It was almost six years ago – during the COVID-19 pandemic – that then-Attorney General Bill Barr called a "virtual press conference" to announce that the Justice Department was taking action against Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.

"Today, I am here to talk about the former Maduro regime and its direct participation in narco-terrorism, corruption, money laundering, and drug trafficking," Barr said on March 26, 2020.

"As you will hear, the Department of Justice is announcing the unsealing of a superseding indictment filed in the Southern District of New York against four defendants, including Nicolás Maduro," said Barr.

"The indictment of Nicolás Maduro and his co-defendants alleges a conspiracy involving an extremely violent terrorist organization known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – or FARC – in an effort to flood the United States with cocaine," Barr said.

"There is an area on the border of Colombia, Norte de Santander, which is one of the primary cocaine producing areas remaining in Colombia," explained Barr. "FARC gets this cocaine over into Venezuela and then is given safe haven by the regime to fly this cocaine from an area called Zulia, near Lake Maracaibo, up into Central America. Since 2016, this air bridge has been established and has grown fivefold in just those four years. In addition, the regime is allowing these drug traffickers to take drugs by a maritime route in the Caribbean. We estimate somewhere between 200 and 250 metric tons of cocaine are shipped out of Venezuela by these routes per year.

"Those 250 tons," said Barr, "equate to 30 million lethal doses."

The........

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