Venezuela: Striking the Deep State

By Douglas J. Hagmann, HagmannPI.com / January 2026

 Less than 72 hours into 2026, President Trump announced that U.S. military forces, in conjunction with U.S. law enforcement, executed a “large-scale strike” against Venezuela. President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured and flown out of the country. In a news conference on January 3, 2026, President Trump described the actions as part of a broader campaign targeting drug smuggling by transnational criminal organizations including Tren de Aragua and Cartel de los Soles.

   The real story, however, goes much deeper than the flow of illegal drugs. It’s a strike against a vital apparatus of the Deep State — the very same apparatus that gave us Barack Hussein Obama, two decades of rigged local, state and national elections, Biden’s illegitimate regime, open borders, and even the pervasive fraud by Somalian nationals that dominates today’s headlines.

   Nicolas Maduro was a key figure in expanding a Venezuelan-originated election manipulation network. It involved software from companies like Smartmatic and Dominion, influenced U.S. elections since 2006 by remotely altering vote tallies in key districts. Maduro’s system, with ties to Cuba, China, Iran, Serbia, and Cartel de los Soles, a network involving Venezuelan military and political elites, with Colombia’s FARC guerrillas, was part of a broader “hybrid war” against the U.S. and other nations.

   In addition to foreign actors, certain U.S. agencies and officials acted as co-conspirators through infiltration, inaction, or complicity. These enemies within allowed the fraud to persist, while others gained politically from rigged outcomes favoring candidates who embraced Communist ideologies. As a further insult, U.S. taxpayers indirectly funded the fraud through NGOs and government channels, much like we’ve recently seen with the Somalia childcare fraud in Minnesota and elsewhere.

Objections & False Equivalency
   It’s notable that although President Trump’s directed take-down of Maduro is particularly polarizing in today’s politically charged climate, it’s not without precedent. It was exactly 36 years ago to the day, on January 3, 1990, when U.S. forces captured Panama’s dictator, Manuel Noriega. Once a U.S. intelligence asset and paid informant for the CIA, Noriega was indicted in 1988 by U.S. federal grand juries on drug trafficking and racketeering charges. He also hijacked the results of the Panamanian 1989 general election, allowing him and others to remain in power. That military operation, known as “Operation Just Cause,” lasted about two weeks and involved over 25,000 U.S. troops, culminating with his surrender.

   Despite surface-level similarities between Noriega and Maduro, from criminal indictments to the CIA fingerprints of regime change, a significant difference exists. The take-down of Maduro goes far beyond drugs, oil, and natural resources. This was a bold strike against the Deep State apparatus that has been actively subverting our Republic for more than two decades, beginning with Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez.

   By capturing Maduro and blasting targeted installations in Venezuela, including the Cuartel de la Montana complex in Caracas, which houses the shrine to Communist dictator Hugo Chavez, shockwaves were undoubtedly sent through Langley, Foggy Bottom, and the DNC’s war rooms. As only he could do, President Trump delivered his personalized message by this final insult to Chavez, an idol of anti-ICE protestors, ANTIFA, Black Lives Matter, and other groups and individuals supported by the American Left.  More than a historical footnote, it was a signature move by President Trump. It was a message to the enemies within the U.S., “We know what you’ve done, what you plan to do, and we intend to stop it.”

Propaganda War
   Like most Americans, I’ve seen the fingerprints of our own Deep State involvement in regime changes, from Iran in 1953 to Ukraine and elsewhere. Like you, I’m tired of foreign wars that enrich the elite oligarchs at the expense of our blood and treasure. Like you, I’m sick of the lies and corruption of our leadership, the propaganda spewed by a compliant media — the stenographers of the Deep State. What’s the difference, then, with this latest regime change in Venezuela? It’s the motive.

   In the case of Venezuela and Nicolas Maduro, the public predicate for President Trump’s actions is the asymmetrical attack against the U.S. — the smuggling of drugs that are killing and incapacitating a generation. I can almost hear your stifled laughter after you read that sentence. Oh, the irony! Yes, I’m aware that the largest trafficker of drugs and even children is the dark cabal that exists within our own intelligence community and our allies. However, I’m also aware that President Trump has a much greater operational understanding of the Deep State today than ever before. That assurance was conveyed to me by an individual who has access to the eyes and ears of President Trump. Moreover, he knows that the survival of our Republic depends upon his survival — political and otherwise. He knows that his most dangerous enemies are embedded within the labyrinth of government, many at arm’s length, and all adept at shaping public perception.

From Caracas to Chicago
   The sudden rise of Barack Hussein Obama from his origins as a community activist in Chicago to the White House in 2008 was curious to many. Many questions about Obama’s origins and his past remain clouded in uncertainty. What is certain, however, is that Obama’s tenure as President of the United States fundamentally and drastically changed our nation. Our current political and moral environment can be attributed to Obama and his associates during his two terms and during the Biden auto-pen years.

   The 2016 election of Donald Trump, however, unexpectedly interrupted the planned destruction of our nation. President Trump’s inexplicable loss in 2020, laughably called “the most secure election in history,”  caused many Americans to question our election system. Information about that election is confirming what we already knew: the 2020 election was rigged at multiple levels through different means. Investigation ultimately found that elections in the U.S. were rigged from at least 2006, with perhaps the 2008 presidential election the most significant in terms of the outcome and the fraud mechanisms used.

   One significant mechanism used to hijack elections in the U.S. were the voting machines and the virtually undetectable software code that allowed remote tampering of vote tallies in swing states, flipping outcomes without a trace. These were the instruments of the crimes committed by the globalists.

   Our nation’s justice system, neutered by Obama and by his extension, the Biden occupancy, disallowed proper forensic examination of those instruments. Ultimately, however, forensic examination was conducted, along with an extensive investigation using whistleblowers and other sources inside and outside of government.

   The findings not only confirmed the crime, but verified the tools — complete with Venezuelan fingerprints, courtesy of Nicolas Maduro. A mechanism of fraud he inherited from his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, who developed undetectable election-rigging software with Cuban assistance. It was first deployed in Venezuela’s 2004 referendum. Maduro refined and finely tuned his tools as he continued to work on behalf of the globalists.

   The tactic was to destroy our Republic from within by ensuring the election of Communist subversives, while the taxpayer footed the bill through compromised NGOs and State Department slush funds. Meanwhile, his cartels would continue their drug trafficking and human smuggling in this asymmetrical war, receiving help from confederates already within our government and inside our borders.

   Maduro did not limit his attacks to the U.S. He exported this undetectable software virus designed to hijack elections worldwide, using Cuba, China, and other authoritarian regimes to infiltrate over 70 countries across the globe.

Tapestry of Treason
   By capturing Maduro and blasting targeted installations in Venezuela, including Chavez’s shrine, shockwaves were undoubtedly sent through Langley, Foggy Bottom, and the DNC’s war rooms. As the blasts shook buildings in Caracas, a tremor might have been sent though the Obamas, Bidens, Clintons, Leftist governors, Communist mayors, and other political offices and their bureaucratic enablers, realizing that their Venezuelan outpost is destroyed.

   Deep State puppets like Barack Hussein Obama, his mantra of “hope and change” that masked his Socialist-Muslim agenda, empowered our enemies, and sowed division, might be a recipient of the fallout. Recent investigations have found patterns as well, suggesting that Obama’s wins, like Biden’s in 2020, were accomplished through Venezuelan code.

   Obama won again through a Biden victory, a product of the same malware that turned Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania into digital battlegrounds. As anyone can see, the war against America is not limited to the presidential elections. State, county, and local officials appear to be the benefactors of Venezuelan fraud.

   The list of conspirators, criminal accomplices, and benefactors, would be quite long. Cabinet agencies, including the U.S. Department of State under Hillary Clinton, could be added, along with numerous NGOs used as financial laundromats.

   These are all threads in a tapestry of treason. Until President Trump took bold and decisive action on the opening days of 2026, Maduro and his Cartel of the Suns operated in concert with our adversaries, aided by enemies inside our government who didn’t just look away, but profited by achieving political power and untold personal wealth.

   Now, we must take note of those who object the loudest.

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