Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Stay Tuned In Brief. I’m Preet Bharara.

Last week, authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro declared himself the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election. Venezuelans across the country took to the streets to protest the result, accusing Maduro of election fraud. Maduro first rose to power in 2013, and since then has crushed political opposition and plunged Venezuela’s economy into a state of collapse. Foreign nations, including the United States, have expressed very serious doubts about the election’s legitimacy and have joined opposition leaders in calling on Maduro to release polling data.

Joining me to discuss the election and its aftermath is Elliott Abrams, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Abrams previously served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser under President George W. Bush and a special representative for Iran and Venezuela under President Donald Trump. Elliott, welcome to the show.

Elliott Abrams:

Thank you. Very glad to be able to do it.

Preet Bharara:

I appreciate the time. There’s so many things going on in the United States that we’ve been covering. It is useful to sometimes talk about things that are going on in other countries, particularly elections. So with respect to Venezuela, let’s start way at the beginning. Who is Nicolás Maduro and what has Venezuela been like under his rule?

Elliott Abrams:

Nicolás Maduro was the guy who basically inherited control of the country, inherited the presidency, from Hugo Chávez. Chávez was a charismatic leader who got himself elected. At first he tried a coup. That failed. Then he got himself elected. He died in office and Maduro took over. Maduro has never been, I think it’s fair to say, freely elected as president of Venezuela. And under him, the country has pretty substantially been destroyed. When Chávez came to office, they were exporting over 3 million barrels a day of oil, and they were rich. Now they’re exporting about maybe 700,000 barrels a day. The country is poor. It’s in great debt. 6 million out of roughly 30 million Venezuelans have left the country as refugees, and it is now really a dictatorship. That is, there’s no free press, there’s no independent judiciary. Maduro controls the Supreme Court, the Parliament, and as we saw on Sunday, tried to control, is continuing to try to control, the National Elections Commission and the presidential election.

Preet Bharara:

When Chávez died in office, what was his level of popularity in the country?

Elliott Abrams:

It’s still pretty high, I’d say. I mean, there had been a significant downturn already in the economy. But would he have won another free election? Probably. He was widely popular, particularly among poorer Venezuelans, working class Venezuelans, and he had presided over a period of prosperity, so my guess is he’d have won again.

Preet Bharara:

So what did Maduro do differently that caused not only the downward spiral in the country, but also in his own popularity?

Elliott Abrams:

Well, part of this, you’d have to say it was not his fault, that is oil prices began to decline globally. But for example, he nationalized the oil industry and put in cronies, political supporters, instead of the professionals who had been running all of the oil production sites in Venezuela. He introduced a kind of, I guess I’d call socialist economy, which was more and more run by the state rather than allowing a private sector. And with the decline of the economy, of course, came a decline in his popularity and he substituted brutality and repression for what had initially been under Chávez, a populist but popular regime.

Preet Bharara:

So Elliot, fast forward to the current day. We have this big election looming in Venezuela. What were the polls saying about Maduro’s chances for victory?

Elliott Abrams:

The polls suggested he would lose.

Preet Bharara:

By a wide margin or not?

Elliott Abrams:

Yes. No, the polls suggested that there was going to be a big victory, and maybe a landslide. And what has been striking, the polls were correct. What was striking about the outcome on Sunday, July 28th was not only that the polls were correct, but that the victory was sweeping, meaning González, the opposition candidate, Edmundo González, won every state. In one case, he won by a narrow margin. In others by a very wide margin. The figures show that nationally he won certainly two to one, basically 65-35, 60-30. Of course, the government, the Maduro regime doesn’t supply, hasn’t supplied, the data that’s needed, but there have been quick counts.

Preet Bharara:

Their government says, the Maduro government says, that Maduro won 51 to 43 or something like that.

Elliott Abrams:

Yeah, no one believes that. Literally no one. No one in Venezuela believes it.

Preet Bharara:

Not even Maduro himself.

Elliott Abrams:

Maduro himself knows that he lost the election. Every Latin American government knows that he lost the election. And this is important because now the situation is clear. You might argue that what Trump did in 2019 and ’20 by recognizing the Speaker of Parliament as president, some people would say was irregular. There’s nothing irregular about winning an election in a landslide. González won. Maduro lost.

Preet Bharara:

The evidence of that, as I understand it, is in the polling that you just mentioned in the lead-up to the election. Also exit polling, which is consistent with a two-to-one loss for Maduro. And then explain this other evidence is that the opposition has put forward.

Elliott Abrams:

There is exit polling, but there is also a collection of data that the opposition has been able to do, voting place by voting place. They had millions of Venezuelans who were trying to observe what was going on in polling places. So there is actual on the ground data that shows the magnitude of the defeat.

Preet Bharara:

So I guess the question presented now, Elliot, is what happens next? Is it a stalemate? Does Maduro win? Where is the military in all this?

Elliott Abrams:

Yep. Those are the questions posed to Venezuelans and posed to the U.S. government and other Western hemisphere governments. So far, what Maduro is doing is saying, “What are you talking about? I won.” And he did make a slight bow, you might say to reality, by saying, “Tell you what. Let’s let the Supreme Court decide who won.” Now that is a joke because he has complete 100% control of the Supreme Court. And again, everyone in Venezuela knows that. In the past, the opposition has tried on one or two occasions to take electoral questions to the Supreme Court and been rebuffed, been shot down. So they’re not going to buy that.

And I think what’s more significant, other Latin American governments aren’t apparently buying it either. The question is whether something here can be negotiated. Yesterday there was a meeting of the OAS, Organization of American States, and about half a dozen Latin American foreign ministers attended, but they couldn’t pass a resolution about Venezuela because of the number of countries that either abstained or simply went out to the bathrooms during the vote.

Among those who abstained were Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico, which might be a terrible sign. They are unwilling to acknowledge the fact of Maduro’s defeat. But it might be a more promising sign because there are rumors that those three countries are actually trying to be mediators, negotiators, between the regime and the opposition. The actual inauguration isn’t until January, so there are months now in which they can try to mediate. If that’s their reason for abstaining, that’s a good reason. We would want to see influential Latin American countries like Brazil and Mexico and Colombia, which is the country that has the largest number of Venezuelan refugees, trying quietly behind the scenes to see if some kind of transition can be negotiated.

Preet Bharara:

Talk about this super interesting issue of two important values in conflict with each other that you’ve talked about in a number of contexts, whether it’s Panama in the past or after apartheid in South Africa, and that is the competition between justice and democracy. Is that what we’re presented with here in Venezuela as well?

Elliott Abrams:

In a sense, if we’re lucky, we are. What we may face is just sheer brutality with the regime crackdown. But assuming that there are people in the regime who are willing to contemplate a transition, this is the problem. It would be just for a lot of people in this regime to go to prison for the crimes they have committed in drug trafficking, human trafficking, and brutal repression of democracy and democrats in Venezuela. This is the problem that Nelson Mandela faced in South Africa. And in South Africa he went for democracy and reconciliation, not justice or if you will, sometimes it’s called restorative justice rather than retributive justice, because if the people in the regime think, “After a transition, I go to prison for the rest of my life,” then they’ll fight to the end.

Preet Bharara:

They don’t leave. They don’t leave.

Elliott Abrams:

No.

Preet Bharara:

Right.

Elliott Abrams:

So you have to be able to say, “Look, there’s life after government.” In every South American transition, if you go back to the ’80s and ’90s, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay, there was always a negotiated amnesty. And I believe there’s going to have to be one in Venezuela as well.

Preet Bharara:

Who negotiates that?

Elliott Abrams:

Well, it’s Maduro, or his negotiators. It’s Edmundo González and his negotiators. But it can’t be done, I think, without outside help. And that’s where I think, again, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, maybe others, other Latin American countries I think are critical, there may be Spain, to be kind of honest brokers, conveners, between the two sides. Norway has done this in the past in Venezuela. So I think they’re going to need outside help to get this done.

I’ll tell you one thing they don’t need. The International Criminal Court. This is a real problem. I know a lot of people love the International Criminal Court, but again-

Preet Bharara:

We’re going to get mail, Elliott.

Elliott Abrams:

Because, again, you’re trying to negotiate someone like Maduro out of power. What do you do when he says to you, “Okay, you can promise me that Venezuela will not go after me. But how do I know that the International Criminal Court won’t go after me?” I mean, I think there are answers to that, in Venezuela, and also conceivably if you negotiate a deal. Maybe a UN security council resolution that would call on the International Criminal Court to leave this negotiated deal alone and not go after Venezuelan former officials.

Preet Bharara:

Is there a precedent for that with the ICC?

Elliott Abrams:

I think there was a precedent in Iraq.

Preet Bharara:

Is there a role for the U.S. in these negotiations?

Elliott Abrams:

Certainly. There’s a role right now, I think. Yesterday the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Brian Nichols, spoke at the OAS and said, “We know who won the election.” So the first role for the U.S. is to make it clear that everyone understands the election outcome.

Secondly, I think we should be both good cop and bad cop. I think we should be saying, “If there is no resolution here, if there’s no negotiation, we will reimpose sanctions, fully.” But that’s not what we want to do and the good cop side should be saying, “All of these transitions in Latin America have required a negotiation and an amnesty. We imagine this one will. We are prepared to support that.” And that would require, frankly, quashing the indictments we have against Maduro and others. And you mentioned Panama. We did this, or we tried to do it in the case of Panama, in the Reagan administration. We offered the dictator, Manuel Noriega, a deal. “You leave power and we will quash the drug trafficking indictment against you.” And he, President Reagan approved that deal. Noriega would not take it. And of course ended up ultimately, after a U.S. invasion, in federal prison.

Preet Bharara:

This is a side issue, but since you mentioned it, I’ve never independently researched this, but when I was U.S. Attorney, people would talk about the sovereign district of New York and say, “Well, that’s nothing compared to what happened with Noriega.” And I was told, and I don’t know if you have a recollection or you do know, that the U.S. Attorney in Florida indicted Noriega without any notice to Washington. Is that true?

Elliott Abrams:

It is correct. It is correct. And I believe that rule or protocol was adopted after that, that no U.S. Attorney would indict a head of government or head of state without informing Main Justice first.

Preet Bharara:

I was just thinking that guy, a man after my own heart. And as independent as we were, we indicted people who were very close to sitting heads of state. We did that with respect to a Turkish national and some others. But even I in the sovereign district would’ve advised the Attorney General if we were indicting the head of state. Sitting head of state.

Elliott Abrams:

Yeah. He was actually head of government. He was illegitimate so he wasn’t head of state.

Preet Bharara:

Right. So that the noted exception for U.S. attorneys.

Elliott Abrams:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

Illegitimate leaders are fair game. Could you describe, I asked you about a U.S. role in negotiation of Maduro’s exit, but explain to people what the U.S. economic or national security or other interest is in the situation in Venezuela. And I imagine there’s a relationship between that situation and our migrant issues. Can you elaborate on that?

Elliott Abrams:

Let’s speak about oil, national security, and migration. They have the largest reserves of oil in the world.

Preet Bharara:

But we don’t need it.

Elliott Abrams:

We don’t really need it. And it’s very high sulfur oil, most of it. They do have some offshore gas. They have a little bit of sweet oil, but most of it is high sulfur. I would say the need for it is on the decline. It’s a tragedy for Venezuela’s future, but certainly by the time they were able to get their production back up to say 3 million barrels a day, no one would need the 3 million barrels a day say 10 years from now. But that’s one thing. We have Gulf Coast refineries that for decades were taking Venezuelan oil and could do it again. Though I think myself that the Biden administration has exaggerated the degree to which an increase in Venezuelan oil production from let’s say 750,000 barrels a day today, to a million, million and a half, would affect our oil prices or global oil prices. The international oil markets about 100 million barrels a day. So this is trivial increase.

Second interest, national security. The Cuban Secret Police are very prominent and powerful in Venezuela in helping keep the regime in power. There are Russians, Chinese, Iranians, there. I don’t think we should exaggerate this problem. They haven’t done anything subversive to Colombia, Brazil, Guyana, their neighbors. But it’s a potential concern.

The migration issue is the largest issue right now because among those 6 million Venezuelans who left their home country, large numbers are coming north to the U.S. Here I’d have to say I think the Biden administration has made a mistake. They have believed that this was mostly tied to economic sanctions. And therefore if we started to alleviate the sanctions, migration flows would decline. I don’t think it’s mostly linked to sanctions. I think it’s mostly linked to Maduro. And I think that if he stays in power now and more Venezuelans lose hope of ever seeing a transition, more are going to leave. Millions more are going to leave. So I think the Biden administration, and more generally the United States, if we don’t want to see millions more illegal aliens, and we have hundreds of thousands from Venezuela, we should be trying to help get to some kind of negotiated transition in Venezuela that restores hope and that tells Venezuelans, “Things are going to get better here,” and that tells other Venezuelans, “Maybe it’s time to think about going home.”

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Before I let you go, I wanted to just timestamp this for our audience. You and I are having this conversation on the morning of Thursday, August 1st so a lot of things can happen in the coming days. What are the things that could happen in the immediate term with respect to the stalemate that we see at the moment?

Elliott Abrams:

Well, you could see a real turn to repression, for example. What if the regime arrests the candidate who just won the election, Edmundo González? What if they arrest the other leader of the opposition, their original candidate, who is then disqualified, María Corina Machado, and actually imprison them? What if they start shooting crowds to prevent them from assembling to protest theft of the election? That could happen in the coming week, let’s say.

You could see larger protests, though the opposition is not now calling for everyone to go to the streets. You could see that, and that could bring more repression. You could see though, I think, this will take more than just the coming few days, you could see evidence that other countries, I mentioned Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, are actually engaged in talking to the regime. You could see, this is probably too optimistic, some cracks in the regime. It’s noteworthy that the regime is not using the army in these acts of repression. It is using the gangs, organized gangs, that it has on the payroll. Maybe that’s because they’re afraid the army would crack. And maybe it would. So we may not see major events in the next week or so, but we certainly will in the next month or two.

Preet Bharara:

Well, we’ll watch it all unfold. Elliott Abrams, thanks so much for spending time with us. Really appreciate it.

Elliott Abrams:

My pleasure.

Preet Bharara:

For more analysis of legal and political issues making the headlines become a member of the CAFE Insider. Members get access to exclusive content, including the weekly podcast I host with former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance. Head to cafe.com/insider to sign up for a trial. That’s cafe.com/ insider.

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me at Preet Bharara with the hashtag #AskPreet. You can also now reach me on Threads, or you can call and leave me a message at (669) 247-7338. That’s (669) 24-PREET. Or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by Cafe and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noa Azulai and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández. And the CAFE team is Matthew Billy and Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.