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Published
2 days ago
on
December 29, 2025
President Donald Trump refused to say whether the military or CIA had struck a Venezuelan drug-smuggling facility when it’s unclear the strike actually happened
Trump made the claim during a press conference following his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday afternoon. A reporter had asked for further details on Trump’s Friday claim that he had “knocked out” last week a Venezuelan facility where drug-smuggling ships “come from.” Venezuela has yet to comment on the alleged attack or even confirm that it happened, according to The Hill.
“Was the facility taken out by the U.S. military, or was it another entity like the CIA?” the reporter asked in a clip surfaced by reporter Aaron Rupar.
READ MORE: GOP Lawmaker Suggests US ‘About to Go In’ to Venezuela for Oil
“Well, I don’t want to say that. I know exactly who it was, but I don’t want to say who it was. But you know it was along the shore,” Trump said.
He was then asked if he’d talked to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Trump said he had “pretty recently” but that “nothing much comes from it,” before changing the topic to immigration.
“They’ve sent billions of dollars of drugs in, but maybe just as bad, they’ve sent hundreds of thousands of people in from jails, from prisons, from mental institutions and insane asylums. The drug lords, the drug dealers, were all sent into our country,” Trump said. “Tren de Aragua, probably the worst gang. They cut off people’s fingers. One man made a phone call to complain about them. He cut off their hand. They cut off his hand. ‘Don’t ever make a phone call again. We’ll cut off your hand, and after that, we’ll kill you,’ they said. That was in Colorado.”
Trump still doesn’t understand the difference between political asylum claims and insane asylums pic.twitter.com/uBNhCyvZSi
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 29, 2025
Trump appears to be referring to a story from 2024, where Brawnis Dominique Suarez Villegas, accused by the Department of Justice as a member of the Tren de Aragua gang, allegedly “directed and approved the torture and disfigurement” of a Denver man, according to KUNC-FM.
KUNC-FM reports that Suarez Villegas allegedly told fellow gang members to ransom a Denver man to his family for $30,000. The money did not come through and Suarez Villegas is said to have ordered the removal of the man’s finger, not his entire hand.
Suarez Villegas was indicted by a grand jury on Thursday for the robbery of a jewelry store in June 2024, according to CBS News. He is currently in a Bogota, Colombia prison and will be extradited to the United States.
Image via Reuters