‘We came in, they pressed buttons and nothing worked,’ Trump told The New York Post.
President Donald Trump has revealed that U.S. forces used a secret weapon to disable Venezuelan military equipment in the Jan. 3 operation that resulted in the arrest of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
“The Discombobulator,” Trump said in an interview with The New York Post published on Jan. 24. “I’m not allowed to talk about it.”
Trump said the weapon disabled Venezuelan equipment during the operation, enabling U.S. forces to capture Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their residence in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas.
“They never got their rockets off,“ he said. ”They had Russian and Chinese rockets, and they never got one off. We came in, they pressed buttons, and nothing worked. They were all set for us.”
The president did not explain how the weapon worked or how it was deployed.
In a Fox News interview aired on Jan. 3, Trump said the special operations forces who conducted the raid “rehearsed and practiced like nobody’s ever seen,” and had built a model version of the location they operated in. He said Maduro “was in a house that was more like a fortress than a house.”
“It had steel doors,“ Trump told the news outlet. ”It had what they call the safety space, where it’s, you know, solid steel all around.
“He didn’t get that space closed. He was trying to get into it, but he got bum rushed so fast that he didn’t get into that. We were prepared.”
At least 32 Cuban officers deployed to assist Maduro in Venezuela were killed in the U.S. attack, according to the Cuban government, which has denounced the operation.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Jan. 4 that Maduro’s internal security apparatus was “entirely controlled by Cubans.”
“The ones who have sort of colonized, at least inside the regime, are Cubans,“ Rubio said. ”It was Cubans who guarded Maduro. He was not guarded by Venezuelan bodyguards.”
Following Maduro’s ouster, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was appointed interim leader by Venezuela’s Supreme Court and was sworn in on Jan. 5.
Trump warned Rodríguez after the U.S. operation that her fate could be worse than that of Maduro, who is facing drug- and arms-related charges in the United States, if she fails to “do what’s right.”
Venezuela’s interim government has freed hundreds of political detainees to demonstrate its “broad intention to seek peace,” with more than 100 political detainees released on Jan. 25, according to Alfredo Romero, director of Caracas-based advocacy group Foro Penal.
Maduro and his wife pleaded not guilty to all U.S. charges on Jan. 5.
Ryan Morgan contributed to this report.
