing her to re-establish ties with western banks and more freely work with U.S. investors seeking to tap into the world's largest petroleum reserves. As ties between the two governments have deepened, some have held out the Venezuelan playbook - characterized by oil blockades, indictments of top leaders, and threats of military intervention - as a model to drive regime change from within as the U.S. pressures other longtime adversaries in Iran and Cuba.
Rodriguez and her brother, Jorge Rodriguez, the head of the National Assembly, were hit with U.S. sanctions during Trump's first term for their role in undermining Venezuelan democracy and cementing Maduro's authoritarian rule.
Rodriguez "is doing a great job," Trump wrote on social media in early March. "The Oil is beginning to flow, and the professionalism and dedication between both Countries is a very nice thing to see!"
In recent months, Rodriguez has hosted ceremonies with a steady stream of American oilmen, some of them partaking in high-profile delegations led by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum.
Election talk deferred amid Trump's praise Missing in all the mutual backslapping is any talk of elections in Venezuela, even as Rodriguez last month blew through a 90-day limit set by Venezuela's high court to fill Maduro's position on a temporary basis.
"I don't know," she responded in English when a visiting U.S. journalist earlier this month shouted out a question about her time frame for holding elections. "Some time."
Rick de la Torre, a former CIA chief of station in Caracas, said that the decision to halt any criminal investigations into Rodriguez fits well with the Trump administration's foreign policy goals in Venezuela.
"She's a lifelong Marxist and was a senior leader of one of the world's most corrupt regimes but the U.S. is providing her with breathing space and carrots to lay the foundation for democracy and U.S. investment," said de la Torre, the CEO of Tower Strategy, which advises companies seeking to do business in Venezuela.
"There's a shelf life to her utility, however. At some point she will face justice.," he added.
Rodriguez has been on DEA's radar since 2018 The DEA had amassed a detailed intelligence file on Rodriguez dating to at least 2018, and has received allegations about her ranging from drug trafficking to gold smuggling, the AP reported earlier this year. One confidential informant told DEA in early 2021 that Rodriguez was using hotels in the Caribbean resort of Isla Margarita "as a front to launder money," the records show.
Her name has surfaced in nearly a dozen DEA investigations - several of which remained ongoing as recently as this year - involving field offices from Paraguay and Ecuador to Phoenix and New York. She had even been linked to Maduro's alleged bag man, Alex Saab, whom U.S. authorities first arrested in 2020 on money-laundering charges, the records show.
Rodriguez deported Saab this month as part of a purge of insider businessmen who are accused of having enriched themselves through corrupt dealings with Maduro.
It's unclear in which Miami investigations Rodriguez's name surfaced. Two of the former officials said Rodriguez has also come up in meetings with investigators in Tampa tasked last year by former Attorney General Pam Bondi with looking into financial crimes in Venezuela.
At the time, Rodriguez was serving as Maduro's vice president. Justice Department policy requires the attorney general to personally approve the charging of any foreign head of state, who are normally immune from prosecution under international and U.S. law.
Halting high-profile criminal probes of foreign leaders The pausing of the investigations into Rodriguez comes as the Trump administration has similarly tapped the brakes on ongoing federal investigations into another prominent Latin American leftist, Colombian President Gustavo Petro.
The DEA had also designated Petro a "priority target" over alleged ties to drug traffickers that had been probed for months by federal prosecutors. The New York Times reported in March that U.S. officials recently assured the Colombian government Petro does not face charges in those cases.
Duncan Levin, a former prosecutor who worked for the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn, said it would be "deeply troubling" for federal law enforcement to be "told to stand down from a legitimate investigation for political or transactional reasons."
"The White House cannot use criminal enforcement as a diplomatic light switch," Levin told AP. "DOJ decisions are supposed to be based on law, evidence, policy and public safety - not on whether a foreign official is useful to the administration at a given moment."
